The Phillies and the Mets head across the pond for what should be a fun two-game series in London. The first game of this series is Saturday, June 8 at 1:10 P.M. ET, and here is what we like from a prop perspective.
Play 1: Bryce Harper to Hit a Home Run (+400) Bet365
Go big or go home, as the kids say, so why not start off with a home run prop and take Harper to hit one yard. Harper will be going up against Sean Manaea of the Mets. Despite the fact that Manaea is a LHP and Harper traditionally is better against righties, there are definitely some reasons to back Harper in this matchup.
For starters, Harper has started to hit lefties better recently than he did at the beginning of the season. He has only hit four of his 14 home runs this season against LHP, but three of those have come within the past 30 days. In that stretch, his ISO rate against LHP is up to 23.8%, which is considered "Great" by FanGraphs' standards. For the season, his ISO rate against lefties is now up to 20% after it had been in the teens for most of the campaign. Sure, he is still better against RHP, but it isn't as though he is incapable of hitting lefties.
In terms of the matchup itself, Manaea is the type of pitcher that Harper should be able to hit. Manaea throws a four-seam fastball 40% of the time and a slider 23% of the time. Those just so happen to be the two pitches that Harper has hit the best this season.
Play 2: Ranger Suarez Under 4.5 Strikeouts (-120) DraftKings
Despite the fact that Suarez has been phenomenal this season, fading him in this spot is the way to go. For starters, we are not sure how Suarez is going to look after leaving his last start early after being hit by a line-drive. Luckily for the Phillies, it appears as though they avoided disaster with Suarez not missing a start, but there does remain the possibility that it effects his performance to some extent.
The main reason why we are fading him, though, is because this Mets lineup has been absolutely mashing left-handed pitching recently, and part of their success has to do with striking out very infrequently. Over the past two weeks, the Mets have a team strikeout rate of 16.9%, which is a very low number. For context, FanGraphs considers an "average" team strikeout rate to be 20%. Last year, the lowest strikeout rate in all of MLB was 18.7%.
Taking out his last start in which he left early, Suarez has only gone under this number in two of his 11 starts this season, but one of those starts came against the Mets on May 15, when he went five full innings with only three strikeouts. The Mets' projected lineup for Saturday's game does not feature a single batter that has struck out over 25% of the time against LHP over the past two weeks.
Play 3: Nick Castellanos to Hit a Home Run (+425) Bet365
After a horrid start to the season, Castellanos has been on fire recently, and this is the perfect matchup for him to hit one yard. Unlike Harper, Castellanos has significantly better splits against LHP vs. RHP. Against RHP, his ISO rate is a grotesque 10.2%, but if you isolate that to LHP it goes up to 22.5%, and all of his metrics across the board are much better when he is facing a lefty.
His fly-ball rate goes up to 43.1%, his pull rate is 47.1% and his HardHit rate on batted balls is 45.1%, which would be the fourth-highest HardHit rate in the entire MLB. Unsurprisingly, five of his eight HRs this year have come against lefties despite the fact that he has had less than half as many plate appearances.
While Castellanos doesn't hit fastballs and sliders as well as Harper does, this should still be a situation where the batter has the clear advantage. Looking at Manaea's advanced numbers, he is a pitcher that you'd want to target for giving up home runs. He allows a fly-ball rate of 45.9%, which is the 12th-highest in the MLB, while allowing a below-average barrel rate of 7.5% as well. Between Harper and Castellanos, let's hope one of them is able to hit one out of the park!
Opinions expressed here are the author's alone. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post. We may earn a commission from partner links on Newsweek, but commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.
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