Lindy's Long Balls: JUST Three After Dark, And One Price Is 100 Points

Grading first, and Thursday's one bullet hit a diving glove. Murakami's one loud swing of the night was a seventh-inning liner that Mangum ran down in right field, one batter before the double that finally broke up the no-hit bid Jones had carried that far, and that was as close as anyone in white got in a 2-0 loss. The comedy gods stay undefeated: Murakami's 31st homer came WEDNESDAY, one day early for our ticket, which pairs beautifully with Jensen homering one day LATE last week. The tally is now bracketed by punchlines:

Date	Play	Price	Effective	Result	Risked	P/L
8/17	Bobby Witt Jr. (KC)	16¢	+490	✅	0.25u	+1.23u
8/17	Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC)	21¢	+351	✅	0.25u	+0.88u
8/17	Mookie Betts (LAD)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/18	Jackson Merrill (SD)	13¢	+625	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/18	Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC)	18¢	+425	✅	0.25u	+1.06u
8/18	Mike Trout (LAA)	19¢	+398	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/18	Jo Adell (CLE)	14¢	+574	✅	0.25u	+1.43u
8/18	Corbin Carroll (AZ)	9¢	+945	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/19	Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC)	14¢	+574	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/19	Bryce Harper (PHI)	19¢	+398	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/19	Gunnar Henderson (BAL)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/20	Pete Alonso (BAL)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/20	Zach Neto (LAA)	17¢	+456	✅	0.25u	+1.14u
8/21	Francisco Lindor (NYM)	16¢	+490	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/21	Julio Rodríguez (SEA)	17¢	+456	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/21	Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC)	21¢	+351	✅	0.25u	+0.88u
8/22	Corbin Carroll (AZ)	16¢	+490	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/22	Jo Adell (CLE)	19¢	+398	✅	0.25u	+1.00u
8/23	Jo Adell (CLE)	23¢	+313	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/23	Jackson Merrill (SD)	18¢	+425	✅	0.25u	+1.06u
8/23	Ronald Acuña Jr. (ATL)	13¢	+625	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/24	Junior Caminero (TB)	20¢	+373	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/24	Pete Crow-Armstrong (CHC)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/24	Byron Buxton (MIN)	28¢	+240	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/25	Bryce Harper (PHI)	16¢	+490	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/25	Fernando Tatis Jr. (SD)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/25	Manny Machado (SD)	13¢	+625	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/26	Matt Olson (ATL)	18¢	+425	✅	0.25u	+1.06u
8/26	Pete Alonso (BAL)	18¢	+425	✅	0.25u	+1.06u
8/27	Jac Caglianone (KC)	19¢	+398	✅	0.25u	+1.00u
8/27	Jackson Chourio (MIL)	17¢	+456	✅	0.25u	+1.14u
8/28	Matt Olson (ATL)	26¢	+266	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/28	Ozzie Albies (ATL)	14¢	+574	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/28	Zach Neto (LAA)	17¢	+456	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/29	Alex Bregman (CHC)	13¢	+625	✅	0.25u	+1.56u
8/29	Jackson Merrill (SD)	12¢	+685	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/30	Sal Stewart (CIN)	21¢	+351	✅	0.25u	+0.88u
8/30	Pete Alonso (BAL)	27¢	+252	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/31	Gunnar Henderson (BAL)	19¢	+398	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
8/31	Seiya Suzuki (CHC)	20¢	+373	✅	0.25u	+0.93u
9/1	Manny Machado (SD)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/1	Jordan Walker (STL)	book (bet365)	+350	✅	0.25u	+0.88u
9/1	Jackson Chourio (MIL)	22¢	+331	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/2	Wilyer Abreu (BOS)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/2	Francisco Lindor (NYM)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/3	Wilyer Abreu (BOS)	book (DraftKings)	+426	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/3	Cal Raleigh (SEA)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/4	Jac Caglianone (KC)	19¢	+398	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/4	Jordan Walker (STL)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/6	Jackson Chourio (MIL)	14¢	+574	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/6	Matt Olson (ATL)	22¢	+331	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/6	Brayan Rocchio (CLE)	6¢	+1464	✅	0.25u	+3.66u
9/7	Wilyer Abreu (BOS)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/7	Jo Adell (CLE)	14¢	+574	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/8	Carter Jensen (KC)	15¢	+529	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/8	Nolan Arenado (AZ)	13¢	+625	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/8	Miguel Vargas (CWS)	16¢	+490	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
9/10	Munetaka Murakami (CWS)	21¢	+351	❌	0.25u	−0.25u
	TOTAL			17-for-58	14.50u	+10.60u (73% ROI)

