MLB Player Props & Bets: Thursday (5/29)

The pickings are slim from a player prop perspective with today’s Major League Baseball slate featuring just five games. Nevertheless, we have identified our two best plays to keep the momentum going for what has been a profitable week thus far.

Read on for our top MLB player props and bets for Thursday, May 29th.

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Thursday's Best MLB Player Props & Bets

(Odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)

Matt Olson 2+ Total Bases (Game 1) (+165)

The Braves-Phillies series finale has a great starting pitching matchup of southpaws as Chris Sale opposes Cristopher Sanchez.

Sanchez has been tough on left-handed hitters this year, allowing just a .170/.291/.191 slash line in that split in 47 combined at-bats this season. But Matt Olson is one lefty who has had good career success against Sanchez, albeit in a small sample size.

Olson is 4-for-12 with two home runs and three total extra-base hits against Sanchez, good for a 1.250 OPS. Sanchez has had trouble with current Braves hitters up and down the lineup, as Atlanta has combined for a .338/.369/.592 slash line in 68 at-bats against the southpaw.

If Atlanta’s lineup continues to have success against Sanchez, I expect that to mess with his psyche, and all it would take is one swing of the bat from Olson to cash this over. Olson is one behind the team lead with 91 total bases, and with his over/under 0.5 total bases line juiced to -175, this is a great value play for him to record at least two total bases, since he has cashed this over in six of his previous nine games.

Jacob Lopez Under 3.5 Strikeouts (-130)

For the biggest reason we are backing this wager, one does not have to look much further than the fact that the Toronto Blue Jays did not strike out once against Rangers righty Jacob deGrom on Monday, despite deGrom recording 16 outs and throwing 81 pitches. It was the first time in deGrom’s career he did not finish with at least one strikeout.

Athletics lefty Jacob Lopez is next up to challenge a Blue Jays lineup that owns the fifth-lowest strikeout rate in the Majors, and the lowest among all American League teams (19.9%) when facing southpaws. Toronto has just one qualified hitter in its lineup with a strikeout rate worse than 20% against left-handed pitching.

Lopez recorded eight strikeouts over seven innings in his last outing, but seeing that was the only time he recorded more than eight outs in an appearance this year, we are comfortable backing this under.

Make sure to check out our other best bets for Thursday:

Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.