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We’re just five days from the start of the 2024 MLB regular season, as the Los Angeles Dodgers meet the San Diego Padres for a two-game series in Seoul, Korea, starting on March 20. On March 28, the rest of the league will start their regular-season play.
Some surprising players have already started to emerge in spring training such as Eloy Jimenez, the DH for the Chicago White Sox. Observers believe his timing is already at midseason level, so keeping him from having to play the outfield and risk the sort of injury that has historically slowed him down should help him contribute all season long.
The Texas Rangers have a new prodigy names Wyatt Langford, who zipped thorugh the minors in 2023 and has been raking in spring training, including a grand slam against Cincinnati on Thursday. He leads the Cactus League in home runs. Langford and Adolis Garcia, last year’s ALCS MVP, could take turns in both the outfield and at DH, giving both of them reps on defense as well as chances to rest from the daily grind of patrolling such a large amount of real estate. As we consider sports betting on such futures as division, league and World Series titles, let’s look at some teams that are changing the way observers rate them. After all, did you have Arizona and Texas facing off in the World Series when 2023 began? Neither did we, so let’s look at the next potential group of surprises to consider in your MLB Betting plans.
2024 MLB Betting Analysis: Teams that Have Surprised and Are Shifting the Odds
Arizona Diamondbacks
The Diamondbacks aren’t getting a lot of respect, even though they turned an 84-win regular season into a wild-card berth in last year’s postseason and then rolled all the way to a pennant. It’s true that the Diamondbacks are in the same division as the L.A. Dodgers, who show no signs of dropping off their typical pace of winning 100+ games in the regular season. They are also in the same division as the San Diego Padres, who have Fernando Tatis Jr back and should, at some point, starting matching results with the talent on their roster. The Diamondbacks are going to be contenders in their own right as long as they can avoid the World Series hangover that plagues teams at times. They still have two elite starting pitchers in Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly.
Gabriel Moreno and Corbin Carroll were rookies in 2023, but the bright lights of the postseason did not faze them one bit, and they look like cornerstones of the franchise for seasons to come. During the off-season, the front office added Eduardo Rodriguez, Eugenio Suarez, and Joc Pederson, adding stability to the starting rotation and giving the lineup another experienced bat. Now, what about the back end of the bullpen? Paul Sewald came over from Seattle at the trade deadline and appeared in 20 games for Arizona down the stretch, notching 13 saves (for a total of 34 saves on the season) while blowing just two in Arizona (and five for the season). His postseason ERA is a whopping 8.10 – he appeared in three games with SEattle in the 2022 offseason and posted a 16.20 ERA, allowing six earned runs in 3 ⅓ innings of work. The 2023 offseason was actually much better for him, as he had six saves over 10.0 innings, but the World Series was a house of horrors for him. He came on twice in the Diamondbacks’ five-game series loss to Texas. In Game 1, he blew a save opportunity, striking out the side in his inning of work but also walking two and permitting a home run, turning a two-run lead into a tie game.
In Game 5, he came on with his team down 1-0 but needing all hands on deck to avoid the series loss. He struck out two but allowed five hits, including a home run, and four earned runs overall. The fact that Sewald was able to perform so well in the earlier rounds suggests mental strength, but he has a fastball that tends to rise, and hitters sitting on that fastball can drive it a long way. Is he the right closer for a championship run in Arizona?
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San Diego Padres
Let’s go back to the Padres for a minute. Their talent took a hit in the off-season, but the team might actually perform better. The Padres had an impressive +104 run differential in 2023, but they missed the playoffs. Why? Because they had an awful record in one-run games and failed, over and over again, to deliver in clutch situations. Some of this might be due to bad luck. Along with Tatis, Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts are five-star hitters who can do a much better job at the plate. Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove are elite starting pitchers who underperformed in 2023. The team did lose Juan Soto and Josh Hader and might lose Blake Snell unless they can come to an agreement, but even so, the Padres have the potential to push 90 or even 95 wins and take a wild-card berth of their own.
Cincinnati Reds
We’ve projected the Reds to win the National League Central this year. In 2022, they won 62 games, but in 2023 they jumped up to win 82 games, just missing out on the playoffs. They haven’t made the postseason in a 162-game campaign since 2013. They lost franchise cornerstone 1B Joey Votto along with outfielders Hunter Renfroe, Harrison BAder, and Nick Senzel. They added Jeimer Candelario at third, long reliever Nick Martinez, reliever Brent Sunter and starter Frankie Montas. The biggest story remains Elly De La Cruz, who used his speed and opportunism to become one of the sport’s most exciting players in 2023 and is expected to take Votto’s spot as the face of the franchise. Jonathan India is a one-time Rookie of the Year but has been on and off the shelf for a few seasons. He inked an extension and should be contributing on offense.
Candelario and Matt McLain come to town bringing promising bats of their own. The Reds didn’t buy on any of the other big-name starting pitchers in free agency, but if they get off to a solid start, they could turn into buyers at the trade deadline. Pitching is still an area of concern for the Reds, as their staff ERA (4.83) was the sixth-highest in MLB in 2023. Hunter Greene has dynamic stuff but is still figuring out the finesse part of his pitching. Over his first two seasons, he has a 9-20 record and an ERA of 4.62. Montas gives the team a mid-rotation hurler who will push 200 innings.
Boston Red Sox
It’s hard to imagine the Red Sox flying under the radar, but the truth remains that they are projected to finish fifth in the American League East again. They could finish over .500 and still come in last, given the quality in competition that the rest of the division provides. However, there are some elite prospects in Boston who could start contributing sooner than later based on their work in spring training. Marcelo Mayer was the fourth overall pick in the 2021 MLB draft and the top-rated position player in that draft. The lefty-hitting shortstop has had injuries slow him down the last two seasons, but he’s healthy this time around, and he has been hitting well for contact and making the plays on defense. He still might start down at Double- or Triple-A, but if the Red Sox need a utility player to come up and make contributions, he’s an intriguing option to come up and start to learn the big-league game.
There’s also center fielder Roman Anthony. Just 19 years old, Anthony has already gotten a couple of starts with the big club after getting called up from the minor league camp. He graduated from high school in 2022 and was already up to Double-A by the end of 2023. He hits lefty and has a sweet, compact swing and solid defensive tools.
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MLB Betting Teams that Have Surprised and Are Shifting the Odds
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