The most storied rivalry in all of baseball, perhaps all of sports, will get several new installments over the next week. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have two series and six games scheduled against each other through next Sunday. Let’s dive into the betting odds for Saturday night’s Red Sox-Yankees game to make our MLB predictions and pick the best bet. We’ll also go over whether it’s a good spot to take advantage of the early win bonus at DraftKings.
Readers looking for all the best MLB bets, picks and predictions throughout the season should check out OddsShopper’s articles and market-based models, including our Parlay Builder!
Best MLB Red Sox-Yankees Betting Pick & Prediction: Bronx Bombers Bounce Back
Red Sox-Yankees Odds
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook
Red Sox: +105 | Yankees: -130
Over 8.5: -115 | Over 8.5: -105
A quick look at the stats suggests the Yankees have an edge on the mound tonight, but a deeper dive reveals that Boston may actually have the leg up. New York will start RHP Domingo German (3-3), whose 3.69 ERA is slightly lower than his 4.19 xERA. Boston will start RHP Tanner Houck (3-5), whose 5.46 ERA is dramatically higher than his 3.85 xERA. Houck’s ERA also improves to 4.56 on the road, which suggests Fenway Park’s generosity to hitters has hurt Houck’s numbers.
The Red Sox should also have an advantage at the plate, albeit not much of one. Boston’s offense ranks an impressive seventh in weighted on-base average, or wOBA, at .331, and ninth in expected weighted on-base average, or xwOBA, at .329. In contrast, the Yankees rank 19th in wOBA at .314 but 10th in xwOBA at .329. However, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge remains on the injured list due to a foot issue.
The betting trends and splits don’t yield a meaningful edge here, so I turned to two places to find some value. First, I looked at FiveThirtyEight’s model for win probability. Their model gives New York a 59% chance of winning tonight, which corresponds to odds of -143 and confirmed my suspicion that the market was too low on the Yankees after they lost the first game. We can buy the Yankees to win at -130 (56.5%) via DraftKings Sportsbook and get paid out early if they ever lead by two runs, so let’s take advantage of that deal while we can.
I also looked at OddsShopper’s market-based model to see if anything stood out on the player prop markets for this game. Giancarlo Stanton owns odds of -185 to record at hit at FanDuel Sportsbook, but market-based analysis suggests a fair price for that line is -202, so we’re getting 3% ROI on a play with an expected hit rate of 67%. That isn’t a life-changing return, but, over a large enough sample, our market-based model can net you a much more impressive profit.
Best Red Sox-Yankees MLB Pick: New York Moneyline -130 at DraftKings
