It’s a busy day on the sports calendar with afternoon baseball, divisional rivalries at night and Thursday Night Football! There are plenty of exciting games tonight with the most important being the Padres vs Dodgers, and I’ve picked my 2 best MLB player prop bets to lock in before the action begins! Let’s dive in, while you can also see our'MLB picks for today’s big games.
Kumar Rocker (TEX) over 5.5 strikeouts (-125)
Mets fans are punching the air right now as Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Kumar Rocker have formed a new big 3… but not in New York. Rocker was called up to make his MLB debut last week and has been impressive through 2 starts against the Mariners and Blue Jays as he's surrendered just 2 earned runs and 5 hits through 7 innings. More importantly for this bet, he's racked up 12 strikeouts over those 2 outings. His fastball and slider combination has been filthy and has led to him having a 36.4% whiff rate and 35.3% strikeout rate.
Rocker had 7 strikeouts in 4 innings in his first outing against the Mariners but only managed to go 3 innings in his last start because of an elevated pitch count. Rocker walked 4 hitters but still managed to get 5 strikeouts in those 3 innings. Today, Rocker will face an Oakland lineup that has the 2nd-lowest walk rate and 4th-highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching in September. The A's swing early and often in the count which has led to their extremely low walk rate and I'm expecting them to go fishing for Rocker's slider when they're down in the count.