Yesterday, unfortunately, did not go our way as we were unable to get any of our three MLB home run predictions to come to fruition.
The beauty of betting on baseball, though, is that there is always the next day, and today is no different, with 15 MLB games on tap for us to dive into. So, let’s dive right back into the MLB home run betting market and give out our top three picks for today.
Shohei Ohtani Home Run (+325) BetMGM
Chicago Cubs vs. Los Angeles Dodgers, 10:10 p.m. ET
While Ohtani is almost never priced in the +300s, the reason for today actually makes sense. He is going up against a left-handed pitcher in Jordan Wicks for the Cubs, and not only is it the dreaded lefty vs. lefty matchup, but Wicks has been good against lefties this year.
Granted, it has been a tiny sample size (19 at-bats), but Wicks has not allowed a home run to lefties in his two starts since coming back from injury. Though he hasn’t allowed a home run, he is allowing lefties to his .316 off him, with a 46.67% HardHit rate, so it is not as though he has been unhittable.
Ohtani, meanwhile, still has been hitting lefties hard recently. In the last month, he has a 10% barrel rate and 63% HardHit rate against left-handed pitchers, and he has been even better in the past week. Here are the outcomes of the last seven pitches from a lefty that have left Ohtani’s bat:
- 95.7 mph off the bat
- 99.6 mph, 374-foot flyout
- 110 mph off that bat
- 96.5 mph off the bat
- 101.2 mph, 348-foot flyout
- 99.5 mph, 394-foot flyout
- 111.2 mph, 413-foot home run
All seven of these were considered HardHit (95-plus mph), with three of them at over 100 mph off the bat. The stat sheet only shows one home run, but that does not do justice to how hard he has been hitting the ball.
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Bryce Harper Home Run (+440) FanDuel
Tampa Bay Rays vs. Philadelphia Phillies, 6:40 p.m. ET
Harper is currently on his longest stretch of the season without hitting a home run, as his last come run came on August 9, and it has been 28 total games. The thing is, despite not having hit a home run in this stretch, he has actually been hitting the ball decently hard and gotten unlucky the past couple games.
Yesterday he had two separate HardHits that were 100-plus mph off the bat, one of which was initially called a home run on the field before being called back due to interference. That ball was 106 mph off the bat for a double.
The game before, Harper smoked a slider 108.6 mph off the bat that hit the highest possible part of the fence, but of course did not leave the stadium. Overall, Harper has five extra-base hits in the last week, he has just bad some brutal luck getting one to go yard.
As for the pitching matchup, Shane Baz is pitching for the Rays, and while he is not a bet-on home run type of pitcher, he is nobody to be scared off of, either. Baz is allowing a home run every 22.50 at-bats to lefties in the past month, with a HR/9 of 1.38.
Baz also throws a 4-seam fastball roughly 50% of the time, a changeup 17% of the time, and a slider 16% of the time, and those are three pitches that Harper hits well. He has an ISO rate of .237 against the 4-seamer, .288 against the changeup and .229 against the slider, three of his better pitches.
After having horrible luck the past two months, the guess here is that Harper breaks out of his home run drought tonight.
Brandon Lowe Home Run (+470) FanDuel
Tampa Bay Rays vs. Philadelphia Phillies, 6:40 p.m. ET
For our third and final play of the game, we are staying in this Rays-Phillies game but targeting a batter on the other side of the field: Brandon Lowe of the Rays. This is not the first time that we have targeted a lefty against Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, as Wheeler struggles against left-handed hitters.
He has only allowed 17 home runs on the year, but 12 of them have come off LHH, and he has a HR/9 of 1.22 against lefties specifically. An HR/9 of 1.22 is good, but not quite unhittable like his HR/9 against RHH of 0.53.
In the last two months, that HR/9 has stayed roughly the same (1.24), but his barrel rate allowed (12.38%) and HardHit rate allowed (50.75%) are two concerning numbers. For context, the current worst barrel rate of all qualified pitchers is 10.4%, and the worst HardHit rate is 46.8%.
So, this is all to say that Wheeler can be had by a lefty, and Lowe hits his pitch-mix very hard as well. Wheeler predominantly throws 4-seam fastballs to lefties (40% of the time), with every other pitch below 20% usage.
In the last two weeks against 4-seamers from right-handed pitching, Lowe has a 12.50% barrel rate and 71% HardHit rate.
The other pitches that Wheeler throws are curveballs (19% of the time), cutters (16%) and splitters (10%), which Lowe has also hit hard recently. It is a smaller sample size, but in the past month, he has a 80% HardHit rate against this pitch-mix from RHP.
He goes yard today.
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