MLB Picks Today: Lindy's Strikeout And Home Run Bets
If you came looking for MLB picks today, Monday's card had a clear shape to it, and Eric "Lindy" Lindquist spent two hours on the OddsShopper stream laying it out bet by bet. This was a bet-early, shop-hard day: a cluster of arms who miss bats in the first turn through a lineup, a few parks starting to cook for power in the July heat, and a handful of moneylines the market had not fully sharpened yet. Below is the card he actually fired, the reasoning behind each one, and the OddsShopper process that turned a research session into a stack of positive-CLV tickets.
Braxton Ashcraft — one of the featured arms on today's card.
In Summary (TL;DR)
- The Lead Outlier: Braxton Ashcraft (PIT) Over 6.5 Strikeouts against a New York Yankees lineup that rolled out seven left-handed bats, the exact split his numbers feast on.
- A Second Outs Over: Jacob Misiorowski (MIL) over his outs number against the Mets, bet at the top of the range for CLV.
- Home Run Swings In The Hot Parks: Rafael Devers (SF) and Heliot Ramos (SF) at Kauffman Stadium, plus Austin Riley (ATL) at a long price after a bump to cleanup.
- Moneylines And A Total: the Los Angeles Dodgers at plus money against Cristopher Sánchez and the Phillies, the Miami Marlins, and the under in Twins vs. Guardians.
- Two Prop Edges: James Wood (WSH) over 1.5 total hits at Coors against Kyle Freeland (COL), and Riley Greene (DET) for an RBI at Wrigley.
- The Method: bet early, take the over where the game environment and lineup order correlate, and shop every book on the odds screen so the price beats its own fair number.
Watch: Live With Lindy (7/20)
Lindy walked through every one of these bets live on the OddsShopper YouTube stream. The full research session is embedded below, and you can also watch on YouTube.
The Read: A Bet-Early, Shop-Hard Strikeout Day
Start with the process, because it explains why the card looks the way it does. The plays here were not "what does a model say to bet" outputs. They came from building distributions and simulations, mapping each pitcher's range of outcomes, then betting the spot where the posted price sat longer than the true number. That head start is why so many of these tickets already show heavy closing-line value: they were placed the night before or first thing in the morning, before the market caught up.
Two habits do most of the work. First, bet the over when you can correlate it. A strikeout or a home run is not an isolated coin flip; it lives inside a game environment and a lineup order, and the right tail runs further than the left, so overs that stack correlated outcomes carry an edge the raw projection misses. Second, shop relentlessly. The same strikeout or home run number can swing a dozen cents between books, and over a full season that gap is the whole margin. OddsShopper's odds screen flips every book's price to its no-vig fair number, so you can see which side is actually priced in your favor instead of eyeballing it. If the de-vig math is new to you, the remove the vig primer is the two-minute version.
One honest caveat worth repeating: the public projection feeds do not update overnight, so a number that looked great at midnight can move by first pitch. Treat them as a starting point, not gospel, and re-check lineups before you click.
Strikeout And Pitching-Outs Overs
The clearest theme of the day was early strikeout arms, and the single most lopsided number on the board was Braxton Ashcraft's.
Braxton Ashcraft (PIT), over 6.5 strikeouts. This is the outlier that makes the card. Ashcraft's strikeout rate against left-handed hitters towers over his rate against righties, and the Yankees were set to run out seven left-handed bats. In one line, that is the whole bet: a pitcher whose entire skill is punching out lefties, handed a lineup stacked with them. The slider has sharpened over the last month and the curveball is a genuine put-away pitch, and the plus-money opening number was, in Lindy's words, ridiculous. It was one to bet early, before the market corrected — the kind of number that never lasts. You can track the day's arms on the strikeout prop board.
Jacob Misiorowski (MIL), over his pitching outs. This one is a bet on volume as much as whiffs. Milwaukee understands what it has in a generational young arm, and with Brandon Woodruff out for the year and Kyle Harrison on the IL, they gave Misiorowski a little extra rest rather than sit him. He is already past 110 innings against a career-high near 140, so the arm-fatigue question is real, but his last time on the mound he punched out 11 against St. Louis, and he has had nearly two weeks of rest since. Taking the top of his outs range meant getting paid a plus-money price for him simply being healthy enough to work deep, which is exactly where the CLV came from.
| Play | Market | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Braxton Ashcraft (PIT) | Over 6.5 Strikeouts | Seven lefty bats vs. a pitcher whose K rate spikes against lefties. |
| Jacob Misiorowski (MIL) | Over Pitching Outs | Rested phenom, plus-money top-of-range, all CLV. |
The row that matters most there is the top one. When a pitcher's platoon split is that extreme and the opposing manager hands him the exact side he dominates, the strikeout over stops being a projection and starts being a matchup. Lead with it.
New to OddsShopper? It scans more than 100 sportsbooks and flips every price to its no-vig fair number, so you can see which side is +EV before you bet, the same de-vig read Lindy runs by hand all show. You can try OddsShopper Pro free for 7 days, and code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month if you subscribe.
Home Run Swings: Kauffman And A Cleanup Bump
The power plays all trace back to one idea: put a right-sized bat in a park that is heating up, and take the long price. Kauffman Stadium in particular is climbing as a home run venue as the summer humidity settles in, and that is the backdrop for two Giants swings.
Rafael Devers (SF), home run. This is a pure platoon-and-park bet, not a bet on the storyline. Devers draws a right-handed starter at Kauffman, and the opening home run price was so far above where it should have sat that it produced closing-line value on a standard power play, which almost never happens. Take the platoon edge in a park playing up, ignore the noise.
