MLB Best Bets Today: Lindy's Leans, Likes & Locks (6/17)

In Summary (TL;DR)

Eric "Lindy" Lindquist runs through the entire MLB board every day for OddsShopper, and his Wednesday (June 17) card is a rapid-fire one built almost entirely on the prices he can beat. Coming off a couple of frustrating nights in the home run market, he kept this slate tight: a small handful of longshot home run swings he has priced better than the books, plus one strikeout prop he paid up to get. The headliners are Kyle Stowers to go deep at +360 in the best lefty-power park in baseball, Paul Goldschmidt at +500 against a lefty he mashes, Brian Reynolds at +425, and Shohei Ohtani over 5.5 strikeouts, a juiced favorite he bought inside -150. Read each one as Lindy's bet at the number he got, never a sure thing, and shop the live price yourself before first pitch. You can watch the full show on YouTube to hear every read in his own words.

The Method: Bet the Price, Not the Team

Before the plays, here is how Lindy decides what to bet. The slate changes every day, but the process behind it holds steady.

• Price versus probability, full stop. Lindy bets numbers the books have priced too long, and the players he happens to like rarely enter into it. He passed on pitchers and games he finds interesting on Wednesday simply because the price was not in his favor, and he leaned into longshots where his own model had the player meaningfully more likely to hit than the payout implied. That discipline does the heavy lifting. Our how to find +EV bets guide breaks down the same idea for any market.
• Closing line value is the real scoreboard, but only in deep markets. When a sharply priced number you beat moves toward your side in a market with real two-way action, that is the market confirming you were early to an edge, a steadier signal than any single win or loss. The catch matters here: home run lines are thin markets, so a small move can be follower money or one book trimming a soft number rather than proof. There the cleaner read is simply that you beat the true price. Lindy noted a few prices were already drifting as he recorded; treat that as a soft signal and nothing more. For the full breakdown, see our closing line value explainer.
• Home run props are a long game, sized small. Lindy is blunt that any individual home run bet is still more likely to lose than win. He keeps each swing tiny, well under two units total across the whole market, and lets a deep sample rather than any one night decide whether the prices were right. A bad two-day stretch does not change the approach.
• Batting order and matchup are the edge. His home run reads lean on projected lineup spots and platoon splits: a lefty bat facing a pitcher who bleeds power to that side, in a park and weather that help the ball carry. His strikeout reads target pitchers in spots where the books sharpen the number a little less than they do a marquee moneyline.
• The tools price the slate. Lindy builds all of this on OddsShopper Pro. The odds screen scans every book for the best available number, the live liquidity tool shows where sharp money is moving so you can tail it, and the in-game EV tool surfaces value once the first pitch is thrown. That is how one analyst can price a full board this fast.

Lindy's MLB Best Bets for Wednesday, June 17

These are the plays Lindy actually fired, at the prices he posted on the show. Treat them as his reads at those numbers, and confirm the live line before you bet, because home run prices and lineups move right up to first pitch.

Kyle Stowers home run, +360 (two homers +4,000)

This is the one Lindy sounded most confident about, and he called the two-homer ticket the longest such play he has ever made. Stowers, a left-handed bat, draws Andrew Painter at Citizens Bank Park, which Lindy flagged as the best ballpark in baseball for lefty power, with the wind blowing out in the 80s. Painter has handled righties but has been badly exposed by left-handed hitters lately, and Lindy's note on Stowers is that when he is not struck out, the contact is brutal: a .196 expected ISO and a 90-plus mph average exit velocity. He expects Stowers to bat third. The straight homer is +360; the longshot for two is +4,000, sized as a true lottery ticket.

Paul Goldschmidt home run, +500

A +500 price on a hitter carrying a .367 ISO against left-handed pitching is the kind of number Lindy thinks the book got wrong. Goldschmidt already has five home runs against left-handed pitching this season, and he lines up against a lefty (Anthony Kay) who has been far more vulnerable to right-handed power than the surface stats suggest. Lindy almost never chases hot streaks, so the fact that he stopped to walk through both the recent and the season-long profile here means something. Lindy's read is that +500 is simply too long for this matchup, to the point he said he would still bet it down to +450.

Brian Reynolds home run, +425

Reynolds hit two home runs on Tuesday to burn the Athletics' moneyline, and Lindy is right back on him Wednesday. He has Reynolds projected closer to +375 than the +425 on the board, and he is betting that difference. Reynolds also keeps the platoon edge whether he faces the starter or a bullpen arm. Lindy was candid that the last two days in the home run market were rough, and that he is staying the course because a sound process is what pays off over a full season regardless of any short cold stretch.

