Dodgers vs Braves Props Picks & Best Bets for Sunday Night Baseball

It's a big-time matchup on Sunday Night Baseball when the Los Angeles Dodgers meet the Atlanta Braves.

In my Sunday Night Baseball player props and MLB picks for May 4, I see considerable value in a couple of Dodgers stars at the plate. I'll also fade Braves starter Bryce Elder.

Dodgers vs Braves Sunday Night Baseball props

• Freeman o1.5 TB (-103)
• Elder o5.5 hits allowed (+104)
• T. Hernandez o0.5 RBI (+120)

Dodgers vs Braves props for Sunday Night Baseball

Freddie Freeman Over 1.5 total bases (-103 at Caesars)

The key to success against Atlanta Braves righty Bryce Elder is getting the ball into the air. A product of his struggling for the better part of the last two years after a brilliant start has been just that. Elder creates ground balls at a rather elite clip, but his stuff is easily exposable when you get under his pitches.

Freddie Freeman is good at that. The veteran comes into this game this season with the third-lowest ground ball rate among Los Angeles Dodgers players, but throughout his career, he's typically managed to keep a low number in this metric. Today, he'll have two advantages.

The brisk winds expected to blow out to left field will aid his ball carry, as that's where he hits many of his fly balls. Secondly, the pitch mix Freeman will see fits him well. Elder is a big, offspeed pitcher, using the sinker and slider as his primary tools. As he has throughout his career, Freeman has had great success against those two pitches this season, leading Dodger players in batting average and slugging against them. 

Bryce Elder Over 5.5 hits allowed (+104 at Caesars)

Another prop, another spot where I'm fading Elder to some degree. This isn't a good matchup, and the answer is relatively straightforward. Again, it goes back to the ground-ball rate and what happens when those ground balls don't come.

Elder has already faced this Dodgers lineup this season and went four innings while giving up just three hits. He didn't go Over this number because the Dodgers' longball threat elicited the Braves to make a change at the 70-pitch mark instead of the expected workload. It's unlikely that L.A. will hit multiple homers on just 70 pitches again, and instead, I expect them to get after Elder at the plate via multiple hits. 

When facing essentially this same lineup last May, that's precisely what happened when he gave up seven hits in just over three innings. That's far more indicative of what we expect here and goes back to what I said at the onset. The Dodgers will enter today with the third-lowest ground ball rate in the sport and the highest fly-ball rate in the MLB. That's a Bryce Elder nightmare. 

Teoscar Hernandez Over 0.5 RBI (+120 at Caesars)

There's a slight bias here because Teoscar Hernandez's props have been so good to me this season. However, I have a solid edge on this market against the number, seeing this as more of a coin-flip proposition than the current number.

Like Freeman, Hernandez will also benefit from the wind blowing out to left field, which is part of the reason that BatX projects him over this number. But more than that, his placement in the lineup means he'll benefit from a few players in front of him who don't often hit ground balls. That includes the aforementioned Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, and Mookie Betts. 

Hernandez has had some decent success against Elder, too, with a modest .582 OPS. However, this is more about the players in front of him. Betts, Freeman, and Ohtani collectively have an average OPS of just over 1.000 against Elder in their careers. I'll take Teoscar to reap the benefits of that. 

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