Top 3 MLB Player Prop Bet Odds & Picks: Tuesday (9/10)
With college football season in full tilt and the NFL season underway after completing Week 1, Major League Baseball may start to get overlooked as the regular season winds down. However, Tuesdays will always be a great day to take advantage of the numerous MLB offerings as it will not coincide with college or professional football down the stretch.
The biggest buzz regarding MLB player props today is Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Yoshinobu Yamamoto making his first start since June 15 after landing on the IL with a triceps injury. However, there is too much unknown surrounding Yamamoto after that much time off, so I have my eye on other MLB player prop bets today.
Read on for our top MLB player prop bets for Tuesday, September 10.
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Tuesday's Best MLB Player Prop Bets
(MLB player prop bet odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)
Keider Montero to record a win (+140)
Keider Montero is an often overlooked young member of the Detroit Tigers starting rotation, especially since teammate Tarik Skubal is on his way to being a runaway winner of the AL Cy Young award. However, Montero has gotten stronger as the season has gone on, lowering his ERA every month since June, and is coming off an August where he pitched to a 3.82 ERA while winning three of his five starts.
Montero has allowed two or fewer earned runs in half of his previous six starts, and I am not faulting him for a poor beginning to September with a rough outing against the Padres (five earned runs in 4 1/3 innings), as San Diego is one of the best offenses against right-handed pitching and was ranked third in both wRC+ and on-base percentage at the time. He should face much fewer issues with a Colorado Rockies lineup that ranks 24th in OPS and wRC+ in road games against righties in the second half of the season.
Detroit is 35-24 in its last 59 games (+14.45 units/22% ROI), and I expect it to remain profitable for its backers, with Montero leading the way to victory.
Bobby Witt Jr. Over 1.5 total bases (-125)
Bobby Witt Jr. is amid one of his worst slumps of the season, as he entered Monday’s series opener against the New York Yankees batting .227 over the last seven days and .246 over the previous 15. However, Witt still had nine extra-base hits (four doubles and five home runs ) over that 15-day span, keeping his OPS a much more than respectable .907 through his overall batting average struggles.
Witt has at least one extra-base hit in three of his last five games against the Yankees, and he is slashing .450/.476/.600 against New York this season. He and the rest of the Royals lineup faces arguably New York’s most vulnerable starting pitcher at the moment, Marcus Stroman, who has a rotation-worst 5.51 ERA and 4.43 FIP since the start of July.
Stroman has induced soft contact on just 10.4% of at-bats and is allowing a .376 BABIP in that span, which is troubling considering his low 6.65 K/9 rate. Thus, I expect Witt to produce on the big stage at Yankee Stadium, and expect him to produce at least one extra-base hit or a multi-hit day to cash this wager.
Aaron Civale Over strikeouts
Aaron Civale has never been known as a strikeout pitcher, as he entered this season only finishing one of his five career years with a K/9 rate of better than 9.0. Civale is on pace to exceed his career average for K/9 rate (8.6 this year vs. 8.2 for his career) and he has especially come on strong of late, with back-to-back seven-strikeout outings.
One of those seven-strikeout performances was against today’s opponent, the San Francisco Giants, as he held the Giants scoreless on two hits over seven strong innings. He finished that start with a 30% CSW%, including a 41% CSW% on his cutter, which he threw nearly a quarter of the time. Civale kept the Giants off balance with seven different pitches that he threw at least five times each, and that will make him difficult to prepare for in this rematch.
Civale has another high ceiling for strikeouts when facing a Giants lineup that has struck out at the second-highest rate (31.1%) in September, and I would play this all the way up to Over 6.5 when lines become available.
Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.