MLB Player Props: Best Bets for Tuesday (August 27)

Now that the travel day is behind us, we get a full slate of 15 MLB games to dive into. These past couple days have admittedly been tough in the home run department, but thankfully the temperatures are heating back up, which means the weather is more home run-friendly.

As for today, let’s dive into our three favorite MLB home run picks!

Kerry Carpenter Home Run (+450) FanDuel

Los Angeles Angels vs. Detroit Tigers, 6:40 p.m. ET

For this play we are targeting a batter who has been very good at the plate over the past month going up against one of worst (or best, depending on your point of view) home run pitcher targets in the league in Johnny Cueto.

You gotta feel for Cueto, who was an elite pitcher at one point in his career, but that time is long gone, as he has been awful the past couple years. Last year, he pitched 52 innings for the Marlins and had a HR/9 of 2.92. For context, the worst HR/9 last year of all qualified pitchers was 2.16.

This year, while he has only pitched six innings total, with 16 at-bats against left-handed hitters, he already has been taken yard by a lefty, which is what we are targeting tonight in Carpenter. Last year, Cueto’s HR/9 against lefties was 3.71, which would once again be the worst in MLB by a country mile.

As for Carpenter, he has not quite been mashing the ball at the same rate as some of the guys we will mention with our next couple picks, but he has still been hitting well.

Over the last seven days, he has four HardHit line-drive + fly-balls, but the good news is that all four of them were against RHP. His numbers look better if you look at the past two weeks, when he’s had nine HardHit line-drive + fly-balls. He also has hit four home runs off righties in the last 14 days, with a 14% barrel rate and 56.50% HardHit rate.

Cueto has only started one game this year, but the data we have from that appearance provides more evidence that this is a good matchup for Carpenter. Cueto threw a sinker 42% of the time in his lone start of the season on August 21, and Carpenter has hit the sinker hard recently, with a 25% barrel rate and a 50% HardHit rate over the past 14 days.

Cueto’s next-most common pitch is the changeup at 30% of the time, and Carpenter has hit those hard as well, with a 100% HardHit rate and 95.6 mph average exit velocity.

Francisco Lindor Home Run (+470) FanDuel

New York Mets vs. Arizona Diamondbacks, 9:40 p.m. ET

Lindor has been on fire at the plate, and he gets a great matchup against Eduardo Rodriguez of the Diamondbacks tonight. Lindor has eight HardHit line-drive + fly-balls over the past week, and he has hit three home runs overall. That gives him the fourth-most hit HardHit LD + FBs, while his three homers is tied for the third-most in MLB over the past week.

Luckily for Lindor, he has an absolutely incredible matchup, as Rodriguez has really struggled since coming back from injury. He has allowed a .314 average and .255 ISO rate to RHH, which are two awful numbers.

Rodriguez is a left-handed pitcher, and Lindor hits lefties harder than righties overall. His ISO rate against LHP is .293, up from .192 against RHP.

Lindor also crushes Rodriguez’s pitch-mix, which consists mostly of 4-seam fastballs (42.5% of the time) and changeups (31%).

The last 4-seam fastball he saw from a lefty?

Home run.

The last changeup he saw from a lefty?

Also a home run.

He stays hot tonight.

Alex Bregman Home Run (+600) BetMGM

Houston Astros vs. Philadelphia Phillies, 6:40 p.m. ET

Bregman is, as I am sure you could have guesed at this point, another batter who is red-hot at the plate, and he has a great matchup tonight.

He is one of several batters who is tied for fourth in MLB with eight HardHit line-drive + fly-balls over the last seven days. Even though this is a righty batter vs. righty pitcher matchup with Aaron Nola on the mound, this hot streak for Bregman has included him annihilating right-handed pitching.

He has hit five home runs with another five extra-base hits over the past four weeks against RHP, with an 11.11% barrel rate and 54% HardHit rate. Nola has value as a pitcher who can pitch deep into games, but he is also generally a pitcher you want to target for batter home run props. Over his last 10 starts, he has allowed a HR/9 of 1.54, which would be the sixth-worst in the league if extrapolated out to all qualified pitchers.

As for the pitch-mix, Nola mostly throws a knuckle curve (34% of the time), sinker (31%) and 4-seam fastball (25%), all three of which Bregman has hit hard in the past.

Bregman admittedly has not seen a ton of knuckle curves from righties. In fact, he has seen exactly one over the past four weeks, but that one he saw left his bat at 104 mph. As for the other two, he has a 13% barrel rate and 55% HardHit rate from sinkers and 4-seamers from righties over the past month.

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