This article is part of our MLB Picks series.
MLB Best Bets: Head-to-Head Home Runs and Home Runs Leaders for 2024
Grapefruit League and Cactus League have officially begun. So have the devastating injuries. On the good news front, we have a bevy of prop and futures betting opportunities. I highlighted my favorite MLB player totals last week. For this go around, I have some head-to-head and season-leader plays I like. The head-to-head markets are listed in DraftKings, the season totals come via BetMGM, and you can find the ATC projections here on Rotowire.
Note that pre-registration for North Carolina Sports Betting at several of the leading sports betting sites begins Friday, March 1. Sports betting will officially launch on March 11, giving baseball fans in NC plenty of time to lock in their bets before the season starts. Look for further details on the Caesars Sportsbook North Carolina promo code and other premier promos as sports betting gets ready to launch in the Tar Heel State.
H2H Home Runs
Pete Alonso +185 over Aaron Judge -230 (ATC Alonso 41, Judge 45)
OK full disclosure, I bleed Mets orange and blue (well, not literally). I may have also rooted for the Yankees in my misguided youth but that was in a galaxy long ago and far away. I do separate my partisan leanings from any bets and Fantasy drafts. Take any and all grains of salt here, but I like the Polar Bear at the +185 price. Judge has more power and plays his home games in a relative bandbox with a 104 Park Rating for righty homers as per Todd Zola. Alonso plays at Citi Field which in my unbiased view is way nicer, has much better food and the fans in the outfield don't taunt injured players. Unfortunately, Citi has a righty homer park factor of 94. Alonso has one huge advantage in a prop like this; he rarely misses games. Here is the average season each has produced if we eliminate Judge's 27 game strikeout-filled debut in 2016 and pro-rate 2020 Covid numbers to 162 games.
Judge has a history of soft tissue injuries and a body type that does not age well. The list of extremely tall hitters that played well deep into their 30's starts and ends with Dave Winfield. Plus we already know Judge will spend 2024 and the rest of his career managing his toe injury from last season and will do so by moving to center field. Judge should remain great when he plays, but in how many games? Alonso meanwhile has every incentive to stay in the lineup every game in this his walk year. Alonso has just one "major" injury in his career, which resulted from an HBP to the hand in 2023 and he only missed the minimum IL time. At even money, this wager makes no sense as Judge should hit more homers, but I believe the +185 pays enough to take a shot on Pete.
Oneil Cruz -115 over Elly De La Cruz -115 (ATC Cruz 23, De La Cruz 20)
This prop just looks too fun not to take a side. I hope they both go over all their season projections. Both have skill sets that jump off the page. Elly rates in the 100th percentile in sprint speed as per Statcast. Oneil has perhaps the best non-pitcher arm in MLB. What neither has is much of a track record at the highest level. Oneil has 410 PA's to his name after missing most of 2023 with a broken fibula while Elly accumulated 427 PA's after his midseason 2023 call-up. FWIW, Oneil has a 14.8% Barrel% and 17 career homers vs. 8.5% and 13 for Elly. Further, early Elly has a fine 45.3% HardHit%, but it is of the worm burner variety with a 53.9% Ground Ball% and 3.6 degreeLaunch Angle. That works for getting on base when you run like the wind, but we only care about the homer prop here. Those numbers will eventually change as Elly was not a big ground ball hitter in the minors, but who knows when.
Elly plays in the launching pad that is Great American Ballpark (122 Park Factor homers for lefties) while Oneil toils in PNC Park which is beautiful and has Primanti Brothers sandwiches but only a 97 park factor. On the flip side, Oneil projects to bat at the top of the order while Elly looks likely to at least start the season in the back half of a much more stacked Reds lineup. Oneil will also have a longer leash and little to no platooning risk whereas Elly may see some pine against lefties as the Reds try to shoehorn all their bats in. Plus, Elly could even get sent down for a spell as he slumped badly down the stretch in 2023. Even if they get equal playing time, Oneil has the modest edge as Steamer600, which projects every player as if they get 600 plate appearances, has Oneil at 25 homers and Elly at 23.