Shohei Ohtani over 5.5 strikeouts, inside -150

The lone pitching prop on the card, and Lindy paid up for it. He looked at the higher strikeout number at open, did not love the price, and instead bought the over 5.5 at a price inside -150, noting the juice had already started ticking up after he fired. He is betting it against a Tampa Bay lineup that does not strike out much, and his reasoning is that Ohtani limits power, avoids damage, and racks up strikeouts even against contact-oriented bats, so his projection still beats that price even with the extra juice baked in. The matchup that scares some bettors off is exactly why he laid up here rather than reaching for the longer number.

A few games he studied did not make the card. He passed on Nick Lodolo's outs prop at -120, was waiting on lineups before touching the Cardinals' lefties or a Mariners hitter, and talked himself off a Pirates starter's strikeout over against the Athletics because the risk of ruin was too high. Most of the board is a pass; the bets that survive are the ones where the number is clearly on his side.

A Worked Example: Why +500 on Goldschmidt Is a Bet

Lindy's Goldschmidt play is a clean way to see how "price versus probability" actually works, and you can run the same math on any pick. A +500 underdog pays five to one, so the price itself implies a win probability of 1 / (5 + 1), or about 16.7%. In other words, the book is treating Goldschmidt as roughly a one-in-six shot to homer.

Lindy said he would bet this down to about +450, and that number is the tell. The +450 line implies 1 / (4.5 + 1), or about 18.2%. So his honest estimate of Goldschmidt's chance to go deep is at least that 18%, against a left-hander he crushes, while the market is paying him as if it were only 16.7%. That small gap between his number and the book's number is the entire edge.

Put real dollars on it: risk one unit to win five at +500. If his 18.2% read is right, the expected value is (0.182 × 5) minus (0.818 × 1), which comes out to about +0.09 units per unit risked, roughly a 9% edge. It still loses far more often than it wins, which is exactly why he sizes it small and leans on a season-long sample. Spot the mispricing, take the best available price, and keep the stake honest.

Betting Lindy's Card the Smart Way

Following a sharp only works if you bet like one. A few rules that apply to every play above:

1. Shop for the number. Lindy's edge is often the price itself. A homer prop at +360 on one book might be +320 on another, and that difference is the value you are capturing. Line them up on the OddsShopper MLB odds screen and take the best number on the board.
2. Size longshots like longshots. A tenth of a unit on a +4,000 two-homer ticket is not the same wager as a moneyline. These lose far more often than they hit, and Lindy keeps them tiny on purpose. Stake to your bankroll.
3. Check the lineup before first pitch. Home run and strikeout props live and die on the batting order and pinch-hit risk. A number that looked great the night before can evaporate when the card posts, so confirm the lineup.
4. Judge it across a season. Even a well-priced card loses plenty of nights, and Lindy just lived through two of them. What grades a bet is the price you locked in, and that takes a full season's sample to show up.

Bet with the tools Lindy uses. New to OddsShopper? It scans every major sportsbook and flags the bets priced in your favor, the exact work Lindy does by hand above, and it is the same OddsShopper Pro suite he builds every card on. Try it free for 7 days, then code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month: Start your free trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Lindy? Eric "Lindy" Lindquist is OddsShopper's MLB analyst. His daily show, Lindy's Leans, Likes & Locks, walks the full board game by game with the plays he is making and the price and reasoning behind each one. He also hosts a longer MLB research show daily and appears on MLB Live Before Lock.

What are Lindy's best bets for today (6/17)? His fired plays included Kyle Stowers to homer (+360, with the two-homer ticket at +4,000), Paul Goldschmidt to homer (+500), Brian Reynolds to homer (+425), and Shohei Ohtani over 5.5 strikeouts (a juiced favorite inside -150). Prices and lineups move, so confirm the live number before you bet.

Why so many home run props and so few sides? Home run props are smaller markets where Lindy can get ahead of the book on lineup spots and platoon splits, and a longshot price can carry real value. He sizes them tiny because they miss far more than they hit, and he leans on a large sample rather than any one night.

Should I just tail every pick? Only at a price that beats the player's true chance to hit. Lindy's whole edge is the number he gets and disciplined sizing, so if you cannot find a similar price, the value is gone. New to the markets? Our MLB betting terms guide covers the basics.

Where can I follow Lindy's full daily card? Lindy posts his complete card on Tails, where you can follow his plays every day. See his Tails page for the full slate, and watch the Wednesday show on YouTube.

The Bottom Line

Wednesday is a rapid-fire card built on one idea: he only fires when the posted number is longer than the true odds. Lindy is leaning on three longshot home runs he has priced better than the books (Stowers, Goldschmidt, Reynolds) and a single strikeout over (Ohtani) he paid up to get, after a couple of cold days that did not shake him off the process. Shop your number, keep the longshots small, watch the lineups, and grade the card across a full season's sample.

Follow Lindy's full MLB card, every day. Get his complete slate of plays on his Tails page. And to bet with the same tools he uses, start a free OddsShopper Pro trial and take 50% off your first week or month with BABYLINDY50: Get OddsShopper Pro.

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