MLB Betting Guide for Friday 4/7/23: Buying a Pair of Undervalued Pitchers in L.A.

Betting on baseball can be a grind that reaps an enormous reward.

Day-to-day outlooks can be vastly different by starting pitchers, and a wealth of advanced stats can let us know an individual pitcher or team is due to positive -- or negative -- regression.

Which MLB lines from FanDuel Sportsbook are most appealing today?

Note: Lines are subject to change throughout the day after this article is published. All ratings are out of five stars. All stats come from FanGraphs unless noted otherwise. Please check here to make sure you're seeing the most updated information.

Texas Rangers at Chicago Cubs

Cubs -1.5 (+172)

Marcus Stroman's first start should send Cubs fans over the moon.

Stroman tallied six scoreless innings with a skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) of 2.93, and his 15.4% swinging-strike rate would be a career-high mark by over three percentage points. Now, that sample is microscopic, but he had flashed swing-and-miss ability that we'd quite literally never seen before, and the Brewers have a sporty .807 OPS against righties since Stro shut them down.

While Nathan Eovaldi's debut with Texas wasn't as bad as his 5.40 ERA would indicate, he was still a step behind those marks. He faced Baltimore, whose .734 OPS versus righties so far is nearly identical to the Cubbies' .728 mark.

It's a small sample (welcome to April baseball), but I'm wholeheartedly willing to buy into this new-look version of Stroman -- and so are high-profile bettors. Despite only getting 34% of tickets to cover a one-run spread, 66% of the money is on Chicago to win their home opener comfortably.

St. Louis Cardinals at Milwaukee Brewers

Under 8.5 (-114)

For a pair of really solid pitchers historically, this total feels abnormally high. It's potentially due to Milwaukee's park factor, but Jack Flaherty and Brandon Woodruff are two solid hurlers to assume a shootout in Cream City.

Woodruff might be the Brewers' ace given Corbin Burnes' early-season implosion, and he sailed through his debut. He held a sparkling 2.23 SIERA with a 36.4% strikeout rate, cruising through the aforementioned Cubs lineup that's put forth a decent effort against orthodox hurlers so far.

There's no doubt Flaherty is the greatest risk to the under. His velocity was a tick down in the opener (no different than many starters across the league this early), but he allowed an average exit velocity of just 85.4 mph. That all led to a hard-hit rate of just 20.0% against a potent Blue Jays attack. I'm not too worried about his elevated SIERA (8.97) due to a low amount of whiffs in St. Louis' opener.

This is a "Pros vs. Joes" betting spot. 69% of the tickets are on the over, but 66% of the handle is on the under. Behind these two solid pitchers, it's easy to see why.

Toronto Blue Jays at Los Angeles Angels

Under 9.0 (+100)

This is my favorite line of the day, accompanied by a three-star recommendation from numberFire's model.

You'd think two low-end starters are taking the hill with this total, but that's not the case. Toronto is sending Chris Bassitt to the hill, and Los Angeles will counter with Patrick Sandoval.

If there's a concern here, it's definitely Bassitt, who was shelled during his debut in St. Louis. Against a good offense, that can happen. He was chased in the fourth inning with a 6.87 SIERA and an unusual 63.2% hard-hit rate. C.B. has five straight seasons with a hard-hit rate below 38.0%, so I'm absolutely chalking that up to a one-game sample.

As for Sandoval, he was actually quite good in his debut despite not generating many whiffs (9.1% swinging-strike rate). He twirled five innings of one-run ball with a tiny 18.8% hard-hit rate, but that was Oakland. If there's a surprising thing to watch for here, it's that the Jays' 97 wRC+ against lefties thus far isn't that stellar.

Our model sees this paying out (including a potential push) 66.8% of the time, which absolutely works at these 50.0% implied odds. Sharp money dropped this number from 9.5 to 9.0 this morning, so while it stinks to miss the best of the number, I'd get boogying to not miss this opportunity entirely.