Top MLB No Runs First Inning (NRFI) Odds, Picks & Predictions: Friday (9/30)
Today is the last Friday of the MLB regular season and I truly can’t believe we have reached this point. Most of the races are well in hand and there is not much that still needs to be decided but the Braves and Mets open up a quasi-playoff series today and the Brewers and Phillies are still fighting it out for the last Wild Card spot. Let’s dive into the slate and pick our favorite NRFI bets.
View the best player prop bets for tonight’s slate with our MLB Prop Bet Cheat Sheet >>
New York Mets and Atlanta Braves 7:20 ET
Two of baseball’s best pitchers going head to head in the first game in a pivotal three-game series to decide the NL East is about everything that baseball fans could ask for. That is what we get tonight in Atlanta. Max Fried takes the mound for the Braves and he is somehow having an even better season than he did last year. He has a sub-three ERA and all of the estimators seem him the same way. He does not walk hitters or allow home runs which is an elite combination for run prevention. He does face a Mets’ lineup that is 10% better than league average against left-handed pitching but his skill set is just too impressive for me to be worried about the matchup. Fried has allowed a 0.215 wOBA the first time through the order.
On the other side of this game is Jacob deGrom who is still one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. deGrom’s career stats page looks like something out of a video game. He is coming off one of the worst starts of his career in his last game against the Athletics but the numbers in his small sample of 2022 are still off the charts. The strikeouts paired with almost no walks are just unheard of from a starter. He has allowed a sub-200 wOBA the first time through the order in 2022 and has similar elite stats throughout his career. He is just so talented that the matchup truly does not matter, this Braves offense is elite but deGrom is even better. This number is extremely high but it’s for good reason.
Kansas City Royals at Cleveland Guardians 7:10 ET
Aaron Civale is starting for the Guardians today and while his 2022 season has not gone as planned, he is an appealing play for me today. The argument in his favor is two-fold. The first side is his success the first time through the order. His 0.277 wOBA allowed the first go-around jumps to almost .340 once a hitter has seen him once. This works in our favor as we just need him to have a clean first inning. The other piece is the overall lack of success for the Royals’ offense. Overall, they have a bottom five offense by wRC+ against right-handed pitching and have an offense 10% worse than league average in the last thirty days. These two factors should play nicely for the NRFI bet.
Brady Singer takes the ball for the Royals and his 2022 season has been superb. His biggest improvement has been his walk rate. He succeeds mostly by generating called strikes and he faces a Cleveland offense with the lowest in-zone swing rate in all of baseball in the last 30 days. This should only make things better for Singer and should hopefully allow him to find himself in favorable counts all game. All we need to worry about is the first inning, however, and with the Yankees clinching the division there is not much more for Cleveland to play for I would not be surprised if they were to rest some of their top players.
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