We’ve got baseball all day long as we begin the first full week in the big leagues, and several players are looking for their first home runs of the season.
We’ll back at least two of them as we hunt down the three best home run props for today's slate. As always, monitor the odds and available pricing, as the player prop market is constantly changing.
Here are my free MLB player props in the home run market for Monday, March 31.
Best MLB home run props today
James Wood (+450 at Caesars)
Jackson Merrill (+450 at Caesars)
Dansby Swanson (+480 at Caesars)
HR picks for March 31
James Wood (+450 at Caesars)
First up, we’ll pick on a guilty man when it comes to allowing home runs in Toronto Blue Jays starter Bowden Francis. He yielded 17 in 103 2/3 innings a season ago, but it could have easily been more on account of his pitching profile.
Francis is a rather heavy fly-ball pitcher, inducing contact in the air at a clip that was 10 points higher than the league average in 2024, and while he did a decent enough job at doing so with rather low exit velocities, he’ll face a few mashers atop the Washington Nationals’ order.
I’ll choose James Wood, a man who possesses some pretty considerable power but has still been working on lifting the ball out of the park as he develops further at the age of 22.
Wood did club nine home runs in 79 games last season, but he finished with 26 home runs in the minors in 2023 and hit 10 before his promotion in 2024.
The lefty mashed fly-ball arms last year, hitting .280 with a .928 OPS and five dingers, and eight of his nine homers were against righties. The matchup here should be right.
Jackson Merrill (+450 at Caesars)
Jackson Merrill hasn’t hit a home run yet in 2025, but tonight could bring him his first of many in 2025. He hit 24 in his rookie year and picked right back up where he left off with four in 46 plate appearances this spring while posting a .539 slugging percentage through his first few regular-season games.
Cleveland Guardians right-hander Luis Ortiz can reasonably be expected to give up at least one home run to the slugging San Diego Padres tonight.
Ortiz was good enough last season for the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 4.31 expected ERA, but his .425 expected slugging still didn’t provide enough of an improvement in an area he’s struggled throughout his career.
The righty yielded a 30.7% fly-ball rate, which was roughly seven points higher than average last season, and with a poor 8.8% barrel rate, there’s a world of opportunity here — especially in a park that produced plenty of home runs a year ago.
Merrill was a righty masher last season, hitting 19 of his 24 homers in the split with a .547 slugging percentage, which topped the reverse by over 170 points. He was just as tremendous vs. fly-ball arms, hitting .304 and slugging .546 with 11 home runs.
Dansby Swanson (+480 at Caesars)
To wrap things up, we’ll head to the Athletics’ new home in Sacramento, which many are expecting to yield a ton of home runs after it served as a PCL park in Triple-A before this year.
I’m very curious to see what comes of A's home games — though while I’m excited about this power-heavy lineup, I’m a huge fan of Chicago Cubs starter Ben Brown and think he’ll be set up for a huge night.
It’ll be an easy pivot to the Cubs’ side against Joey Estes, who was a disaster in 2024. He allowed a stunning 23 home runs in just 127 2/3 innings with a fly ball rate more than 11 points higher than average and a terrible .435 xSLG.
As primarily a fastball pitcher, I love Dansby Swanson to take him deep. The veteran shortstop has begun to get hot with three hits — including a home run — in his last three games, and that’s just the icing on the cake when you consider he’s mashed fastballs his entire career.
Swanson put forth a .451 xSLG and 10.6% barrel rate against fastballs from righties a year ago, hitting four of his 16 home runs on the pitch, and he’s undervalued tonight, given the matchup and the park.
Not intended for use in MA.
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