Heliot Ramos (SF), home run. A second dart pointed at the same Kauffman spot. When the park is the edge, you want more than one swing aimed at it.
Austin Riley (ATL), home run. The frustration play of the day, and the most instructive. Riley has been poor all season and was projected to hit seventh, but he got bumped up to cleanup in a platoon-favorable spot, which quietly hands him more plate appearances. The bet is not "Riley is good again," it is "a right-handed bat with a cleanup workload at a very long price." The lineup card, not the batting average, is the reason to click. For the full board of these, the OddsShopper home run picks hub tracks it all day.
Moneylines And A Total
Not every edge is a prop. Three game-level plays made the card.
Los Angeles Dodgers, moneyline (plus money) vs. the Phillies. Plus-money Dodgers do not come around often, and this one is a read on two glaring issues in Cristopher Sánchez's start rather than a blind favorite-fade. When the market hands you a live team at a dog price, you take the number.
Miami Marlins, moneyline. The edge here is the arm across from them. Ronel Blanco misses almost no bats against left-handed hitters — not a single strikeout to lefties in the sample — and he has been hit hard by them, so Miami can point a run of lefty and switch bats like Xavier Edwards (MIA) and Liam Hicks (MIA) straight at that weakness. The side was paired with a Liam Hicks home run swing so the game had more than one way to pay.
Twins vs. Guardians, under. This was the first play on the card and the most honest about its own edge: thin, priced close to fair, and admittedly light on closing-line value. The weather in Cleveland does not favor hitters, and while Byron Buxton returning nudges the Twins' side up, Ryan Jeffers being out is a real downgrade behind the plate, so the under still holds up. On a near-efficient total, it is a conviction-light play, not one to hammer.
The Sharpest Spot On The Board: James Wood, A Worked Example
If you want to see how one of these edges is actually built, walk through the James Wood bet, because it is the cleanest on the card.
James Wood (WSH), over 1.5 total hits at Coors Field against Kyle Freeland. Wood is one of the biggest walk-drawing hitters in baseball, and normally that hurts a hits prop, because a walk is not a hit. But Freeland almost never walks a left-handed batter. He has issued one walk to lefties all year across nearly a hundred batters faced. Strip the walk outcome out of Wood's profile and nearly every plate appearance turns into a ball in play, in Coors, with three-plus trips to the plate likely. His one weakness for this market becomes the reason to bet him. The number was plus money, and it is one of the more positive-EV props of the day.
Riley Greene (DET), RBI at Wrigley rounds it out, with the wind helping and the bigger position going on the 1.5-RBI number over the straight one-RBI line.
The takeaway from the Wood play generalizes: the edge is not "he is a good hitter," it is a specific, verifiable reason the market's number is wrong. That gap between a pick and a bet is the habit worth copying. If finding those spots yourself is the goal, the how to find +EV bets guide is the on-ramp.
How To Bet This Card The OddsShopper Way
Every edge above came out of the same workflow, and the tools map onto specific bets from this card:
- Line Shopping Across 100+ Books. The odds screen puts every book's price side by side, which is how the Ashcraft strikeout over and the plus-money Dodgers moneyline got bet at the best available number instead of the first one posted.
- De-Vig And +EV Ranking. Every price is flipped to its no-vig fair number and ranked by expected ROI, which is the math behind calling Ashcraft's plus-money opener "ridiculous" and the Devers home run price one of the worst the market put up all day. Brush up with the MLB betting terms glossary if any of it is unfamiliar.
- Live In-Game EV. Once first pitch hits, the in-game EV screen keeps flagging value as the lines move, so a Misiorowski pitch-count scare or a late lineup scratch becomes an opportunity instead of a surprise.
- Sharp Money On The Exchanges. OddsShopper also surfaces where real money is moving on the prediction markets and betting exchanges, which is worth a look when a prop like Wood's total hits is priced better off the traditional sportsbooks.
- Promo And Free-Bet Mechanics. When you settle on a book for the Ashcraft or Dodgers ticket, its current sign-up terms matter, and the FanDuel promo page lays them out. If you end up with a free bet, the free bet converter shows how to squeeze the most value out of it.
FAQ
What were Lindy's best MLB picks today? The headliner is Braxton Ashcraft over 6.5 strikeouts against a lefty-heavy Yankees lineup. The James Wood over 1.5 total hits against Kyle Freeland at Coors is the other standout, built on Freeland almost never walking a lefty.
Why bet strikeout and pitching-outs overs so early? Because the value is in the CLV. These numbers were plus money before the market corrected, so betting them the night before or first thing locked in a price better than the close. The odds screen makes those early spots easy to spot.
Is Rafael Devers a home run bet because he is hot? No. It is a platoon-and-park bet: a bat drawing a right-handed starter at Kauffman Stadium, which is playing up for power in the summer heat, at a home run price well above its fair number.
Where can I follow the rest of the card? OddsShopper's strikeout props and home run picks hubs update all day, and Live With Lindy streams Monday through Friday.
The Bottom Line
Monday was not about one magic pick. It was about a repeatable process: build the range of outcomes, find the spot where the price is longer than the true number, bet it before the market moves, and shop every book so the number works for you. Ashcraft into a lineup of lefties was the loudest example, but the same logic runs through Devers at Kauffman and Wood at Coors. Get the process right and the picks take care of themselves.
New to OddsShopper? It does automatically what Lindy does by hand: scan 100-plus books, strip the vig, and flag the bets priced in your favor. Try OddsShopper Pro free for 7 days, and code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month.
Card and analysis from Eric Lindquist's Live With Lindy MLB research stream (7/20). Watch the full show on YouTube. Bet responsibly, 21+.
