MLB Picks Today: Best Bets for Diamondbacks vs Orioles and Cubs vs Phillies

Summer is in the air!

What a difference a week makes as it's gone from freezing to scorching in the Northeast and Midwest.

Here are today’s MLB Picks.

Season Record 7-8-1, -1.66 Units

Diamondbacks at Orioles

F5 Over 4.5 (-120 FanDuel)

It’s going up to 90 today in Charm City. I don’t have the Ballpark Pal park factors number for today’s game yet, but last night Baltimore ranked as the top hitting venue in MLB with a +17% Run Factor. And it's only toastier this afternoon.

The Orioles start Kyle Bradish, and in all fairness he’s been better than his topline numbers so far. He was kind of polarizing in Fantasy drafts this year, but mostly because of doubts about the workload he could handle this year.

That doesn’t concern us for today though. What does matter is that he has a 5.27 ERA and 1.68 WHIP through three starts covering just 13.1 IP. That is perhaps a bit unlucky as he has a sky high .382 BABIP against. The league average is .287 this year and his career level is .291, so this screams small sample size bad luck. What’s more he has a 60% LOB% vs. 71.1% league wide. His xERA is 3.21 and his SIERA is 4.25 so split the difference and he’s pitching more like a high 3’s ERA type.

DBack starter Eduardo Rodriguez is the polar opposite as he has a 0.60 ERA but that is wildly propped up by a .222 BABIP and 96% LOB%.He’s the same meh pitchers he’s been in the last few seasons, perhaps worse as he has just a 15% K% (Bradish is 27% fwiw).

It would not shock me in the slightest to see both pitchers regress today as Bradish remains the clearly better arm, early season results to the contrary. But I’m going to choose the weather over everything and play for the balls to fly around the park and roll with the Over.

Cubs at Phillies

It’s a great pitching matchup here today. Shota Imanaga looks fantastic early on with a 2.81 ERA and 0.81 WHIP that’s fully backed by his 26.7% K-BB%. But that was achieved in some cold weather early season games. It's warm in Philly today too and Shota’s one bugaboo in MLB is his propensity to give up bombs. He yielded 31 in 141 IP last year, but just 1 in 16 IP this year thanks to a 5.6% HR/FB% vs. a 12.6% rate in his career. I’m thinking he gets tagged for a couple from the loaded Phillies lineup.

Meanwhile Jesus Luzardo has pitched perhaps better than he did in his ace turn of 2025, but early season luck has hit him even worse than Bradish.

He has an enormous 36% K% but a .359 BABIP and 48% LOB% have led to an extremely misleading 6.23 ERA. His SIERA is 2.04. Whether he fully mean regresses today or not is anyone’s guess, but I think he’s a favorite to carve up the Cubs today.