MLB 2021 Futures: Best Bets To Make

Baseball is officially back — and MLB betting futures are there for the taking! Whether it’s the World Series or the league pennant winner, we have betting picks for all the top futures categories! Read this for wagering advice, as well as a mini-season preview!

Some of the most lucrative bets in baseball are MLB 2021 futures! While the payday is still a ways off, the upside is huge — and as they say, it pays to be patient.

Sure, the MLB regular season is barely underway, but right now — when things are relatively uncertain across the league — the odds are the steepest. It's at these prices that you can really cash out by season's end, if correct.

With that said, we've made our betting selections for four of the most popular MLB futures currently available among online bookmakers. You can tail these picks, or heck, fade them, but our research points in this direction:

American League Pennant

Team		Intertops
New York Yankees	+275	+225
Chicago White Sox	+425	+400
Houston Astros	+700	+850
Minnesota Twins	+850	+750
Toronto Blue Jays	+900	+800

Drill this into your head: pitching wins in the playoffs. Period. Therefore, when choosing the AL champion, or another playoff future for that matter, we've put a premium on pitching rotations and bullpen.

It's that exact reason we're siding with the Astros. Here's a team that was one game shy of the World Series a year ago — all this despite a cheating controversy lingering around them. While trash can jokes haven't completely gone away, Houston will be much less distracted in 2021.

But more than that, the Astros M.O. has long been pitching. That hasn't changed. Zack Grienke and Lance McCullers Jr. remain ace material. The always-clutch Justin Verlander, while hurt now, could return by postseason time. During the offseason, Houston also shored up the rotation by signing Jake Odorizzi. A pitching staff of this caliber has all the power to silence the big bats of the AL favorite Yankees come October.

Betting pick to make: Houston Astros (+850)

National League Pennant

Team		Intertops
Los Angeles Dodgers	+180	+175
San Diego Padres	+400	+375
New York Mets	+650	+550
Atlanta Braves	+750	+600
St. Louis Cardinals	+1400	+1200

The NL race feels like a two-team race between division rivals, the Dodgers and Padres. Los Angeles is the grizzled vets with three NL pennants in the past four years. San Diego is the hot upstarts bursting with potential, but little recent success.

In fact, the Padres were swept out of the postseason last year by Los Angeles in the NLDS. It was the franchise's first playoff berth in 14 years. But that young core of San Diego players — led by the $340-million-dollar man Fernando Tatis Jr. — can use that experience as a launching pad in 2021.

But much like what we said about the Astros, the Dodgers pitching lineup is stacked. Heck, it's the best in all of the MLB. Signing Trevor Baurer over the offseason only solidified Los Angeles' rotation even more. Top-line starters like Baurer, Clayton Kershaw, and Walker Beuhler should clinch another pennant for LA.

Betting pick to make: Los Angeles Dodgers

World Series Winner

Team		Intertops
Los Angeles Dodgers	+325	+350
New York Yankees	+575	+550
San Diego Padres	+700	+800
Chicago White Sox	+1100	+1000
New York Mets	+1200	+1000
Atlanta Braves	+1400	+1100
Houston Astros	+1600	+1800

Houston vs. Los Angeles. A rematch of the highly controversial 2017 World Series that's believed to be part of the Astros cheating scandal.

The Dodgers were particularly harsh on the Astros in the fallout of their stealing-signs scheme. Do you think they wouldn't be motivated to the brim to exact revenge on a team they believe stole their World Series? Oh, absolutely!

No MLB club has gone back-to-back since the Yankees three-peat between 1998 and 2000. That's two decades of history going against Los Angeles. But even then, this Dodgers team has almost no weakness up and down the roster.

We've already talked up their throwing, but they have equally explosive hitting, too. Mookie Betts vaulted the offense in 2020, which we expect to continue this year with a full season less affected by the pandemic. Take the Dodgers to repeat in 2021!

Betting pick to make: Los Angeles Dodgers (+350)

Bonus Bet: Site Of All-Star Game

City
Milwaukee	-125
Chicago (Wrigley)	+200
Arlington	+300
Denver	+400
Detroit	+700
Philadelphia	+800

Alright, this futures bet is particularly relevant at the moment. MLB has made national headlines as of late for pulling the 2021 All-Star game from Atlanta over a controversial political bill. Now, the league's annual showcase is without a host.

Unlike the aforementioned bets, this future won't be up for long. The All-Star game is slated for July 13 — only three short months away. So our advice is to jump on this bet soon before a new location is announced.

Our money is on Arlington, Texas — where the Texas Rangers call home — to pick up the game. At the end of the day, the MLB is motivated by profits and Texas presents the biggest opportunity to rake in money. Thanks to loose pandemic restrictions, the Arlington stadium allows for a full capacity of fans, which one would think would eat up All-Star tickets, after all, that's transpired during the last year.

Betting pick to make: Arlington (+300)

One last word of advice before we let you go, many betting sites are currently running "MLB is back" promotions for new players. It's essentially a sign-up bonus for MLB-focused bettors.

The bonus can be earned rather quickly. All it takes is to create a new account at a bookmaker, fund that account, and a percentage of the initial deposit are earned back in free play. The awarded amount varies by the bookie, but bonuses of more than $1,000 in free money are pretty common.

You can compare promotional offers in the table below. On top of big-money promotions, each betting site listed underneath carries all the MLB betting action you'll need this year under one roof. For bettors, that's a win-win scenario, if ever one!