Kyle Schwarber +110 over Matt Olson -140 (ATC Schwarber 41, Olsen 40)
OK these are all fun in their own way. The real attraction here is just the plus money on Schwarber as these two look close to even. Both guys play pretty much every day as Schwarber has missed just 7 games in his two seasons in Philly while Olson has played in all but 6 games in the last 4 seasons. No lineup tops the Braves, but Schwarber will bat leadoff in Philly while Olson is likely the cleanup hitter, so that is perhaps a few extra PA's going Schwarber's way. Plus with Harper now the full time 1B, Schwarber will predominantly DH all year, which means no more late game defensive substitutions that cost PA's on the margin. ATC projects Olson for 662 PA's, vs 648 for Schwarber, so slight lean to the Brave. Again though, these two have had very similar careers in the power department
Schwarber plays in a modestly better ballpark for lefty power, 105 to 101. Both have upped their barrel rate in their first two seasons on these teams, with Olson at 15.0% and Schwarber at 18.2%.They also both take a ton of walks, Schwarber more so.
So why Schwarber? Again, it is so even between these two. We are not talking who makes the better fantasy baseball pick as it is easily Olson thanks to Schwarber's likely horrendous batting average. It comes down to price, so give me Schwarber at plus money.
Home Runs Leader
Yordan Alvarez +1400, ATC 39 HR
Let me again stipulate if Judge stays healthy, he probably takes the home run crown. If I want to bet on a huge power guy staying on the field though, I want more than +375. Give me Yordan Alvarez at +1400!
Judge leads the Steamer600 projections with 41 homers, with Yordan and Alonso next at 38. Alvarez mashes like nobody but Judge when he plays, he just can not make it through a full season. Yordan peaked at 144 games in 2021, and maxed out homers at 37 in 2022, in 135 games. ATC pegs him at 139 games in 2023.
We are looking at what can go right in this exercise, and for Yordan, we just need him to play. He figures to DH more often in 2023, so what if he can somehow get over 150 games? He had a Barrel% of 18% in 2023 which basically matches his career mark. It ranked 9th among hitters with over 100 PA's in 2023, but only Judge (27.5%) and Shohei Ohtani (19.3%) rank higher among guys that actually get full run and are not named Joey Gallo. A fuller season likely gets him into mid 40's homers, and that could win the title.
Ronald Acuña Jr +2000, ATC 37 HR
On a team filled with hitting superstars, Ronald Acuna truly stood out in 2024 with an insane 41-homer, 73-steal season that also included 149 runs, 106 RBI's and a .337 AVG. But believe it or not, his batted ball data suggests he really did even better than all that. He had an xwOBA of .463 vs an actual wOBA of .428. He should have hit even more homers! He barreled up 86 balls in 2024, the most in the league by 13. Not every homer is a barrel, and not every barrel results in a homer. They of course correlate to a huge degree though. In 2023, the ratio of homers to barrels was 58.6%. Do the math, and Acuña could have hit about 50 homers based on his quantity of barrels.
What can cause barrels not to homer? A lot depends on the baseball we get each year, but that remains unknowable. Here are a few more specific factors off the top of my head
- Cold weather: the ball just does not travel as far (I knew high school physics would come in handy some day).
- A big ballpark: Tigers hitters routinely turn barrels into relatively few homers whereas Reds hitters do the opposite.
- Simply hitting to the wrong part of the ballpark: A barrelled ball headed for dead center is certainly less likely to turn into a homer than one pulled down the line.
Well, Atlanta does not have cold weather in March or April, and it plays league-average for righty power. Acuña did hit it to center a shade more than league average (35.6% vs 34.6%) and pull it a little less (39.7% vs 41.1%). That Pull% incidentally represented a career low. Now no human would recommend he adjust one iota from whatever approach he took in 2023. But it will not take much to revert his HR/Barrel rate up a bit.
Nelson Velazquez +20000 (FanDuel), ATC 22 HR
OK, I threw some hypothetical loose change I found under the couch on this extreme longshot. He plays a poor corner OF and will likely only DH for the Royals and he has serious contact issues. He has a 16.3% SwStr% and 30.1% K% in his 385 career PA's. What does he do well? I feel like I should say "He gets on base", but he has only a career .294 OBP. No, his skill is that when he makes contact, he mashes. The Cubs traded him to KC at the deadline in 2023 and he popped 14 homers in just 147 PA's with a monstrous 22% Barrel% in his new digs. Kauffman Stadium's 95 park factor for righties is not at all favorable. But hey, once upon a time, the Cubs traded a power-hitting, poor-fielding outfielder with serious swing and miss issues to the Royals. The man, Jorge Soler, popped 48 homers in 2019 and took home the AL home run crown.
