Finding Value In MLB Props For the Short Season

• With the MLB season ready to start Thursday, prop bets are available for the shortened season, including Jacob deGrom over/under five wins.
• Other props feature RBI and batting average lines for top players like Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, and Ronald Acuna Jr.
• Max Scherzer is favored to finish the regular season with under 6.5 wins, evident from his slightly shaded -125 odds.

LAS VEGAS – It is hard to truly believe, but MLB baseball is finally a reality. After a summer full of turmoil across the world, America’s pastime is gearing up for its Opening Night on Thursday, July 23.

Baseball fans and bettors are overjoyed at the return of their favorite sport, and while the Korean baseball league has been fun, it is time to bring back the best baseball league in the world.

With the MLB set to play an abbreviated 60-game season, this year will be unlike any other in the sport’s storied history. Bettors are looking at some intriguing season player prop bets that offer strong upside over the course of the shortened season.

Due to the length of the and the players have limited preseason preparation, no one really knows how they will look coming out of the gate.

With that in mind, let’s breakdown some prop bets for some of the league’s best players.

Pitchers

In order to compare data from the past to this season, we must extrapolate the numbers from a 162 game season down to 60 games.

Jacob DeGrom averages around 13 wins a season in the typical format across his career, which comes out 4.7 wins when divided down to 60 games,

While DeGrom is one of the game’s best pitchers, wins are not his strongest stat in his career, which has the under looking like the better value.

In his last two Cy Young-winning seasons, he has only gone 10-9 and 11-8.

The same can be applied for someone of the other best arms in the league, defending World Series Champion Max Scherzer.

Max Scherzer racks up more wins than DeGrom, coming in at an average of 16 a season.

Still, with the format of this season being so unpredictable and with the nature of the wins stat being rather arbitrary, the under is the most likely result here.

Justin Verlander can certainly run up the wins column as he did in 2019 with an insane 21 wins. However, last year’s outlier leads to inflated numbers for this season which see him scoring more wins than the aforementioned Scherzer and DeGrom.

Baseball bettors should continue this trend of fading the pitchers, especially with Verlander.

Batters

On the other side of the plate are the hitters looking to shake off the rust of the extended offseason and start putting the wood to cowhide.

Batters have the advantage in these stats, as anyone could go on a run that sees a hitter soar in categories like batting average.

The two players that have the best potential to get hot and post some crazy averages are Juan Soto and Jose Altuve.

The defending champs will be looking for more production from Soto after the departure of Anthony Rendon.

Soto batted .282 last season, so going on a run to get to .290 seems very possible.

Additionally, the world might not have seen the best Soto has to offer so far, as the young slugger is only 21 years old.

The same can be said about Jose Altuve.

While batting .310 is no easy feat, the former MVP hit .316 in 2018 and .298 in 2019, both while dealing with nagging injuries. If Altuve is healthy and catches fire, he should be able to finish above .310 in the short 60-game sample size.

Home runs will be a bit harder to predict, but some of these online betting lines are too good to ignore.

Acuna Jr. established himself as one of the biggest threats in the league last season when he belted 41 HRs while also stealing 37 bases.

While 41 Home Runs is an amazing stat for only a second-year player, Acuna looked like he could have easily gone for 50 if he had focused on it from the beginning of the year.

Acuna will be ready now, and him getting to 15 in almost half the games seems like one of the biggest locks available.

Of course, none of this is guaranteed and this unusual format could see any predictions go out the window. While no one can be sure until it happens, we will surely be watching to find out.