Friday April 17th Expert MLB Betting Picks, Predictions

We had just scratched back to .500 on the year and then Jesus Luzardo happened, oh well. Let’s look at a couple MLB Picks for today.

Season Record 8-9-1, -1.85 Units

Padres at Angels

Who would have thought the Padres at Angels in mid April would give us a kind of interesting matchup? Especially the Angels half of it. Well, here we are. And hey Mike Trout is on a tear with five homers in his last four games.

The Angels will start Jose Soriano and the righty has emerged as one of the best SP’s in baseball so far. 

Through four starts and 27 innings he has allowed one measly earned run to cross the plate on his watch, alongside a 0.67 WHIP. The WHIP is huge for him as he’s an extreme groundball pitcher with a 4.0 LA and 61.4% GB% (94th percentile), so that’s a risk for him playing in front of a less than stellar infield. But he’s controlling contact well thus far with a 33% HardHit% and 87.8 EV. Oh and most importantly, he’s learned how to produce K’s from his 97.5 MPH heat. His Whiff% is up from 27% last year to 32.4%, and his K% has exploded from 21% to 32% He’s throwing his fastball much more (23.4% vs. 8.6%) and his slider much less (49.1% to 30.5%) and the new mix is clearly doing wonders.

The Padres start German Marquez, who has escaped Coors but magically is still not a good pitcher. He’s won two of his three starts, but that’s more thanks to his offense as he has an ugly 5.54 ERA and 1.69 and there’s nothing in his “skills” that suggest anything better than that. The Padres offense looks better on paper than they’ve played this far, as they have a teamwide wRC+ of 100. 

They have just 17 homers as a team so far, none from Fernando Tatis Jr.

I like the F5 prop here because once it gets to the bullpen, the game tilts heavily to San Diego. Closer Mason Miller has an amazing walkout and when he gets to the mound he has an insane 74% K% so far. Meanwhile Angels closer Jordan Romano has blown two saves already this week.

Angels F5 -0.5 (-105 BetMGM)

Giants at Nationals

Let’s stick to the Warmth in the Northeast play and go with an over on two kind of underwhelming teams. The Nats have actually had a pretty pesky offense as their 112 wRC+ ranks 4th in MLB. They face Logan Webb, who has gotten off to quite the rocky 5.25 ERA start. His K% has dipped to just 20% and his BB% is at 8.6% vs. 5.6% for his career. He’s had an ability to change his styles over the years, and in 2025 he bumped his K% to a career high 26%. He may need to do that again as he’s an extreme groundball pitcher in front of a really bad fielding right side of his infield. Not sure he gets it corrected in time to limit damage today. The Giants are not a titanic offense to say the least, but I trust they can at least get to the meh Zack Littell and the hideous Nats bullpen.

Over 8 (-110 FanDuel)