Live With Lindy MLB Research (7/9): The One Bet On A Dead Home Run Board
Some MLB nights the home run board hands you three or four mispriced longballs and the hard part is choosing. Thursday, July 9, was the opposite. Eric Lindquist (Lindy) worked the full board on his Live With Lindy MLB research show on the OddsShopper YouTube channel, and early on he called it the worst set of home run prices he had seen, a full board glowing red with almost nothing to fire. Nights like that are when the research show earns its keep, finding the one number the market got wrong. He found it, and the edge behind it was playing time, not power. It was Trevor Larnach, and the case lived in a bullpen, not a bat.
One vocabulary note first, because it changes how you tail this. A lean is a game he likes but has not bet, an official play is one he fired, and the stake (a full unit, a quarter, a dart) is the conviction. A lean is not a bet that was made.
In Summary
- The Conviction Play Is A Playing-Time Bet: Trevor Larnach (MIN) across a portfolio of props, to homer, over total bases and 2-plus hits (over 1.5), at more than a full unit, because Cleveland was at risk of having no left-hander in its bullpen and Larnach normally gets pinch-hit for when a lefty is available to face him.
- The Home Run Board Was Dead: beyond the Larnach homer and a couple of $1 longshot parlay darts, he fired no straight home run plays, because the opening prices were the most efficient he had seen. Do not force dingers on a day the market has them nailed.
- The Rest Of The Card Is Small: a Nathan Eovaldi (TEX) over 7.5 strikeouts, a Bryce Elder (ATL) over 4.5 strikeouts, and small money-line snipes on the Braves, Royals and Athletics (a touch more on the Braves).
- Where The Tool Agreed: with the home run market dead, the OddsShopper +EV board graded its cleanest edges on the under side, led by Elly De La Cruz (CIN) Under 0.5 hits at +175, a 9.1% edge.
- New to OddsShopper? You can try the same tools free for 7 days, and code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month of OS Pro.
Watch The Video
Lindy works the full 13-game board live in the show below, opening with the home run rant that shapes the whole card and then walking through the Larnach case in detail as first pitches roll in. This recap pulls out the plays he fired and the read on each; the two-hour live sweat is in the video.
Watch on YouTube
Thursday's Fired Card At A Glance
Below are the plays Lindy fired, with the spot and the one-line read. Prop and money-line prices move fast, so treat these as the read, not a live quote, and confirm the current number on the OddsShopper MLB odds screen before you bet.
| Play | Game / Spot | The Read | Stake |
|---|
| Trevor Larnach (MIN) HR, Total Bases, 2-Plus Hits (+ More) | vs. Cleveland, Gavin Williams | A depleted Guardians lefty pen means a better shot at a full night of at-bats instead of an early pinch-hit | 1u+ |
| Nathan Eovaldi (TEX) Over 7.5 Strikeouts | vs. the Angels | Fired small, then flagged the closing-line value once the number moved his way | Small |
| Bryce Elder (ATL) Over 4.5 Strikeouts | vs. Pittsburgh | Fired early, watched it close shorter (closing-line value) | Small |
| Atlanta Braves | Money line | A price with room inside his fair number | Small |
| Kansas City Royals | Money line | A dog-side snipe he sized down | Small |
| Athletics | Money line | A live-later underdog he liked at the number | Small |
| Kyle Schwarber (PHI) Over 0.5 Walks | vs. Cincinnati | A small play on a walk-prone bat at one stubborn, un-sharp book | Small |
The table lists his main straight plays; the stake is the read. On the home run board itself he fired only novelty darts, a $1 "Dukes Nukes" parlay of four longshot Underdog pieces and one small $10 two-leg home run parlay, which is its own tell about how dead he thought the board was. The Larnach cluster is the whole show: it is the most he has put on a single batter in a single spot in a long time. Everything under it, the two strikeout overs and the three money lines, sits a full rung lower as deliberately small plays rather than hammers. That gap between one conviction bet and a scatter of darts is the honest shape of a low-value board.
The Larnach Bet: A Playing-Time Edge, Not A Power Pick
Start here, because this is the reason the research show existed on a dead board. Trevor Larnach (MIN) is a left-handed hitter, and left-handed hitters in Minnesota's lineup have one recurring problem: the Twins pinch-hit for them the moment the other side has a left-handed pitcher available to face them, which quietly caps their at-bats and kills any over. It is exactly why Larnach's home run and hits numbers usually sit off the rest of the lineup. The bet was that today, the cap was gone.
