This is Lindy's Long Balls, weekend edition: every night I dig through the prediction-market home run board looking for MLB dingers priced like gas station scratch-offs, and this column is both things at once, an information board you can shop from and the plays I'm actually on. Saturday, August 22 is a late-shift card. Both of my plays come out of the after-8 window, and both sit at the best widely available price on my scan, on Kalshi. First, the ledger, because we keep it in public: Friday went 1-for-3 and still finished green at +0.38 units on 0.75 risked, Pete Crow-Armstrong doing the honors with a leadoff homer in Seattle, his 32nd and his fourth cash for this column in six days, while Francisco Lindor never got going in a rain-delayed mess on the South Side and Julio Rodríguez kept the ball in the yard. That closes the week at +4.12 units on 4.00 risked, Monday through Friday. A 103% ROI week. Frame it, kiss it, forget it: Saturday's coin has no memory of Friday's ledger. One number to keep in your head as you read is 4.3. It looks like the reason to skip my second play, and by the end of that writeup it's doing most of the work explaining why the price is this good.
All numbers below are from my scan as of Saturday, August 22, 2026. Prices on Kalshi and at the books move all day, so treat them as a snapshot rather than a live quote, and check the current number before you touch anything.
Corbin Carroll — one of the featured players on today's card.
The Quick Answer
My two Kalshi home run picks for Saturday, August 22: Corbin Carroll (Reds at Diamondbacks) at 16 cents, roughly +490 after Kalshi's taker fee, and Jo Adell (Guardians at Rockies) at 19 cents, roughly +398 after fees. On my scan both beat the best widely available sportsbook price. The full board, the fee math, a righty who has surrendered 11 of his 13 homers to left-handed bats, and the number 4.3 are all below.
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The Board
| Hitter | Game | Kalshi Yes (at scan) | Effective odds after fees | Best book (at scan) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corbin Carroll (ARI) | Reds @ Diamondbacks | 16¢ | ~+490 | +425 to +470 (Unibet outlier: +525) |
| Jo Adell (CLE) | Guardians @ Rockies | 19¢ | ~+398 | +340 (BetMGM) |
The row doing the heavy lifting is the bottom one. Carroll at +490 versus a book field of +425 to +470 is a healthy gap, with one asterisk we'll get to. Adell at +398 versus BetMGM's +340 is a 58-point difference on the same swing, and that gap is the entire reason the second half of this card exists. If you want every name beyond my two, the full MLB home run board runs the whole card of prices.
The Fee Math, Worked At Tonight's Prices
Kalshi charges a taker fee of roughly 7% × price × (1 − price), which at these prices is about a penny per contract. Worked through at 16 cents: 0.07 × 0.16 × 0.84 ≈ 0.94 cents, so your true cost is about 16.94 cents, and a winning contract's 83.06 cents of profit converts to roughly +490. Same arithmetic at 19 cents lands Adell at roughly +398. Every winning contract settles at a flat $1 no matter what you paid, which is why the fee-adjusted entry is the only number that gets to compete with a sportsbook prop. If that adjustment is new to you, the Kalshi fees breakdown and the de-vig guide for Kalshi prices cover it in full, and if the venue itself is new, start with how to bet MLB on Kalshi.
Everything in this column, the fee math included, lives inside OddsShopper Pro's price comparison, which runs a 7-day free trial, and code LINDY25 takes 25% off your first week or month after it.
The rule this column lives by: park factors, platoon splits and barrel rates explain a price; they never beat one. The books know Coors is at altitude and they know who leaks homers to lefties. The only edge I ever claim is the number itself, and tonight the fee-adjusted Kalshi price beats the widely available book field on both plays.
Corbin Carroll, 1+ HR — Reds @ Diamondbacks (16¢, ~+490)
Rhett Lowder has a very specific accounting problem, and tonight the invoice arrives: on my scan, 11 of the 13 home runs he's allowed this season have gone to left-handed bats. That's not a lean, that's a landslide. The season-long numbers agree with the shape of it: a 5.17 ERA and 1.49 WHIP, 1.16 homers per nine, a 9.6% barrel rate allowed on my scan, and a .454 xSLG against per Savant. When a righty leaks that hard to one side of the plate, you don't overthink it. You find the best left-handed hitter in the building.
That's Carroll, who is having exactly the kind of month you want to buy into this matchup. On my scan he's slugging .543 in August with three homers, and the season line is the real thing: 18 home runs and a .237 ISO against right-handed pitching specifically, with 13 of his homers coming in that split, on an 11.7% barrel rate and a 48.4% hard-hit rate. This is the cleanest kind of home run case this column gets to make, a split-specific power bat against a starter whose damage profile points directly at him, under a roof at Chase Field, so there are no weather variables to caveat. Just swing versus flaw.
