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Eys Breakers (4/12/22): MLB Props Preview & Best Bets Today

Keith Eyster Tue 4/12 11:54am PT
Image Credit: Imagn

MLB betting expert Keith Eyster dives into his best prop bets to target Tuesday, April 12th in his new series “Eys Breakers.” Use our Caesars welcome offer to get $1100 first-bet insurance today!

All 30 MLB teams are in action today. We have some afternoon games again and one game (LAD @ MIN) that we will be avoiding due to weather concerns. 

The best pitching matchup of the night is the late game this evening in San Francisco. San Diego will send their ace Yu Darvish to the mound to face off against Alex Cobb of the Giants. 

Darvish will make his second start of the season after throwing 92 pitches over 6 innings on opening day. His command was all over the place in his first start as he allowed 4 walks and struck out just 3 batters. 

I expect Darvish to right the ship a bit here and have a better outing tonight. The 13.6% strikeout rate he posted in his first start was abnormally low and he should return to somewhere near the 29.2% strikeout rate he posted last year with San Diego. 

The encouraging thing is we saw 92 pitches from him and should see at least that many in another divisional matchup with San Francisco. 

The Giants finished last season with a 23.6% strikeout rate which put them 19th in the league. The retirement of Buster Posey and insertion of rookie Joey Bart into the lineup is a clear downgrade. Bart had a 29.4% strikeout rate in AAA last season. 

I like Darvish to go over 5.5 strikeouts today and I am willing to pay the juice due to the plus strikeout matchup with San Francisco. 

The other side of this game features the resurgent Alex Cobb. Cobb put together a very good season for the Angels last year. He saw his strikeouts tick up a career high 24.9%. 

Cobb has been spending the last few off-seasons training with Driveline and he saw his fastball velocity hit a career-high average of 93.2 mph last year. 

There are reports out of Giants camp this spring of his velocity sitting between 94-96 mph, and being clocked all the way up to 97 mph. 

I am not implying Cobb is suddenly going to come out here and be a dominant strikeout artist, but I do think there is a chance he can again set a career-high strikeout rate despite this being his age 34 season. 

We are getting plus money on a very reasonable 4.5 strikeouts line. I love the over here despite it being a tough matchup for strikeouts. 

I considered Alex Wood yesterday due to a similar late-career resurgence in his strikeout rate after working with Driveline, but ultimately passed due to the difficult matchup. 

Wood had the swing-and-miss stuff working as he struck out 6 over 4.1 innings. It looks very much like he will at least replicate his career-high 26% strikeout rate from last year. 

I will trust my gut this time and roll with Alex Cobb tonight. 

The final game I want to break down today is the matchup between Houston and Arizona. 

Madison Bumgarner threw only 68 pitches in his opening day start. He pitched 3 innings with 4 walks and 2 strikeouts. 

Bumgarner’s skills have declined considerably since his prime with the Giants. His strikeout rate last season was a below average 20.2% and he posted just a 15.8% strikeouts rate in his first season with Arizona. 

Bumgarner also gets one of the toughest matchups in baseball with Houston coming to town. Houston was the hardest team in baseball to strike out last season as they led the majors with a 19.4% strikeout rate. 

Houston will likely send 7 righties to the plate against Bumgarner and he struck out only 18.6% of righties last year. 

The two lefties are their two best hitters, Alvarez and Tucker, and both handled left-handed pitching extremely well last season. 

I think Bumgarner has a difficult time navigating this line up and finishes below 4.5 strikeouts. 

The Astros will counter with Luis Garcia who had a breakout rookie season for them last year. He posted a 26.4% strikeout rate over 155.1 innings.

He only threw 5.2 innings this spring and he posted an insane line his last outing on 4/1 against Miami. He threw only 24 pitches over 3.2 innings and struck out 6!

I am sure he has been throwing on the side since that outing, but it is hard to feel comfortable projecting a workload for him tonight. I will have to pass.

Today’s FREE MLB Betting Card

There are several other pitchers on the slate making their season debut where projecting pitch counts remains very difficult. For that reason, we will just roll with these three strikeout props tonight: 

Beginning tomorrow, we should have more guys taking the ball for their second turn this season. We will have a better idea of workload and form by analyzing their first start, and should be able to identify some solid spots to target. 

Thank you for reading and good luck with your MLB betting today!