Cleveland came into the game short on left-handed relief, and at real risk of having none available at all. Their primary lefty out of the pen, Tim Herrin, was down after taking a comebacker off his pitching elbow the day before, which left Erik Sabrowski (CLE) as the only left-hander Cleveland had active to face Larnach, and Sabrowski had just blown a save and thrown a dozen pitches, putting his availability in real question. The read was never that a pinch-hit was impossible; it was that the odds of one had dropped hard. Thin the lefties out of the other bullpen and the calculus shifts: instead of two or three at-bats before a lefty pinch-hit, Larnach, hitting leadoff, had a real path to a full five trips against a right-hander. The difference between three at-bats and five is the difference between a dead number and a live one, and reading the bullpen before the market does is one of the last real edges left in baseball props.
The matchup underneath the playing-time read held up too. Larnach drew right-hander Gavin Williams (CLE), who leans heavily on a curveball, gives up hard contact and keeps the ball in the air, the profile that leaks power to a left-handed bat who can lift it. Williams racks up strikeouts against left-handed hitters, but Larnach whiffs far less against right-handed pitching than the rest of the Minnesota lineup, so the strikeout risk that usually knocks a prop like this down was muted. Add a left-handed hitter running a strong average in decent hitting weather in Minnesota, with the wind pulling across, even if it is not a park that traditionally rewards lefty power. The board hung his home run out at a long price while a shorter number was already available at the next book, the closing-line value that made it worth firing. So the card did not just take the homer; it added the total bases and the 2-plus hits (over 1.5) too, the full portfolio on a bat the market had priced as if it would sit half the game.
A bet like this still loses plenty of nights, and Williams can absolutely carve the Twins up, which is the variance you accept on one at-bat. The point is the process: the edge was in the roster sheet, not a hot streak.
The Rest Of The Card: Two Strikeout Overs And Small Money Lines
With one conviction bet down, everything else stayed small, which is the correct response to a board he did not trust. On the strikeout side he fired Nathan Eovaldi (TEX) over 7.5 strikeouts, a number he sized small and then wished he had played heavier once it moved his way, the closing-line value that rewards getting a stale number before it corrects, exactly what running line shopping across every book is for. He also took Bryce Elder (ATL) over 4.5 strikeouts against Pittsburgh and watched it close shorter than where he got it, textbook closing-line value even on a night the strikeouts did not come, because a number that shortens after you bet it is the market agreeing with you after the fact.
The money lines were all small, a touch more on the Atlanta Braves than on the two dogs, the Kansas City Royals and the Athletics, each a spot where his fair price sat inside the number the book offered. A small Kyle Schwarber (PHI) over 0.5 walks rounded it out, a walk he found priced at one stubborn, un-sharp book. He also liked a Bryce Miller (SEA) under, though he never firmly committed to a number on air, so it stays a lean rather than a fired play. These overlap the plays from his early card by design, but the sizing tells you not to treat any of them as the show's headline. The headline was Larnach.
Why The Home Run Board Was Dead
Now the part that framed everything. On a normal night the research show is sifting fifteen or sixteen home run numbers looking for the two or three the books misprice. Thursday, he could not find one worth firing straight, and he was blunt about it: this was not a day to force a home run parlay or to tail a card stuffed with longshot dingers. The reason is the same discipline that made Larnach the play, run in reverse. When a bat is hyped and the number is short, you are betting against yourself; when a bat is quiet and the number is long, you have something. Most of the board Thursday was the first kind.
Which is why the plays that survived his filter were about a park, a platoon, weather or a bullpen wrinkle making a number wrong, not a name being popular. If the +EV idea behind that is new to you, that link is the place to start, and the sizing that goes with it is what keeps home run longshots as small darts rather than full-weight plays. On a dead board, discipline is mostly the passes.
