Happy Fourth everybody! Thursday is normally a travel day for the MLB, but with today being the Fourth of July we have a full betting slate, and it is hard to think of a better way to spend the holiday than betting on home runs.
We stayed hot with these home run predictions with Alec Bohm yesterday, so let’s hope to keep it going today.
Play 1: Jose Ramirez to Hit a Home Run (+400) FanDuel
Chicago White Sox vs. Cleveland Guardians, 1:10PM ET
This is a great game from a weather and stadium perspective for home runs, and there are actually two guys on the Guardians that are going to make todays home run list. In general the Progressive Field is a hitters park with pretty short left center and right center fields, so anything that gets hit mildly far will end up being out of the stadium. Additionally, it’s very humid in Cleveland today which helps with carry. As for Ramirez, he has had a phenomenal year and should have a great opportunity to hit a home run in todays game.
He’s fourth in MLB with 23 home runs with the sixth-best ISO rate, and the biggest reason he has been able to hit so many home runs is he puts the ball in the air at a high rate. He has the eighth-highest fly-ball rate in MLB at 49.3%, the eighth-highest pull-rate at 50.7% and the 16th-ranked launch angle at 19 degrees. His ability to put the ball in the air helps immensely with home runs, especially when you consider the hitters park that he plays at. Ramirez is also much better when he is facing left-handed pitching, which is what he is going up against in Jared Shuster of the White Sox.
His ISO rate jumps up to .320 against LHP, which would be the third-best ISO rate in the entire MLB only behind Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. His fly ball rate is higher against righties, but his pull-rate jumps up to 54.4% with his hard hit rate increasing by a whopping 15 percentage points going from RHP to LHP, with his hard hit rate of 46.1% against lefties that would be the second-best in the MLB. Ramirez’s two best pitchers in terms of ISO rate are 4-seam fastballs (.302 ISO rate) and changeups (.311 ISO rate), and those are Shuster’s two most frequent pitches. He throws a 4-seamer 42% of the time and a changeup 29% of the time.
Play 2: Josh Naylor to Hit a Home Run (+425) Fanatics
Chicago White Sox vs. Cleveland Guardians, 1:10PM ET
For our second play, let’s go with another player on the Guardians, this time going with lefty stud Josh Naylor. He is not quite Jose Ramirez, but he has hit 20 home runs, which ties him with the seventh-most in MLB. He has an ISO rate of .253, which puts him in the “excellent” category according to FanGraphs (anything 25% and above is considered “excellent”), which is the 11th-best ISO rate in MLB.
Only 12 total qualified batters have an “excellent” ISO rate, so Naylor is in pretty good company. He has a barrel rate of 11.3%, which is in the “great” but not “excellent” category as defined by FanGraphs. Technically Naylor does hit for slightly better power against right-handed pitching as opposed to a lefty which he is facing today, but it is nothing too extreme that should scare you off Naylor. His ISO rate against LHP is .245, and is .257 against RHP. Of course, playing at a hitters park helps Naylor just like it does Ramirez, as Naylor has an ISO rate at home of .320, which makes sense when you consider the stadium situation.
Naylor is similar to Ramirez in that he crushes the top pitches thrown by Shuster as well. Naylor has an ISO rate of .319 against 4-seam fastballs, .271 against changeups, and .305 against sliders, which Shuster throws 25% of the time.
Play 3: Riley Greene to Hit a Home Run (+560) FanDuel
Detroit Tigers vs. Minnesota Twins, 1:10PM ET
The books are sleeping a little bit pricing Riley Greene all the way up at +560 odds, as he is a decent power hitter and has an excellent matchup today as well. Target Field, the Twins home stadium, is admittedly not a hitters park like the Guardians stadium is, but Greene should still not be priced this highly. He has the 15th-best ISO rate in MLB at .237, ahead of guys like Pete Alonso, with a 12.6% barrel rate as well. He has also been much better in the summer, as since June 1 he has hit six home runs and has an ISO rate of .290, which would put him in the “excellent” category.
As for today, Greene has the benefit of going up against Bailey Ober of the Twins, who is a right-handed pitcher that does not do a great job keeping the ball in the park, especially against left-handed hitters. Greene is also significantly better against RHP. His ISO rate goes from .192 against lefties all the way up to .252 against righties. Greene has hit 16 home runs on the year, and 13 of them have come against right-handed pitching. His stats across the board are significantly better against RHP, so it is not strictly his power numbers that are better. Looking at Ober, he allows the tenth-highest barrel rate in the MLB at 9.4%, the fourth-highest launch angle at 20.4 degrees, and is also worse against lefties. His fly ball rate specifically against left-handed hitters is 54.2%, which would be the highest fly ball rate in the MLB if extrapolated out.
Ober throws a changeup as his second-most frequent pitch (27% of the time) which Greene admittedly does not hit well for power, but the other three of Obers top four pitches thrown Greene crushes. Ober throws a 4-seam fastball 43% of the time, and Greene has a .318 ISO rate against 4-seamers. Then, Obers third-most frequent pitch is the slider to which Greene has a .259 ISO rate against. Lastly, Ober’s fourth most common pitch is a cutter, which Greene absolutely crushes with a .444 ISO rate against on over 120 pitches. Greene hit a bomb yesterday, let’s hope he can stay hot and do it again today.
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