FanDuel makes Tuesdays exciting via a promotion called “Dinger Tuesday,” which promotes the most fun thing to do when wagering on MLB: Betting on dingers.
Here’s how the promo works: You receive a $5 bonus bet (up to $25) for every home run hit in the game featuring the player you’re backing to hit a home run.
For example, one of my favorite picks today is Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor in the Mets-Rockies game. If there are four home runs hit in that game — regardless of who hits them — you would receive $20 in bonus bets in your FanDuel account. The max you can get per game is $25, but you can bet on as many games as you’d like.
It’s a fun promo, so let’s get right into the best ways to attack it on Tuesday, August 6.
Francisco Lindor Home Run (+300) FanDuel
New York Mets vs. Colorado Rockies, 8:40 p.m. ET
This matchup represents a great opportunity for Lindor to go yard. For starters, the game is being played at Coors Field, which is one of, if not the, best stadium in MLB for home runs. The elevation in Denver means more carry for when the ball is hit in the air, which is why everybody loves targeting Rockies games for home runs. Lindor also has a great matchup against the Rockies pitcher Kyle Freeland.
Freeland is a left-handed pitcher, and Lindor is significantly better against LHP. His ISO rate against lefties is .272, up from .179 against righties. While Lindor has not hit a home run since July 25, which has now been 10 games, he has still been hitting the ball well. He has a combined seven HardHits in his last three games, with an average exit velocity of 104.4 and 100.4 MPH in his last two. So, despite the fact that he has not been able to get the ball to go over the fence, he has at least been seeing the ball well at the plate.
Not only does Lindor hit lefties harder, but he also crushes Freeland’s pitch-mix. The pitches that Freeland throws the most, from most-frequent to least-frequent, are sinkers, sliders, fastballs and curveballs, and Lindor hits the majority of those pitches well. The slider is the only one where he does not have a “great” ISO rate (above 200), but that is predominantly from righties, as he hits sliders off lefties much better. Lindor should be able to take Freeland yard tonight.
Joc Pederson Home Run (+390) FanDuel
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Cleveland Guardians, 6:40 p.m. ET
Pederson has been on an absolute tear recently, and that continued yesterday. He has hit five home runs in his last nine games, including a home run in two straight games. On Monday, he was able to go yard while not even being in the starting lineup, as he homered in the eighth as a pinch-hitter.
Since July 19, Pederson has a ridiculous ISO rate of .621 and a barrel rate of 26.1%, and he should be able to continue to mash today.
Ben Lively is pitching for the Guardians, and this is another batter-pitcher matchup that favors the hitter. Lively is a right-handed pitcher, while Pederson is a left-handed hitter who is much better going up against RHP. His ISO rate against RHP is .275, up from .200 against LHP.
In general, Lively is not a pitcher to be feared. Of all pitchers that have thrown at least 100 innings, he has the ninth-worst HR/9 (1.45), while allowing the 18th-highest HardHit rate and second-fastest average exit velocity, all with a top 30 launch-angle as well.
This is also another example where the batter has tremendous success against the pitcher’s pitch-mix. The top three pitches that Lively throws are sinkers (30.6% of time), 4-seam fastballs (30.3%) and sliders (24.1% of time), and Pederson crushes all three of those pitches. His ISO rate against 4-seamers is .273 against sinkers, .348 against 4-seamers and .275 against sliders.
Anthony Santander Home Run (+430) FanDuel
Baltimore Orioles vs. Toronto Blue Jays, 7:07 p.m. ET
As I am sure you could have guessed by now, Santander is a batter who has been hitting very well recently, so let’s hope he can keep it going today against Chris Bassitt. Since July 19, Santander has hit eight home runs, tying him with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the third-most in this span. In this stretch, his ISO rate is .377, with the biggest reason he has been able to go yard being his launch angle of 31 degrees and fly-ball rate of 65.5%. That is the second-highest launch angle and the best fly-ball rate in MLB since baseball returned from the All-Star break.
As for the pitching matchup, Bassitt is an interesting pitcher in that he throws a variety of pitches, with a total of seven in his arsenal. With that said, he throws the sinker the majority of the time, which is twice as often as his second-most frequent pitch, a cutter.
Santander, meanwhile, crushes sinkers. His ISO rate against the pitch is .333, which is highest ISO rate against any pitch he has seen at least 100 times this season. He also has an ISO rate of .250 against cutters, so he does a good job hitting Bassitt’s top two pitches.
While Santander does not have a home run off Bassitt in his eight career plate appearances against him, he is batting .429 overall with one walk and three hits, two of which were doubles. So, he has hit him hard, but has just been unable to get it out of the stadium, which hopefully changes today.
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