The OddsShopper +EV Board: Where Today's Real Edges Sat
Lindy builds those price-versus-fair comparisons by hand, one market at a time. The OddsShopper +EV board does it for the entire board at once: it de-vigs every book, computes the fair price for each market, and ranks the biggest gaps between that fair number and the best takeable price. On this same July 9 board, with the home run market he trashed nowhere near the top, its biggest graded edges all sat on the under side. These are the tool's graded edges, de-vigged fair versus the best takeable number, separate from his fired card, every price captured live:
| Market | Best takeable | Fair | Edge |
|---|
| Elly De La Cruz (CIN) Under 0.5 Hits | +175 (Bet365) | +152 | +9.1% |
| Dominic Canzone (SEA) Under 0.5 Hits | +195 (Bet365) | +177 | +6.5% |
| Jordan Walker (STL) Under 0.5 Hits | +175 (Bet365) | +163 | +4.6% |
| Alec Burleson (STL) Under 0.5 Hits | +190 (Bet365) | +178 | +4.3% |
| J.T. Realmuto (PHI) Under 0.5 Hits | +170 (Bet365) | +159 | +4.2% |
| Logan Henderson (MIL) Under 4.5 Strikeouts | +119 (DraftKings) | +112 | +3.3% |
The row worth sitting on is the top one. Elly De La Cruz (CIN) is the exact hyped bat a home run board tempts you to chase, and the board's single biggest edge on the day was his hits under at +175, a 9.1% gap, the mirror image of the longball hype. That is the "bet the price, fade the story" discipline in one line: the market crowds onto the star to do something, and the value sits on him quietly not doing it. The bottom row ties straight back to the show, too, Logan Henderson (MIL) Under 4.5 strikeouts, a Henderson strikeout under Lindy himself was eyeing on a props platform at a slightly higher line. He flagged it as a lean rather than a fired play, but the tool graded the same under side he was leaning, here at a takeable +119 on the 4.5.
A Worked Example: Why Elly De La Cruz Under 0.5 Hits Grades On Top
Run the math on the biggest number to see why it topped the board. Convert each price to its implied probability with the American-odds formula 100 / (odds + 100):
- +175 offered: 100 / (175 + 100) = 36.4%. The best takeable price is paying you as if the under hits about 36.4 times out of 100.
- +152 fair (the de-vigged number): 100 / (152 + 100) = 39.7%. The market's own no-vig read says the real chance is closer to 39.7%.
That roughly three-point gap is the edge. Put it through an expected-value check on a $10 bet, where +175 returns $17.50 in profit: at a true 39.7% chance, EV = (0.397 x $17.50) minus (0.603 x $10) = $6.94 minus $6.03, or about +$0.91 per $10 risked, right in line with the board's 9.1% grade, but only if that 39.7% fair read holds; if the true chance is lower, the edge shrinks. That is the whole game, and it is exactly the calculation the board runs on every market at once instead of by hand.
New to OddsShopper? It scans every major sportsbook and the prediction markets, shows the de-vigged true odds next to the offered price, and ranks the board by edge, the exact comparison Lindy runs by hand on a spot like the Larnach bullpen read. You can try it free for 7 days, and code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month of OS Pro. Start your free trial
What Lindy's Hunting Later: The Tigers-Athletics Platoon
He closed by pointing at the game he thought held the day's next real edge, the Athletics at Detroit later on. Detroit is one of the most platoon-heavy lineups in baseball, which cuts both ways for a prop bettor: several of their bats are candidates to be pinch-hit for early once the matchup turns, so the same playing-time logic that made Larnach a bet makes a handful of Tigers hitters live under candidates, guys the book prices for a full night who may only see one or two trips. It was a lean he wanted to firm up once lineups posted, not a play already down, but it is the same idea the whole show ran on: find the bat whose real number of at-bats the market has not priced yet, and take the side of the number that reflects it.
FAQ
Who is Lindy and what is the Live With Lindy research show?
Lindy is Eric Lindquist. He hosts the Live With Lindy MLB research show on the OddsShopper YouTube channel, where he works through the baseball board game by game as a live sweat, attaches a real price to each play, and grades everything against a break-even number.
What was Lindy's main bet on July 9?
Trevor Larnach of the Twins, across his home run, total bases and two-plus hits, at more than a full unit. The edge was playing time: with Cleveland short on left-handed relief, Larnach was set up to bat a full five times instead of being pinch-hit for against a lefty, which is what usually caps his numbers.
Why were there almost no home run plays?
Because Lindy read the opening home run prices as the most efficient he had seen, with nearly every number fairly priced or short. When the power market is that tight, forcing a longball bet is betting into the book's edge, so the value moved to the under side and to one mispriced playing-time spot.
How can I find these price gaps myself?
The OddsShopper +EV board does it automatically. It shops every book and prediction market at once, de-vigs each market to a fair price, and ranks the board by the gap between that fair number and the best takeable price, so the reads Lindy builds by hand are sitting there ranked for you.
Try The Tools Lindy Uses
Lindy's edge is not a hot bat. It is pricing every play against the real number, from a platoon split to a late bullpen wrinkle, and firing only when the offered price is longer than the fair one. OddsShopper is what does that for you: it runs line shopping and odds comparison across every major sportsbook and the prediction markets at once, shows the de-vigged true odds next to the price, and ranks the whole board by edge.
Try it free for 7 days, and code BABYLINDY50 takes 50% off your first week or month of OS Pro. Start your free trial
