FanDuel Dinger Tuesday Picks for June 20

Tuesday’s are the best day of the week during the MLB season, thanks to FanDuel’s $5 Dinger Tuesday promotion. This article will break down the promo, show you how to attack it, and give some picks to be profitable!

This year I’ll be tracking my wagers here on eatwatchbet.com. This will include tracking units ($25) won as well as free bet conversions.

How it Works

First, make sure you OPT-IN on Fanduel for the promotion. Then, for every game in which you place a $25 bet on any player to hit a home run, you get a $5 free bet for each home run hit in the game. The free bets pay out regardless of whether your pick hits or not, and you can use this promotion on every single game on the Tuesday slate.

How to Win

We’ll look to pick a player from just about every game. We don’t need to worry about the -EV nature of Fanduel’s home run prices, as the value of the promotion creates an inherently +EV environment for this type of wager.

We are going to look to target games with higher totals, as there is more expected scoring. While we’ll get into more specifics outlined with the picks, in general, you want to look for the perfect storm of hot hitters, poor pitching, high totals, and good weather.

Total result: +$217.5, $100 Bonus Bets awarded

We used $100 in bonus bets during the week on FanDuel’s boosts, converting the 100 bonus bets into $56.25 putting our annual total at +$464.65 (18.5 units).

Keep in mind, you’ll need to use free bets within one week, meaning that these will expire tomorrow if you haven’t used them yet. I’ll post picks at the end of the article or on twitter on a weekly article thread.

Weather Report

As more and more accounts get hit with the $50 per day max on Fanduel, we’ll look to limit our selections and prioritize games with the most home runs projected.

We’re in for a relatively average day in major league baseball, with conditions across the country between 60 and 80 degrees. As of now, it doesn’t look like any games will be affected by rain or by strong winds.

St. Louis Cardinals at Washington Nationals: 7:45 pm EST

In our first matchup of the evening, we’ll take a look at an under the radar hitter, who’s improved his power numbers tremendously in 2023 and who’s splits point to a great matchup tonight. While Lane Thomas isn’t known as a power hitter, he’s refined his approach in 2023, improving his hard hit rate over 40% and his barrel rate up to 9%.

Lane’s statistics look even better when split against left-handed pitchers, where he hits for a 184 wRC+ and a .300 .ISO. Thomas’s strikeout rate also drops from 28.4% against righties to 19% vs. lefties. He’ll be leading off against Jordan Montgomery for the Cardinals tonight, a pitcher who’s just not blowing anyone away.

Montgomery pitches to just a 21.5% strikeout rate, with a solid 6.2% walk rate, putting his K-BB% at an average 15%. He does, however, limit hard contact at just 37.2% and he generates a high percentage of ground balls with his sinker. Where he has struggled the most in 2023 has been with his curveball.

According to statcast, Montgomery is not generating the same spin on the ball when he throws his curveball, and the shape of the pitch appears to be different than in 2021 or 2020 when it was his best or second-best pitch.

Lane Thomas is a great breaking ball hitter and has been more patient against lefties, which I think stack up nicely for this matchup. Toss in that most other markets are around +500 for Thomas tonight, I think FanDuel’s offering at +630 is a great bet.

Colorado Rockies vs. Cincinnati Reds: 7:10 EST

In our next matchup we have a bit of a difficult pitcher to judge in Noah Davis. David was decent in his first two starts of the year before the wheels fell off in his last start against Arizona, albeit his first and only start at Coors this year. The underlying statistics are not great, he has just a 13% K-BB ratio and struggles to miss bats with just a 20% whiff rate.

It’s hard to judge his contact metrics with the Coors start skewing the data, however, Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati won’t be doing him any favors keeping the ball in the yard. On the other side, Ben Lively has given up double digit barrels in two of his last three starts and also looks to be regressing back to the expected output after a strong first few starts to 2023.

I’m going for Jonathon India in this matchup, where I’d expect quite a few home runs on both sides given the pitching matchup and hitting conditions tonight. India has hit 3 home runs in his last 5 games, and I really like the move to put him at the three spot in the lineup, after leading off for much of the year. Despite the return of Joey Votto and the call up of Elly de la Cruz, I still view India as the best hitter in this sneaky Reds lineup.

The Reds are littered with platoon bats that take their walks and steal bases, making it a difficult lineup for many pitchers to navigate. Where they lack is in the contact department, with too many unproven hitters making inconsistent contact throughout the year, leaving them susceptible to cold streaks on offense.

That being said, the Reds are on a nine-game win streak and have scored five or more runs in seven of those nine games. We’ll look to continue to ride the hot streak and pick up a decent price at +520 for India to go yard tonight.

See the full list below: