UPDATE: Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz has been scratched from tonight’s game. Jake Mangum will start instead.
Last night, a Major League Baseball game was played in Las Vegas for the first time, and between dry, hot air and 2,000 feet of elevation, the ball was soaring. The Athletics and Milwaukee Brewers combined for 29 runs and 11 homers in a 15-14 extra innings thriller, just two fewer than the all-time record. I expect at least one long ball when the teams rematch tonight.
While I’ll definitely target that game among my three favorite home run prop bets for tonight’s action, there should be plenty of other big flies around the association, especially with all 30 teams in action.
Here are my three favorite home run prop bets at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Top MLB Home Run Props
Oneil Cruz 1+ Home Run (+447)
The Pittsburgh Pirates continue to hover just above .500 as one of MLB’s biggest positive surprises this season, and the power-hitting exploits of Cruz and his teammate Brandon Lowe have been big reasons why. Cruz still has lots of flaws, as he leads all of baseball in strikeouts, but when he connects, it tends to go far. He ranks eighth in the National League with 14 homers, in the 100th percentile in both hard hit rate and average exit velocity, and in the 95th percentile in barrel rate. He’s hit three homers in his last nine games, posting a 1.251 OPS across that span. Plus, he has an extremely friendly matchup against Eric Lauer, who has just a 5.74 ERA this season and ranks in the ninth percentile in barrel rate. Though Lauer has been better since his trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, he’s still given up a homer in each of his starts. Lauer is very reliant on his four-seam fastball, and despite being on the wrong side of the platoon splits overall, Cruz has a .677 xSLG against left-handed four-seamers this season.
Sterlin Thompson 1+ Home Run (+760)
The Colorado Rockies’ No. 15 prospect hasn’t yet hit a homer in the first 52 plate appearances of his MLB career (or even found the barrel), but he’s still shown plenty of power bona fides in the minors, and his bat speed would rank in the league’s top quintile if he’d had enough at-bats to qualify. Thompson had a solid 18 homers and 28 doubles in 513 plate appearances last season for Triple-A Albuquerque, posting a .970 OPS, and he also hit 11 homers in 66 games in his sophomore season at Florida. He has a good matchup against Chicago Cubs righty Colin Rea, who’s pitched to a 4.59 ERA this season and ranks in just the seventh percentile in both barrel rate and average exit velocity. Last season, 15 of Thompson’s 18 homers came against right-handed batters. Coors Field, like Isotope Park, sits at roughly one mile of elevation, making it one of the most homer-friendly environments in baseball.
Brice Turang 1+ Home Run (+490)
Most of the hitters in this game have pretty poor value, as homer odds shorter than +200 should be reserved for the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and Munetaka Murakami standing on the summit of Mount Everest. The Las Vegas Ballpark is a hitter-friendly venue by nature because of the elevation, heat, and wind that perpetually blows towards center field, but one game with 11 homers shouldn’t be sufficient evidence that it’s an all-time great homer paradise. Turang, though, seems like excellent value. He homered last night and ranks second on the Brewers with 10 for the season, and he’s probably the team’s best hitter overall. Though Athletics starter J.T. Ginn has done a good job keeping the ball in play, ranking in the 65th percentile in barrel rate, he gave up 17 homers in just 90.1 innings of work last season, and his 24.0% fly ball rate is a career-high. Plus, while he’s pitched deep into the game as of late, he averages just 82.8 pitches per start overall, leaving Turang up to two at-bats to take advantage of a weak Athletics bullpen.
