It's a brand new week for me here on the Fantasy Alarm MLB Best Bets and I am grateful for that as last week was full of let downs from the Yankees blowing games against the Rockies to players going cold on their props I am ready to wash my hands clean of all of it! The nice thing about the MLB is it keeps trucking on and every night is a big slate full of chances to get back in the green. There are 4 picks in the article today that include a team total wager, a player prop, a game total and a Money Line so we have all the bases covered in the writeup, sorry for the cliche baseball pun! Let's take a look at what I am betting on for tonight in the MLB on July 18th, 2023. 

  • Sunday's Record: 1-2
  • Season Record: 43-38-1
  • Bankroll: -0.94 units
 

MLB Best Bets for July 18

Boston Red Sox at Oakland Athletics 

The Red Sox are one of the hottest teams in baseball right now and the All-Star break did nothing to slow them down as they've won 8 of their last 10 games and have scored 34 total runs over the last 5 games! Tonight they'll get the A's on the road in the 2nd game of this series and it's hard to see them slowing down against one of the leagues worst teams. The Red Sox overall have averaged 5.06 runs per game this season, the 5th most in the MLB and the Athletics have a team ERA of 6.08 the highest in the majors so you do the math. The Boston lineup likely won't be out for a few hours but it appears their normal complement of hitters are projected to be a go as well. They'll get to tee off against Luis Medina who has an ERA of 6.34 and WHIP up at 1.61, both those numbers are quite poor. All of that out there the first wager of the article will be on the Boston Red Sox team total runs to go over at 5.5 runs. Let's stack on top of that though as we expect an offensive outpouring and take a look at Masataka Yoshida who has been red hot recently. In the past 5 games the Boston outfielder has 8 hits, 6 runs and 7 RBIs so that has me looking at one of my favorite props in hits, runs and RBIs. His line is 1.5 in this betting category today and that's just way too low for a guy hitting as well as he is right now and will be hitting second in the lineup tonight so give me that over!

Pick: Boston Red Sox Team Total Over 5.5 Runs (+110 on BetRivers)

Pick: Masataka Yoshida Over 1.5 Hits/Runs/RBIs (-140 on DraftKings)

Cleveland Guardians at Pittsburgh Pirates 

What do you do when you get two of the worst offenses in baseball together for a night? You take a good look at the under on the game total! It's true that Cleveland managed to score 11 total runs last night but over the course of their season that's a major outlier as they've scored on average 4.10 runs which is the 4th lowest mark in the MLB. They will also probably regress tonight as Mitch Keller takes the mound for the Pirates and he's been lights out almost all season with a 3.31 ERA and 129 strikeouts over 116.0 innings of work. The Guardians will face an uphill battle tonight scoring but so will the Pirates as they average 4.13 runs per game, the 5th lowest mark in the MLB. More recently they've failed to top 4 runs in 9 straight games so the under is starting to look pretty juicy. The last thing I will note on this matchup is that the Guardians have hit the under in 58.2% of their games this season that highest rate in the entire MLB so let's go ahead and wager on that to happen again tonight in Pittsburgh. 

Pick: Cleveland Guardians & Pittsburgh Pirates Under 8.5 Runs (-105 on BetMGM)

Los Angeles Dodgers at Baltimore Orioles 

What a fun series this is going to be as the Dodgers and Orioles don't play often and are both on the top of the mountain right now. Game 1 of the series went to the Dodgers yesterday as they won 6-4 but tonight I see things getting evened up by the home side as there are a few advantages statistically for the Orioles. The first of which is their play at home this season as they sit at 29-19 overall and score 4.97 runs per game on the season. Another reason to like Baltimore is they rarely lose back to back games on their home turf, its only happened 4 series all season out of nearly 17 series to this point. The Orioles will also have the advantage on the mound tonight as Tyler Wells gets the nod with his 7-4 record and 3.18 ERA. This is compared to the Dodgers starter for tonight Michael Grove who has an 6.89 ERA and WHIP of 1.55 in his 11 starts this season. Compound everything together and things look awfully good for the Orioles tonight at home so let's bet on them in a very fair Money Line market against the Dodgers tonight. 

Pick: Baltimore Orioles Money Line (-120 on Caesars)

**all bets are one unit unless specifically mentioned.