MLB prop picks: 3 best bets for Friday (June 28) (2024)

Now that the travel day is behind us, we have a full MLB betting slate featuring every team suiting up today.

As always, lets dive into some of our favorite home run predictions for today, Friday June 28.

Play 1: Riley Greene to Hit a Home Run (+370) BetRivers

Detroit Tigers vs. Los Angeles Angels, 9:38 p.m. ET

These odds are admittedly short for Riley Greene, but they are short for good reason. The books know what they are doing pricing him this way, and there are a couple reasons why. For starters, this is one of the two good games from a weather perspective for home runs to be hit, as there are mild winds blowing out of the stadium.

As for Greene, he's a left-handed batter who is decently better against right-handed pitching, and he's going up against a right-handed pitcher who struggles against lefties. Greene has hit 15 home runs on the year, with 12 of them coming against RHPs. His ISO rate against righties is .245, slightly up from the .205 ISO rate against lefties. Overall, Greene has a barrel rate of 13.5% (anything between 10-15% is considered "great" by FanGraphs), which ranks 21st in the MLB. The biggest reason why Greene has such short odds, though, is because of the pitching matchup against Zach Plesac of the Angels.

Plesac has only made two starts this year, but in those two starts he has given up four home runs, all four of which have come against left-handed hitters. In those two starts he allowed a barrel rate of 27.8%, which for context the current worst barrel rate in the MLB of qualified pitchers is at 11.8%. He would also have the worst hard hit rate in MLB at 50%, and his launch angle of 31.3 degrees would lead the MLB by a mile as well (current highest launch angle is 22.3 degrees).

Play 2: Rafael Devers to Hit a Home Run (+400) Fanatics

San Diego Padres vs.Boston Red Sox, 7:10 p.m. ET

This is another situation where we are backing a left-handed hitter who is much better against right-handed pitching and a righty pitcher who is much worse against lefty hitters, with Rafael Devers going up against Randy Vasquez of the Padres.

Overall, Devers is having a great year with the sixth-best ISO rate in MLB at .272 and the 17th-best barrel rate at 14.6%. Devers also has the ninth-highest average exit velocity in MLB at 93.4MPH. His splits against righties vs. lefties is dramatic, though, with an ISO rate of .337 against RHP, up from .154 against LHP. That ISO rate of .337 would be the second-highest in the MLB if you extrapolated that out to all qualified batters, only behind Aaron Judge. His hard hit rate specifically against RHP is 42.2% (would be tenth-highest in the MLB), and his fly-ball rate is 46.7% (would be 18th in the MLB).

Now, he is going up against a pitcher in Vasquez who has allowed half of his home runs (five of ten), to be against lefties despite that fact that he has seen significantly more RHH. His stats against lefties are significantly worse across the board, and Devers has actually taken Vasquez yard before, hitting a home run off him in one of his two at-bats against Vasquez last year.

Play 3: Gunnar Henderson to Hit a Home Run (+510) BetRivers

Texas Rangers vs. Baltimore Orioles, 7:05PM ET

It is rare to see Gunnar to hit a home run all the way up at +510 odds, but the reason is because Max Scherzer is pitching for the Rangers. Scherzer has had a Hall of Fame career and has the name-brand of being an ace, but he is making his second start of the season due to injury. While he looked good in his first start, that does not mean we should be completely scared off taking a batter against Scherzer. His velocity was far down from what it was last year (a year that Scherzer struggled), and a far cry from where he was even two years ago.

Even if this was Scherzer in his prime, +510 odds for Gunnar seems a little crazy. Gunnar has the second-best ISO rate in the MLB, the fifth-highest hard hit rate, the seventh-highest average exit velocity, and is also facing a right-handed pitcher in Scherzer which he is much better against. His ISO rate jumps up to .345 against RHP, with a hard hit rate of 49.1%, both of which would be the second-best in the MLB behind Judge.

In Scherzer's first start he threw a 4-seam fastball 49.1% of the time (Gunnar has a .295 ISO rate against 4-seam FBs, his third-best pitch), a slider 17.5% of the time (Gunnar's best pitch to hit for power with a .484 ISO rate), a curveball 15.8% of the time (Gunnar's second-best pitch with an ISO rate of .389). To summarize, the top three pitches that Scherzer threw in his season debut just so happen to be the top three pitches that Gunnar hits for the most power, and those numbers would most likely be even higher if we could isolate pitch-type splits to the handedness of the pitcher as well.

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