MLB Home Run Best Bets and Picks: July 31

MLB Best Bets 7/31

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Junior Caminero (TB) +500, BetMGM

Caminero is worth a shot at +500 on a short slate day. He’s been much better against right-handed pitchers this season, with 21 of his 27 home runs coming against them. While Marcus Stroman has been solid in right-on-right matchups, he’s allowing an .878 OPS at Yankee Stadium this season. Caminero hasn’t faced Stroman yet, but this version of Stroman is very hittable. We set Caminero’s line at +330 to homer.

Brandon Lowe (TB) +450, BetMGM

Unlike Caminero, Lowe has seen Stroman before—he’s 4-for-16 with a home run in his career against him. Stroman is allowing left-handed hitters to post a .298 average and .925 OPS this season. Lowe just returned from the IL but looked sharp with two hits yesterday. He’s hit 16 of his 19 home runs against right-handed pitchers and owns a .297 average with an .881 OPS against them. We set Lowe’s line at +380 to homer.

Corey Seager (TEX) +400 (BetMGM)

Seager is hitless in 13 career at-bats against George Kirby, which is rare for him, but he’s only struck out twice in those ABs. He’s posted 90+ mph exit velocities in 3 of his last 4 at-bats against Kirby, so we’re leaning into the “he’s due” narrative. Kirby has been much more vulnerable to left-handed hitters this season—7 of the 9 home runs he’s allowed have come from the left side, and he’s giving up a .789 OPS to lefties compared to .566 to righties. We set Seager’s line at +366 to homer.

MLB HR, Stolen Base, Strikeouts Prop Cheat Sheet

The SportsLine Model was developed and is powered by the Inside the Lines team. You can find all of our team’s picks and content at our blog which has all our personal best bets for free. Our system is simple. We take the strongest SportLine Model projected values vs the best available prices at the time we publish our content. In most cases lines move in ‘our direction’ so you should bookmark the blog, follow us on social and make it a habit of checking for updates throughout the day to maximize your expected value. 

The table below shows today’s projected leading Home Run, Stolen Base and Strikeout Leaders. We include the projection and for HRs and SBs the money line we’d set for over 0.5 a HR/SB. You can use this cheat sheet to compare it to your book’s line and if your book’s line is significantly higher than ours (and you like the player) then you would want to consider that bet. For example, Junior Caminero is our #2 projected HR hitter and we’d price him at +291 which is why getting +500 at BetMGM is such a good value. Use the same method for Stolen Bases. For the Starting Pitcher’s strikeouts compare our line to the betting line. If we have 5.4 and the line is 5.5 it could be good value if the under is +100 or more. But if it’s -120 then not so much.