MLB Picks

Let's get on the dinger train early with a great matchup in the 12:35 matinee. Drake Baldwin is heading to the All-Star Game in just his second season, and projects as a +EV home run play today. He owns the fourth-highest probability to go deep on the slate and gets a matchup with Mitch Keller, who served up three home runs in his last outing. The hotter months have not been kind to the Pittsburgh starter. Keller has allowed eight home runs in 32 innings across his last six starts, his H/9 has climbed above one per inning, and he has gone Over his strikeout prop just once during that stretch. Baldwin snapped a brief cold spell with a homer over the weekend, but his BlastContact% and swing speed have both ticked up over the last week. I make the fair price closer to +380, and we've seen his home run prop as short as +350 over his last 10 games.

New York is on a bullpen day, so the focus is Ryan Yarbrough, whether he opens or works bulk. He has not pitched since July 4 and can cover length, but his 18% strikeout rate meets a Rays lineup with an 86% zone-contact rate. That has been the series problem. Drew Rasmussen adds the cleaner edge with a 4.5% walk rate against a Yankees lineup needing free traffic.

More All-Stars are making the home run card today with Riley Greene at +364. He is swinging one of the fastest bats in baseball, matching Yordan Alvarez's swing speed over the last two weeks, which ranks 17th in the league and tops on the Tigers. He's also in the middle of a power surge, piling up 24 total bases (six extra-base hits) over his last 27 at-bats, including a team-leading four home runs. Jack Perkins is one of the best home run targets on the board. The Athletics' starter owns the worst HR/9 among today's starters over the last 30 days, and his 28.4% groundball rate means there should be plenty of balls in the air. The lefty Greene also loves right-handed pitching, with 11 of his 13 home runs this season coming against righties. The Athletics may only have lefty Hogan Harris available out of the bullpen, and left-handed hitters have actually had more success against him than righties. This home run prop has been as short as +310 over the last 10 games.

The Cardinals are in a premium offensive spot against Zac Gallen, who enters the day with the second-worst pitcher rating in Batters-Box's current season model. Gallen has struggled to limit power and hard contact, carrying poorly rated matchup marks in ISO, hard contact rate, and ground ball rate. St. Louis counters with seven elite-rated hitters and an offense averaging more than 2.5 first five innings runs per game at home. The Cardinals have also been red hot lately, posting a 122 wRC+ over their last 12 games. With so many favorable individual matchups, backing the offense as a whole makes plenty of sense.

Okamoto's hitting profile perfectly matches up well against Imanaga’s stuff. The Cubs starter throws a heavy dose of the fastball and gets barreled up at a 10.4% rate. The Jays third baseman barrels the ball better than anyone in the Blue Jays lineup with a 13.5% barrel rate, while owning a 63.2% hard hit rate against the four-seamer. 

Atlanta and Chicago send two of the best lineups in baseball to the dish, and they respectively rank eighth and third in wOBA against lefties for the campaign. The two clubs have also trended to the Over, and I'm particularly expecting White Sox southpaw Anthony Kay to struggle considering he's saddled with the fifth-highest xERA in baseball among the 100 pitchers with at least 60 innings this year.