From a player prop perspective, all eyes most days are on Aaron Judge, as he currently leads the league in all Triple Crown categories (batting average, home runs, and RBI) and looks to be the first player to win the Triple Crown since Miguel Cabrera in 2012. However, a player who could garner much more attention as the season goes on is Washington Nationals rookie DJ Herz, who just became the second pitcher ever with two 10-strikeout and zero walk games in their first career outings since 1901, as MLB’s Sarah Langs reported.
What MLB player prop bets are on our radar for today? With a loaded Fourth of July MLB slate, we are provide advice on three player prop wagers. Read on for our top MLB player prop bets for Thursday, July 4.
Join our new MLB Betting Group to share bets and compete in leaderboards >>
Thursday's Best MLB Player Prop Bets
(MLB player prop bet odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)
Martin Perez Under 3.5 strikeouts (-125)
In a rotation full of young flamethrowers, Martin Perez is an outlier as a soft-throwing lefty in the Pittsburgh Pirates rotation. Perez has the lowest K/9 rate (7.3) of all Pirates starting pitchers, and is also the only one with a negative WAR rating. Perez has recorded four or fewer strikeouts in six of his previous seven starts, and now faces a St. Louis Cardinals lineup that strikes out at the sixth-lowest rate against left-handed pitchers (19.9%). We are getting good odds on this Under today, as St. Louis’ strikeout rate against southpaws has increased to 21.8% since the calendar turned to June, and the Cardinals rank 28th in wRC+ against left-handed pitchers in that split. However, Perez is still coming off a season with his worst K/9 rate (5.9) in a season since 2018, and he has an absurdly low 3.7 K/9 rate in three career starts against St. Louis, the lowest against all 28 MLB teams whom he has faced in at least three starts.
In addition, St. Louis entered Wednesday having cashed its team total Over 26 times in its last 45 games (+5.35 units/10% ROI), and we expect its offensive resurgence to result in a shorter outing for Perez, thus limiting his ceiling for punchouts.
Elly De La Cruz Over 0.5 RBIs (+195)
Elly De La Cruz put on a show in Tuesday’s series opener against the New York Yankees, hitting a triple and a home run, which put him in rarified air.
most games with at least 1 triple & HR in first 185 career games, since at least 1901:
Elly De La Cruz: 5 (today is game 183)
Ted Williams: 5 https://t.co/npmphuqLhD— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) July 3, 2024
De La Cruz now has at least one RBI in five of his previous 11 games, and we look for him to continue to take advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short dimensions in right field, especially when facing Marcus Stroman, who is on pace for the worst HR/9 rate of his career. Stroman never had ended a season with a fly ball rate higher than 20%, but so far this year has a 25.7% fly ball rate, which does not play well with the short porch in the Bronx. Stroman has also allowed a .710 OPS (his highest in four seasons) and has walked a career-worst four batters per nine innings, so there should be plenty of traffic on the basepaths for the Cincinnati Reds star shortstop.
Carlos Correa Over 2.5 hits+runs+RBIs (+120)
Minnesota Twins slugger Carlos Correa entered Wednesday scalding hot, with a .471/.571/.882 slash line in the last seven days. Correa has a hit and a run in all five games in that span, and an RBI in four of those five games, and he could easily surpass this total with one swing of the bat, as he has homered in two of the previous four games.
Detroit Tigers righty Kenta Maeda has pitched well against his former team, holding current Twins hitters to a .224/.254/.391 slash line in 67 combined at-bats. However, Correa is a respectable 2-for-7 against Maeda in his career, and the fact that Maeda is on pace for career-worst in home run rates (1.8 per nine innings) and strikeout rates (6.8 per nine innings) does not bode well when facing a Twins lineup that ranks second in wRC+, slugging, and OPS in home games against right-handed pitching since the calendar turned to June.
Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.