Today’s MLB Prop Picks and Best Bets: Dodgers Have Patient Eye for Sandoval, Angels

Prop bet #1: Ketel Marte to hit a home run

Conditions will be ideal for the long ball tonight at Citizens Bank Park. According to ballparkpal.com, the heat and wind will combine to increase home run probability by just over 25%. 

Luckily, the starters both have issues with the hard-hit ball. My favorite of the two options is Taijuan Walker. By his standards this season, he’s had two back-to-back reasonably solid games. Today, it’s hard to imagine that continuing, and we’re taking Ketel Marte to go yard against him.

Why is Walker a target? The most obvious reason is he has one of the highest hard-hit rates in baseball. 

Coming into this game, he sits in the Bottom 3% of such categories, and even after two decent starts, this is still a big issue, as indicated by the average exit velocity in those games. Marte is a great candidate to attack this. He’s never faced Walker in his career, but Walker favors exceptionally well, given the pitch mix.

Walker is primarily a breaking ball pitcher with a little bit of split-finger mixed. Marte ranks in the Top 2 on the Arizona Diamondbacks in hard-hit against all three pitches. Given the park conditions and the matchup, you couldn’t ask for much more when looking for a home-run hitter. 

Ketel Marte prop: To hit a home run (+420 at FanDuel)

Prop bet #2: Giancarlo Stanton Over 1.5 strikeouts

It figures to be a rough night for Giancarlo Stanton at the plate. The big-time power bat has gone Over this number in three of the last four games, and tonight, he has one of the biggest challenges he’ll face in that stretch.

Chris Sale will take the mound for the Atlanta Braves this evening, and throughout stretches this season, he’s been nearly unhittable. 

Sale has seven and 10 strikeouts in his last two starts, along with a K rate in the Top 10% of baseball. Like he has throughout much of his career, Stanton leads the New York Yankees in K rate.  More troubling about this matchup, in particular, is the K rate number jumps by about 5% against lefties like Sale. In addition, the slider, which leads the arsenal for Sale, has been one of Stanton’s biggest problem pitches.

Giancarlo Stanton prop: Over 1.5 strikeouts (+110 at BetMGM)

Prop bet #3: Patrick Sandoval Over 2.5 walks issued

One of the most challenging things about playing the Los Angeles Dodgers is the patience they show at the plate. Yes, they lead the league in walk rate — a number that has gone up over the last three games — but they also have metrics that illustrate that patience. That spells trouble for Patrick Sandoval.

He’ll enter this game with a BB% that sits in the bottom 30%. In addition to the highest walk rate in baseball, the Dodgers are in the Bottom 10 of swing, chase, and whiff rates. A reasonably strikeout-reliant pitcher like Sandoval will likely struggle to navigate this lineup. Sandoval has exceeded this number in half of his last six games, and only one of those matchups came against a team with an exceptionally high walk rate. 

Sandoval hasn’t played this Dodgers team in two seasons despite being in the same league. That’s an element that has typically favored Dodgers hitters historically, but regardless, the last time that he appeared against them, he issued four walks. That was still an L.A. team with a similar swing profile to this one.

Patrick Sandoval prop: Over 2.5 walks issued (+136 at Caesars)