Seventeen for 58, still up 10.60 units on nothing but quarter-unit bricks. Look one more time at the 9/6 row, because it explains the whole document: Rocchio at six cents, +1464 effective, one swing, plus 3.66 units. That single quarter unit paid for 14 misses' worth of premium. You do not get that row without also taking the 14, and you do not survive the 14 unless every ticket weighs exactly the same.

It's Friday, the slate is enormous, and let the record show: JUST THREE home runs tonight. Not four, not a matinee flier, not a nibble at the day games. Three swings, all after dark, all three already ticketed this morning. The early slate can entertain itself.

Here's the thread I want you to pull all the way through: tonight the READ is the easy part. All three of these bats have a real, nameable reason to run into one. The hard part is the REGISTER, because on all three the best number in America is sitting somewhere different, and on one of them a single sportsbook is a hundred points clear of every other place you can bet it. That's the argument below. Names buried, card at the bottom, go.

Max Scherzer, the Toronto starter listed at Rogers Centre at 7:07 ET, carrying a 6.03 ERA and 1.87 homers per nine into his 15th start of the season. He is one of the three arms tonight's card is aimed at, not a pick; the bats are named below.

The Legend's Slider, On Life Support (7:07 ET)

At Rogers Centre, Max Scherzer takes the ball at 41 with one pitch quietly bleeding out. The slider that made him a legend is getting slugged .695 with a .517 expected mark on my pitch-level pull, and at roughly 18% usage that's about one batting-practice offering every six pitches. The season line around it is not subtle either: a 6.03 ERA over 62.2 innings with 13 home runs allowed, 1.87 per nine, which is more than half again the league's 1.16. The four-seam still competes. The slider writes checks to the seats.

The damage has a direction, and it points exactly where we want to shop. Left-handed bats are hitting .263 and slugging .461 against him with 8 of those 13 homers, a 1.89 homers-per-nine clip in the split. Righties are hitting .202. This is not a pitcher who is broken against everyone; he's broken against lefties, and if the roof is shut, as it usually is for a Toronto night game, there is no wind excuse waiting for us at first pitch. Toronto makes that call at gametime, so glance at it before lock.

The left-handed bat collecting is Gunnar Henderson, and there are two pieces of fine print here. One: he's having a down year, .219 with a .395 slug, and September has been a wall. He is 4-for-29 this month, hitless in the power column since Aug. 30, when he went 4-for-4 with two homers against the Athletics and then simply stopped. Two, and this is the one nobody says out loud: his own platoon split leans the OTHER way. Henderson has 8 homers in 191 at-bats against left-handers and 14 in 384 against righties, so per swing his power is slightly better versus lefties, not worse: one homer every 23.9 at-bats against left-handers, one every 27.4 against righties.

So the edge here is not a Henderson edge. It's a Scherzer edge, and that's a perfectly good thing to buy. You are paying 22 homers of talent, a brutal September, and a market that has written him off, in exchange for the right side of the platoon against a right-hander leaking 1.89 homers per nine to left-handed bats. That's the ticket in one sentence.

