| Play | Prop | Game | First pitch | Odds | Stake | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Yainer Diaz | Over 0.5 hits | HOU@PHI | 1:05 ET | -161 | 1u |
| 2 |  TJ Rumfield | Over 0.5 hits | COL@NYY | 7:05 ET | -148 | 1u |
| 3 | Isaac Paredes | Over 0.5 hits | HOU@PHI | 1:05 ET | -155 | 1u |
| 4 |  Jake Burger | Over 0.5 hits+runs+RBI | TEX@SEA | 4:10 ET | -165 | 1u |
Parlay of the Day: Diaz, Paredes and Rumfield together, about +347.
Dingers (separate record, 6-29): Corey Seager to go deep, +395, TEX@SEA 4:10 ET. Only one today — 25 of the 28 home run numbers on the board priced worse than the odds of it actually happening.
Four today. Five games on the whole schedule, so this is a short card on purpose.
Every one of these four is the same kind of bet, and it is the kind that holds up when there is not much to choose from. A hit prop is not really about power, it is about contact. The one outcome where nothing can happen is a strikeout, so a hitter who almost never strikes out is a hitter who keeps giving himself chances. Yainer Diaz goes down on strikes in 13 percent of his trips against right handers and Isaac Paredes in 12 percent. Diaz has a hit in 69 percent of his games this year and 80 percent of his last fifteen. Paredes has one in 91 of his 139.
TJ Rumfield is the one I like most, and it is a pricing thing rather than a talent thing. Books apply a discount to left handed hitters facing left handed pitching, because as a group they hit worse against it. It is a fair rule and it does not describe this player. Rumfield hits lefties .275 with a 13 percent strikeout rate, which is better than plenty of hitters manage against righties, and he has a hit in 13 of his last 15 games. When a number is built on a group average that does not fit the individual, that is where the value sits.
Jake Burger is different and I would rather say so than dress it up. He hits .226 off right handers and strikes out 27 percent of the time, so he is not a contact hitter at all. What he is, is a middle of the order bat on a team that scores. A hit, a run or a run driven in is three ways to win instead of one, and hitting sixth he collects runs and RBI just by standing in the right place. He has reached that number in 8 of his last 10.
The ones I left alone: Jeremy Pena has the best hit rate on the entire slate, 74 percent, and bats leadoff, and he is not here because he costs too much. Randy Arozarena and Cal Raleigh both looked fine on the surface and both have been genuinely terrible against Jacob deGrom over a real number of trips, so they are out. Brandon Lowe hits .215 against left handed pitching with a 38 percent strikeout rate and draws a lefty tonight.
No lineups are built today. The biggest slate anyone is running has three games in it, and you cannot make ten meaningfully different rosters out of six teams. Nothing rather than filler.
