MLB Best Bets Today June 17
Nine games are on the betting board for what amounts to a pretty busy Monday on the card. All of the games will be at night as well, so instead of having something to distract everybody from the start of a new work week, MLB will be going up against Game 5 of the NBA Finals. This sport consistently finds ways to fail with its marketing, promotion, and general awareness and today is another example.
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Here are the MLB best bets today for June 17:
Detroit Tigers at Atlanta Braves (-130, 8)
7:20 p.m. ET
In a good example of how the baseball season has gone for me, I have an article draft unpublished in my Google Docs. The premise of the article was about how offense has taken a major downturn at Truist Park, not only for the Braves, but also for visiting teams. Back in 2022, MLB installed humidors at every park and my theory was that humidor settings had been changed down in Atlanta and nobody really knew about it.
The ball wasn’t carrying to the degree that it should. Players were not getting rewarded for aerial contact. And, while the Braves have seen a decrease in contact quality this season, it wasn’t of the magnitude that should lead to those kinds of numbers.
Well, there were 35 runs scored last weekend between the Braves and Rays over three games and a total of 13 home runs. I don’t know if the extreme, oppressive heat of the Georgia summer is to blame or not, but the switch got flipped and offense returned.
Today, it will be Reese Olson and Max Fried, who both have solid numbers for the season, but are coming off of rocky starts. Olson has actually had three bad outings in a row with 18 runs allowed on 28 hits over his last 14.2 innings of work. He’s faced the Red Sox, Brewers, and Nationals in that span, so not exactly lineups full of killers.
It is going to be very hot in Atlanta today with gametime temps around 90 and a dewpoint in the upper 60s. Plus, we’ll have about 50% humidity. It’s the kind of evening where the ball should carry, even with the wind blowing in.
I don’t know that the Tigers will give us a lot of help, but the Braves seem to have found their offensive footing. I like Over 8 at -118, but prefer the Braves Team Total Over 4.5 at -120 a little bit more.
Pick: Braves Team Total Over 4.5 (-120)