The asterisk from the board: Unibet was dangling +525 on my scan, so if you happen to hold an account there, that's your number. Everywhere else the books sat +425 to +470, which makes Kalshi's fee-adjusted +490 the best widely available price on the play. The lefty-punisher meets the lefty. Justice is usually more expensive than this.
Jo Adell, 1+ HR — Guardians @ Rockies (19¢, ~+398)
Carroll's case is a landslide split. Adell's case is the opposite shape, a hot bat in the best power environment in baseball, with fine print I'm going to read out loud before I tell you why I'm on it anyway.
Our guy is back on the card. Adell cashed for this column on Tuesday with a 455-foot, 111.9-mph declaration against the Giants, and he's been scorching since the deadline move to Cleveland: .368 over his last seven games with eight RBI. Tonight the man gets nine innings at Coors Field, a mile above sea level, where fly balls go to become legends. Savant backs the profile: a 9.9% barrel rate, .452 xSLG and 45% hard-hit, the loudest contact quality Cleveland runs out tonight.
Now the promised number. The reason a hot bat at Coors costs only 19 cents is Gabriel Hughes, and here's where 4.3 comes in: despite a 6.69 ERA and 1.38 WHIP, Hughes allows just 4.3% barrels and 28.4% hard-hit on my scan, a .338 xSLG against per Savant, the softest contact of any starter on tonight's slate, with a 0.73 HR/9 to match. His blowups, including the seven earned runs in four innings he just wore his last time out, have been death by papercut, not moonshot festivals.
Two more pieces of fine print while I'm at it: Adell's power split leans the wrong way tonight, a .294 ISO against lefties versus .115 against righties this season. And there's a storm window flirting with the middle innings in Denver, so don't dawdle getting a position in.
So why am I on it? Because that 4.3, and the platoon split beside it, are precisely what's holding the price at 19 cents, and everything squeezing back against them is real: a Coors Field that forgives nothing, a hitter running the hottest stretch of his season, and a starter whose soft-contact profile just got tagged for seven earned anyway. The books see all of the above; that's the priced-in rule from the top of the column. What they're not agreeing on is the number. BetMGM said +340 on my scan. Kalshi, after fees, says +398. A 58-point bonus on the same swing in the thinnest air in baseball is the edge, the only kind this column claims. I tip my cap and take the ticket.
The Wrap
A lefty-punisher's reckoning under the roof in Phoenix, and a red-hot deadline pickup moonlighting a mile above sea level. Two swings, late window only, both bought at the best widely available number on my scan. And because a 103% ROI week is precisely when the guardrails matter: both of these lose more often than they win. The prices are the confession, and I co-sign them. Carroll at 16 cents misses five nights out of six; Adell misses roughly four out of five, Coors or no Coors. Last week was great because the numbers were right, not because we bend probability with vibes.
Quarter units, both tickets, same as always. Before you tail either one, confirm both bats are in the posted starting lineup and that Gabriel Hughes is still the listed starter in Denver, then do what the fee-math section preaches and confirm the current Kalshi number still clears the book side on the live odds screen, where you can shop the number across every major book, and if you want more cards than mine tonight, the rest of the OddsShopper crew posts free expert picks today. Bank the week, don't spend the high. See you Monday.
- Lindy's Long Balls: A Scorcher In Queens, Back To The Well At Wrigley, And 315 Feet Of Texas Hospitality
- LINDY'S LONG BALLS: Breaking My Own Heart On The South Side
- LINDY'S LONG BALLS: A Two-Piece Thursday: Kalshi Odds
- Kalshi Home Run Picks Today: Crow-Armstrong, Harper (Aug 19)
- LINDY'S LONG BALLS: Kauffman's Back, Eating Crow (In A Good Way), And A Dodger At Altitude (Aug. 17)
FAQ
What does a winning Kalshi home run contract pay at these prices? Every contract settles at a flat $1 when it resolves Yes, no matter what I paid to get in. So my 16-cent Carroll entry returns 84 cents per contract before the taker fee, roughly +490 after it, and the 19-cent Adell ticket works out to roughly +398 the same way.
Are these picks or just an information board? Both, on purpose, same as every edition of this column. The board is there so you can shop the prices yourself, and the two writeups are the plays I'm on tonight, a quarter unit each, logged in the ledger win or lose.
Why does the storm risk in Denver matter for a Kalshi position? Because a sportsbook prop may void if your hitter never gets a plate appearance, with rules that differ by book, while exchange markets carry their own resolution rules for delays and shortened games; read the market's rules page before you enter. My practical protection is the same either way: I want my position in before the middle innings, which is why I flagged the window.
Want every number in this column on one screen, with the price comparison done for you? OddsShopper Pro runs a 7-day free trial, then code LINDY25 takes 25% off your first week or month.