Now the pricing, and this is where I have to update my own morning note. I fired at 14¢, which is +574 effective after the taker fee, and when I wrote that up I had the best book at +460. The full ladder does not agree with me. Pulling every regulated US book at once this afternoon, Fanatics is +550, FanDuel +520, and bet365, Caesars, Circa, Hard Rock and Rebet are all sitting on +500. So my entry led the best regulated number by 24 points, not 114 — still the right side of the market, nowhere near the gap I claimed at breakfast. I'd rather print that correction than let a number I like go unchecked.

And the ask has already moved past me. As of 2:20 p.m. ET, Kalshi is 14¢ bid / 15¢ ask, last trade 15. At a 15¢ ask you're taking +529, which means Fanatics at +550 is now the better register on this bat than the exchange is. I got the 14. If you're arriving now, shop it.

The Hot Hand Versus The Stingy Rookie (8:10 ET)

The matchup on this one runs uphill. Cleveland's Parker Messick is one of the stingiest arms on the slate: a 2.53 ERA over 167 innings, a 1.04 WHIP, 9.3 strikeouts per nine, and 0.86 homers per nine, three-quarters of league average. His changeup is a legitimate right-handed-bat killer. Nothing about that profile screams "bet a home run here."

There's a ticket anyway, and the reasons get better as they go.

One: what homer risk Messick does carry skews righty. Fourteen of the 20 home runs he has allowed in his career belong to right-handed bats (11 of 16 this season), and when he misses, he misses middle. His only two-homer start since Aug. 7 was Sept. 5 in Detroit, a 12-strikeout outing that still gave up both of them to a single bat — and the fact that the bat was the left-handed Riley Greene is the point, not a contradiction. The failure mode is location, not handedness. Leave one in the heart of the zone and it leaves.

Two: the Minneapolis air, with an asterisk I'm going to plant myself. The National Weather Service has Target Field at 82 degrees and a 20 mph south wind at first pitch, holding 15 to 20 into the late innings, with rain risk under 20% and thunderstorm language appearing from 11 p.m. local. Hot air helps a ball carry, full stop. But I am not going to tell you which way 20 mph of south wind plays at Target Field, because I did not verify it, and a 20 mph wind blowing IN is the best argument on this page against the ticket. Check the flag before you click. I'm counting the temperature as a reason and leaving the direction as an open question.

Three, and the actual reason: the bat is scalding. Josh Bell, Minnesota's switch-hitting DH, steps in from his right side on a .321 average and .571 slug through September: 9-for-28 with homers on Sept. 4 and Sept. 9, three total since Aug. 18, on a season line of 19 homers and a .425 slug. The right side is his lighter power side: 5 of his 19 homers in 168 at-bats against lefties, one every 34 trips.

Now the pricing story, because tonight I am WAY off market on this one and proud of it. I fired at +725 at BetMGM, and that's the number the tally tracks. Here's what makes it remarkable: the next-best regulated number on this bat is bet365 at +625, then Fanatics and Hard Rock at +600, Caesars +575, DraftKings +560. That price is a full hundred points clear of the next book on the board. (Borgata, BetMGM's sister skin, also shows +725, so call it one price at one operator rather than one lonely outlier.) Do the translation with me. +725 implies about a 12.1% chance; the exchange's 13¢, +625 effective, implied about 13.8%. I'm buying nearly two full points of probability below where even the cheapest register prices it, and on the same winning swing +725 pays roughly 16% more profit than +625.

That was this morning. Kalshi has since drifted to an 11¢ bid / 14¢ ask, and at a 14¢ ask you're paying +574, so my edge over the exchange has widened from 100 points to about 151 since I wrote it. My edge over the next sportsbook is still 100 points at the 1:09 p.m. board. When I published my note I said the exchange was still just fine, and at 13¢ it was. At 14¢ it's a materially worse version of the same bet. If BetMGM is open to you, that is where this one belongs, and it is my favorite home run play at the price on the entire slate.

A gap like that could technically justify scaling past a quarter unit. I'm not doing it. Fifty-eight rows of identical stakes are the entire engine of this tally, and no single Friday gets to renegotiate the contract.

