You know the drill — but first, a word about last night, because we cashed. Kyle Schwarber didn't just clear the corn at the Field of Dreams game, he did it TWICE, including a leadoff missile that cashed us early. Was he the chalkiest name on the card at +280? Absolutely. You think I care? Sure don't! The math was mathing (finally). Add in an Abimelec Ortiz going yard at +550 and I finished the day going 2-for-6 on bombs — all quarter-unit sprinkles, which pencils out to +1.08 units on 1.5 risked. That's a 72% ROI day for the haters (boy, do I love the haters). Remember: you're going to miss more home runs than you convert (again: math). So stop trying to be right all the time; you just need to be right enough at the right prices.
(Moment of silence for Mike Trout, who went 3-for-4 last night in a game where literally nobody homered — deGrom lasted two innings and the Angels won 7-0 on a pile of singles. The bat is clearly alive. Hold that thought, because we're running it back.)
Tonight: three swings in three different buildings. The math first, as always.
The Fee Math (A.k.a. Why The Sticker Price Lies)
New readers, listen closely: when you buy a YES on Kalshi as a taker, you pay a fee of roughly 7% × price × (1 − price) on top of the contract. A 19-cent contract really costs about 20.08 cents once the fee's baked in; win and you collect a dollar, so your profit is 79.92 cents on 20.08 risked — that's +398 effective, not the +426 the raw price whispers in your ear. Always run this number before comparing to your sportsbook. It's the difference between the sticker and what you actually pay walking out of the dealership.
Tonight's card, fee-adjusted:
- Pete Alonso At 19¢ → true cost ~20.08¢ → +398 effective
- CJ Abrams At 18¢ → true cost ~19.03¢ → +425 effective
- Mike Trout At 17¢ → true cost ~17.99¢ → +456 effective
Against the books: Alonso's best price is +390 (Fanatics), so Kalshi wins by a nose. Trout's best book is +443 (DraftKings) — Kalshi by a nose again. Abrams keeps fluctuating above-and-below this +425, but anything with a 4 in front of it is gold. I don't care where, I don't care how: just get the best prices every single time you possibly can. Cool, good talk. Now: TO THE PLAYS.
Pete Alonso: 1+ HR (19¢, Effective +398) — Orioles @ Rays
Best book price: +390 (Fanatics)
The Polar Bear in Baltimore orange is having himself an August: .371 over his last ten outings with three bombs, including his first two-homer game as an Oriole on Sunday. Season line: 26 homers, a 13.8% barrel rate, and a 55.8% hard-hit rate — that hard-hit number is monstrous, top-of-the-league violence on contact.
Now the fun part: the Rays are running a pitching magic trick tonight. Steven Matz "starts," but Matz has been living in one-to-two-inning bursts all month — five straight short outings, none longer than two frames. Pitched on Wednesday. Useful platoon for one AB. And behind the curtain: Jesse Scholtens, recalled yesterday specifically to eat the bulk innings, per the Tampa Bay Times. Scholtens hasn't started an MLB game since 2023, missed two-plus months with a wrist injury, and his 2026 ledger reads 10.8% barrels allowed and roughly 1.9 HR/9. Matz's own number is worse — 2.33 HR/9, with 10 of his 12 homers allowed to right-handed bats.
Honesty corner: the Trop is a dome that suppresses homers (0.93 factor), and Alonso's split against lefties this year is the soft spot (.233, six homers). But righty power has been auspiciously up in the Trop this season (heard Caminero's good or something though), and Matz is a cameo, not a feature — Alonso gets one look at him, tops, then three-plus cracks at a rusty bulk guy. And Pete's 33.2% opposite-field fly-ball rate plays beautifully at a park with one of the shallowest right-field porches in baseball. The polar bear doesn't need the whole game, just one big paw swipe somewhere.
CJ Abrams: 1+ HR (18¢, Effective +425) — Nationals @ Mets
Best book price: +475 (bet365 — take that one if you have it; the rest of the board is worse)
The Mets are starting a pitcher named Robert Stock, and as the son of a financial adviser, I am legally obligated to tell you to buy low on it. (I'll see myself out. Just kidding, this is my column.)
You know I'm not a hot-hand guy, so let's do this properly: Abrams has quietly been merely fine the last two weeks, and I don't care, because this play is launch plus matchup plus price. The launch: Abrams is having a legitimate breakout — 29 homers, a .257 ISO, an 18.0-degree average launch angle — and against right-handed pitching specifically he's a monster: .965 OPS and 23 of those 29 bombs. Stock is right-handed.
And Stock's profile, in his brief return to a big-league rotation, is exactly what this column hunts: 14.3% barrels allowed, a 17.1-degree average launch angle allowed — contact off him leaves at homer altitude — and lefties are slugging .652 against him. Full disclosure: that's built on eight innings, so squint accordingly. But the shape of it (fly-ball heavy, loud contact, lefty problems) matches everything in the scouting book on a 36-year-old journeyman, and Citi Field's modest HR suppression is the only thing the 18-cent price has going for the other side. A top-five-launch lefty against a small-sample fly-ball machine? Buy the dip.
Mike Trout: 1+ HR (17¢, Effective +456) — Royals @ Angels
Best book price: +443 (DraftKings)
Round two. Last night Trout sprayed three singles in a game nobody homered in, and the market's response was to make him CHEAPER — 16 cents became 17 cents' worth of... wait, no, the price barely moved and the effective number is now +456. The bat is scorching (17.1% barrel rate, 17.5° launch — still higher-grade contact than almost anyone in the sport), and tonight's matchup is sneaky-good in a very specific way.
Seth Lugo is the rare pitcher with a reverse power split: righties don't hit him more often — his overall numbers against them are actually fine — they hit him farther. Check the splits page: 8 homers allowed to righties in just 49.1 innings (1.46 HR/9) versus 8 to lefties in 85.1 (0.85 HR/9), with a .192 ISO against righties to .167 against lefties. Same number of dents, half the innings. When righty contact connects off Lugo, it's the loud kind, and Trout produced some of the loudest righty contact throughout his Hall of Fame career.
The garnish tonight is the air: NWS has Anaheim at 71% humidity at first pitch, climbing toward 79% — thick, heavy marine air. And the honesty portion: Angel Stadium suppresses homers overall, and Lugo's 8.5% barrels allowed says he's no gas can in the aggregate. This is a precision play — elite barrels against a pitcher whose one leak is exactly the shape of Mike Trout — at a price the books still won't match.
The Wrap
A polar bear against a faux-magic-trick bullpen game, a Stock tip in Queens, and round two on the best right-handed contact of a generation against the one pitcher who leaks specifically to righties. Fee-adjusted: +398, +425, +456, with Kalshi beating the books on two of three and bet365 sneaking the Abrams win. Same rules as always — you won't hit all three, you probably won't hit two, and last night proved for the hundredth time that one is plenty at these prices.
Oh, and as always with any longshot prices: please sprinkle responsibly. Have a great weekend!
— Lindy
