Happy Independence Day! It’s the Fourth of July, which means a loaded slate of MLB action starting in the morning and ending late at night. I’m assembling a sizeable card on Discord but have included some of my top picks for the late games in this column. Let’s dig into today’s top MLB player prop picks and home run bets for Thursday, July 4. For more notes on today’s action, check out my slate breakdown on X.
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MLB Player Props & Home Run Picks Today: Thursday, July 4
MLB Home Run Pick Today: Brent Rooker
The Oakland Athletics will host the Los Angeles Angels and RHP Roansy Contreras tonight. Contreras is off to a shaky start — the 24-year-old sports a 4.68 xERA (23rd percentile) and .257 xBA (31st). Those aren’t terrible numbers, but his .268/.361/.549 slash line allowed to RHBs raises some serious concerns, as do the 1.4 xHR/9 he is coughing up.
No batter stands out more in this spot than Brent Rooker. The slugger has mashed 18.7 expected home runs this season, including 19 expected home runs at the Oakland Coliseum. He also comes into this game red hot, slashing .368/.400/.842 over his last seven games with three home runs.
Rooker has gone yard in both games played so far this series, and he has two other hits to along with them. Even if he can’t make it three in a row while Contreras is in the game, once he exits, it’s up to an Angels bullpen that ranks third worst in ERA (4.79) and eighth worst in home runs allowed (38).
Let’s get action on Rooker to record multiple bases (DraftKings for this prop if you haven’t used it on someone else already!
MLB Home Run Pick Today: Brent Rooker home run live odds page!
MLB Player Prop Pick Today: Max Scherzer
While it certainly would appear as if Mad Max has truly returned, we’re still fading RHP Max Scherzer today. He takes on the San Diego Padres, a team that excels at avoiding strikeouts. San Diego leads the MLB in strikeouts taken per game (6.8) and strikeout rate versus RHPs (18.4%). They also lead the MLB in strikeout rate versus RHPs since May 4 (17.1%), which is also when Luis Arraez debuted for them.
It helps that the Rangers have been cautious with Scherzer so far, allowing him to throw only 57 pitches in his debut and 77 in his second start. He tallied four strikeouts in both appearances, which came against the Kansas City Royals and Baltimore Orioles. Through his 10.1 IP, he owns a 21.1% strikeout rate — way down from the 28% he posted last year.
Scherzer’s strikeout prop is set to 4.5. The odds for this one vary between +110 and -120 depending on where you look. Pinnacle, a sharp book, lists this one for -102, and every book but two are between +102 and -110. That means the best price available, the positive expected value (+EV):
OddsShopper’s betting model indexes the odds from across the sports betting market in order to generate a breakeven price for each bet, called “true odds.” Once we’ve done so, we can estimate how much value we’re getting relative to that point.
In this instance, the tools estimate Scherzer’s true odds of staying under 4.5 total strikeouts to be +106, slightly edging the +110 by enough to warrant us wagering on this bet.
Our back-tested simulations reveal that bets like this one have been profitable, and if you want to know how profitable, use our results page.
This year, our model has identified 1,803 strikeout bets with an OS Rating of 1 or higher with at least two hours before game start. Of those bets, 1,012 of them cashed, yielding those who tailed a 9.6% ROI.
MLB Player Prop Pick: Max Scherzer total strikeouts live odds page!
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