The Nightcap Against The Most Generous Arm Alive (9:40 ET, Already Fired)

I clicked this one at breakfast, which is the only reason it's still a good price. In Sacramento, the Athletics' Jeffrey Springs continues authoring the great gopher season of our era: 33 home runs allowed, tied with Shota Imanaga for the most in the majors, which bookends tonight's card rather poetically given Imanaga is starting the Cubs' matinee at Wrigley. Springs is at 2.28 homers per nine, roughly double the league's 1.16, inside a 6.02 ERA that the home run column fully explains. Opponents slug .519 against him.

The autopsy has a lane, too: 23 of those 33 have been hit by right-handed batters, who slug .508 with a 2.29 homers-per-nine mark off him. Tonight all of that happens in Sutter Health Park, on a clear evening that reads 85 degrees at first pitch and 74 by the sixth, with a 6-7 mph breeze. And I am NOT going to sell you the park: our own park table has Sutter at 96 for home runs, a mild suppressor. Hot air helps, the venue does not. The arm is the edge here, and the arm is enough.

The righty is Randy Arozarena, Seattle's leadoff man, in the middle of his sixth straight 20/20 season, 2021 through tonight, at 22 homers and 21 steals. He is a line-drive hitter, not a moonshot guy, and the September thump has been quieter than my morning note claimed. His last two homers were Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, not Sept. 1 and 2, and his loud August finish was a three-homer burst across Aug. 22 and 23 against the Cubs — a first-inning shot in that Sunday game, not a walk-off, which is what I had in my head and which the box score does not support.

What is real is the split: 7 home runs in 144 at-bats against left-handers, one every 20.6 trips, with a .500 slug, a meaningfully better rate than his 15-in-370 against righties. Line-drive swings play up against a pitcher whose mistakes hang mid-zone, and few pitchers alive hang more.

I fired at 21¢, +351 effective, and the morning books opened at +340. FanDuel, Fanatics and WynnBET all sat there overnight. Early bird, meet worm. But the worm has company now, and this is the correction that stings: by early afternoon BetParx had moved to +380, with BetRivers and Circa at +360, while the exchange sat at 20¢ bid / 21¢ ask. That is not a slightly better number than my entry. BetParx is 29 points better, and it is the best regulated price on the board. I got a good number at 7 a.m. Somebody else is getting a better one at 1 p.m., and telling you that costs me nothing except the pleasure of pretending otherwise.

The Card

Three lines, JUST three, earliest lock first. Kalshi's taker fee, roughly 7% × price × (1 − price), a penny-ish across these, is baked into every effective number; the Kalshi fees breakdown carries the full math, and if the venue is new to you, start with how to bet MLB on Kalshi. Book prices are the live MLB home run odds screen, regulated US books only, pulled at 1:09 p.m. ET on Sept. 11; the exchange quotes are a separate snapshot at 2:20 p.m. ET:

• Gunnar Henderson At 14¢ → +574 effective, my entry. Best regulated book at 1:09 p.m.: Fanatics +550, then FanDuel +520, so the entry led by 24. Exchange at 2:20 p.m.: 14¢ bid / 15¢ ask; at a 15¢ ask (+529) Fanatics is the better register
• Josh Bell At +725, BetMGM (Borgata matches) → my bet, and what the tally tracks. Next regulated numbers: bet365 +625, Fanatics and Hard Rock +600, Caesars +575. Exchange at 2:20 p.m.: 11¢ bid / 14¢ ask (+574). The +725 is a hundred points clear of the next book
• Randy Arozarena At 21¢ → +351 effective, fired this morning when the books opened +340. By 1:09 p.m. BetParx was +380, the best regulated price on the board and 29 points past my entry, with BetRivers and Circa +360. Exchange at 2:20 p.m.: 20¢ bid / 21¢ ask

Quarter unit each, same as all 58 rows above. Three tickets is not a bigger bet. It's the same bet, three times.

