3 MLB Prop Bets to Target on Thursday 5/20/21
Player props can be useful in a variety of ways -- from taking advantage of them straight up (to the tune of cold hard cash) to measure a player's potential to produce in daily fantasy baseball on FanDuel. Here, we're going to focus on the former.
Utilizing our projections as a guide and looking at the odds provided at MLB odds, here are some spots where you can find value today in the prop-betting market.
Please note that betting lines and our game projections may change throughout the day after this article is published. Also, the weather may be an issue in some locations.
Vincent Velasquez Under 6.5 Strikeouts (-122)
The Philadelphia Phillies are definitely not dull, and Vincent Velasquez is the furthest thing from it. He has electric pitches but also gets lit up by the long ball. He has given up seven home runs over his five starts, and his home run-to-fly ball rate is a mind-boggling 24.1%. The NL average is just 13.4%.
Velasquez doesn't go long in games because teams tend to work the pitch count as much as he makes more trouble for himself. His 59% overall strike percentage is not so good. But he is getting more swinging strikes (average of 11.7 per start in the last three outings), and like last season, Velasquez is striking out batters at a high rate (28.9%).
Miami is still striking out at a rate of 28% on the road, too, which is four percentage points above the National League average.
This will be so close, but the feeling is six is the loneliest number, and that may be what Velasquez winds up with on Thursday.
Adam Duvall to Hit A Home Run (+210)
The next pick here hopefully does not get hurt almost right away. Let's hope.
Anyway, Adam Duvall is facing a pretty straight-forward fastball pitcher who throws well into the 90s in the aforementioned Velasquez. If he connects on one of those pitches, the chances it goes over the fence is pretty high.
This year has been nuts, but the 33-year old Miami slugger is getting back to the form he showed in Cincinnati where he clubbed over 30 home runs in 2016 and 2017. His home-run-to-at-bat ratio is 17.1 to 1. That was around his rate in those "career" seasons.
In the last six games, Duvall has eight hits and two home runs with a hard-hit rate of nearly 50%.
Duvall has a respectable projection of 0.21 home runs, according to our model, plus +210 odds are usually not great for an event that occurs once every four games -- but we are taking it anyway.
Steven Matz Over 5.5 Strikeouts (+126)
Steven Matz is a lot like Velasquez. The Toronto Blue Jays' pitcher has some hard stuff but racks up a lot of pitches quickly. In his last start, he only went five innings and threw 106 pitches. However, he struck out nine batters, and Philadelphia has some impressive hitters. While they are not Boston, the Phillies can hit the baseball.
While he is striking out batters at a 25.6% rate, Matz's rate is a career-high for him and even higher than his 2020 rate of 25.4%. He is freezing batters on called strikes at a whopping 31% rate, which is well above the league average of 26.3%.
The Red Sox are a patient team that hits the heck out of the baseball. Their strikeout rate is just 22.8% in 2021, and they may not walk as much as other teams, but they do hit the ball well for extra bases (40% compared to a 36% league average). Despite this, Matz carries in momentum from his season-best performance against Philadelphia (five scoreless innings).
Our model projects the Toronto pitcher to only go 5.23 innings and fan 4.99 batters. But six seems like a round number with Matz given that he is likely to go five to six innings at the maximum. Take the over and the plus number.
