This article is part of our MLB Picks series.
MLB Picks: Expert MLB Props for Saturday, August 24
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Arizona Diamondbacks 
at Boston Red Sox 
Who has the hottest bats in baseball? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the 2024 Arizona Diamondbacks. Since the All-Star break, the Snakes have hit a scorching 137 wRC+ and .368 wOBA, both tops in MLB. Only 15 qualified hitters in all of baseball have topped .368 on the season. It equates to fielding an entire lineup of Freddie Freeman (.371) and Corey Seager (.361) level hitters for five weeks.
Unfortunately for the 2023 National League champs, their best hitter over this last stretch, Ketel Marte (.325/.407/.766, 11 homers), sits on the injured list (IL). So does 1B Christian Walker and C Gabriel Moreno. No worries, the offense has not missed a beat. Josh Bell came over from Miami at the deadline to replace Walker and has a .363 wOBA with four homers in 89 plate appearances in the desert. Adrian Del Castillo has gotten most of the run replacing Moreno and has a 341/.400/.610 triple slash with three homers and 14 RBI in just 45 plate appearances.
Corbin Carroll has also woken up in a big way after a quiet early season. Did his shoulder injury from 2023 bleed into his early 2024 slump? We will never know, but it makes no difference as he looks almost fully back at this point. Pre July 1st, Carroll had two homers in 348 plate appearances with a.279 wOBA. Since then, Carroll has smacked 12 homers in 186 plate appearances with a .360 wOBA. His EV has gone up from 87.6 to 91.2 and his HardHit% from 35.8% to 43.8%. Only his .238 batting average since July 1st and .222 overall average lag, though xBA pegs him at .244. That likely understates Carroll as he remains among the speediest players in the game.
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But wait, we have even more hitters on fire here. Jake McCarthy has a .418 wOBA and five homers and steals since the All-Star break, Joc Pederson has seven homers and the always either-red-hot-or-ice-cold Eugenio Suarez has flipped the "on" switch. A couple of months ago he looked like in DFA danger, but since the All-Star break, he has nine homers and a .280 batting average.
The Red Sox have slumped a bit in the last month, but mostly thanks to their pitching. The bats have remained hot as they have the third-best team wOBA since the All-Star Break at .351. Jarren Duran won the All-Star game MVP award and has not cooled down since, with a 321/.382/.626 triple slash out of the leadoff spot with seven homers, 10 steals, 27 runs and 23 RBIs. Tyler O'Neill has flitted in and out of the lineup (as always) and was scratched last night, so he looks iffy for today. He has a .424 wOBA since the break and has pretty much mashed all season when healthy. Masataka Yoshida missed nearly two months earlier in the season but has hit 302/.376/.457 since returning on June 11th. And, of course, they still employ Rafael Devers, who has not hit particularly great by his standards lately but remains one of the most dangerous hitters in MLB with a .391 wOBA and 27 homers.
The Pick
Over 5 Runs F5 (-110 BetMGM)
The price looks somewhat high as most F5 totals outside of summer games at Coors price at 4.5 or fewer. But this game just feels like the bats will explode. We have two very hot offenses matched up with two slumping starting pitchers.
Kutter Crawford takes the ball for the Sox and while his overall 4.21 ERA and 1.10 WHIP looks perfectly respectable, he has suffered from a severe case of gopher-itis as of late. In six starts since the break, he has an 8.90 ERA and yielded a whopping 14 homers in 29.1 innings. There is some bad fortune there as that came on 16 barrels. For comparison, he gave up 14 homers in 27 barrels pre-All-Star break, which is about a league-average rate. Still, though, the Barrel% itself has nearly doubled from 8.7% to 16.5% and exit velocity against has gone up from 88.3 to 90.6. Also important to note that it is not just the homers. His strikeout rate has dropped from 24.3 percent to 18 percent. His velocity has not changed, but he likely has just run out of gas as he only converted to a full-time starter in the second half of 2023. His 143.1 innings equals a career-high he set in 2018 back in Single-A ball as a 22-year-old.
Crawford will face off against Zac Gallen. The Diamondback's ace has looked anything but lately. Gallen had a huge workload in 2023 thanks to Arizona's run to the World Series on the backs of what amounted to a three-man starting rotation. There was some thought he might take a step back in 2023. Perhaps it is that. Though, it seemed to coincide more with a hamstring injury vs. the Mets on May 30th. My son and I were at the game, so blame us. Regardless, Gallen had a 3.12 ERA and 1.14 WHIP pre-injury and a 4.64 ERA and 1.51 WHIP since his return on June 29th. Very similar to Crawford, his strikeout rate imploded from 25.8 percent to 18 percent.
Further, these teams have popped off early in games all year, at least vs. the number. The Diamondbacks have gone 76-53 in F5 overs for a 12.5 percent return on investment (ROI) as per VSiN.com, while the Sox have a nearly identical 72-54 mark, with an 8.5 percent ROI.