A word on the fair-value question, since I keep getting asked it, and I'm running all three through the same tool including the one it hurts.

Henderson homers in 13.8% of his games this year and a 14¢ ticket breaks even at 14.8%. Arozarena homers in 15.1% of his and a 21¢ ticket breaks even at 22.2%. Both look short until you apply the arm: Scherzer runs 1.63 times the league's overall home run rate in his split against left-handed bats, Springs about 1.97 times league to everybody, and those multipliers clear both break-evens with room. Treat the multiplier as a rough heuristic, not a model. It double-counts average opposition and it does not know what a lineup card looks like.

Now Bell, and here is the number I could have quietly skipped. He has homered in 17 of 140 games, 12.1%, and +725 breaks even at 12.1%. Dead even before you adjust anything. Adjust it the way I adjusted the other two and it gets worse, not better: his right side is 5 homers in 168 at-bats, and Messick sits at 0.74 times league in homers allowed, which drags the estimate to somewhere near 9%. That is the honest output of my own tool, and I am overriding it, on purpose, for one stated reason: the tool uses a full-season split on a hitter who is 9-for-28 with two homers this month, and I trust six weeks of a 33-year-old's swing over a 168-at-bat platoon bucket. You are allowed to disagree with that. What you should not miss is the other half. The matchup does NOT supply the edge here. The market does. Every other register I pulled, regulated or not, prices this bat between 13.5% (BookMaker at +640) and 18.3% (Pick6 at +446), with the exchange's 13¢ at 13.8%, and I am buying the same swing at 12.1%. That is an edge against the MARKET, not against a model, and it is a perfectly honest reason to hold a quarter-unit ticket. It is not a reason to hold a bigger one.

These are market prices and model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state), and every effective number above already includes its taker fee. The sportsbooks named above are a separate thing entirely: 21+, legal only in certain states, and subject to their own terms.

Three tickets, three different best registers, and the only way to know that is to hold every book up against the exchange at the same time. That's the whole job, and it's what OddsShopper Pro does across every board at once, from the live MLB home run odds screen I pulled these ladders off to the live odds screen carrying tonight's game lines, while the fee math above translates the Kalshi side. It runs a 7-day free trial, then code LINDY25 takes 25% off your first week or month.

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More on this: Lindy's Long Balls: One Bullet, The Loudest Bat Meets A Comeback Fastball · Lindy's Long Balls: 107 In The Shade, A Comeback Arm Walks Into The Furnace · Lindy's Long Balls: The Miracle Cashed, Now We Rob The Sleeping Board · Lindy's Long Balls: A Bandbox Barrel, A Bill Collector And A Cheap Miracle

Final Thoughts

A legend's slider under a roof, the hottest switch-bat in Minnesota with 20 mph of south wind moving through the place, and a leadoff line-drive machine against the most generous arm alive. JUST three.

And the thread I promised at the top held all the way down: the reads were the easy part. The register was the argument. On Henderson the exchange has already priced past me and a book is better. On Arozarena a book I did not check is 29 points past my morning number. On Bell one sportsbook is a hundred points clear of everyone, which is the whole reason that ticket exists. If you tail nothing else out of this column, tail the habit of checking all of them before you click.

The sermon scales with the card: at these prices each ticket misses four or five times out of six, and running three at once doesn't change a single probability. It just buys three independent chances at the same disciplined stake. This tally survived an 0-for-6 week and that six-cent miracle in the same fortnight precisely because every row weighed the same. Tonight's three weigh the same, too. Check the lineups before lock, because a ticket on a bat that doesn't hit is just a donation.

If you want the whole board instead of my three, the automated home run picks today hub prices every bat on the slate, and the rest of the crew posts free expert picks today.

I'll keep putting my best out there every single day. Three swings, one quarter unit apiece, and a Friday night full of baseball. Life's alright.

— Lindy

Lindy's Long Balls runs daily on OddsShopper; Thursday's one-bullet card is here, and the Sept. 8 three-ticket furnace card is here.