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Looking to start the week with a winner?

Tonight's MLB player props feature a pair of hitters in favorable matchups and one of baseball's premier strikeout artists at plus money.

From a high-upside K prop to two bats poised to make an impact, here are my favorite MLB picks for Monday, June 15.

Best MLB player props today

Zack Wheeler Over 6.5 Strikeouts (+109)

It has been a minute since a strikeout prop has grabbed my attention enough to back it, but Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler finds himself in a great spot to shove against a struggling Miami Marlins lineup that punched out 10 times on Sunday. Some may view this as a clear bounce back spot for Miami, but I see plenty of reasons to expect another swing-happy performance.

For starters, five Marlins hitters own a strikeout rate of at least 27.9% on the road this season, with four of those bats sitting north of 30.6%. Wheeler's trends are just as enticing. According to Batters-Box, he has recorded 7+ strikeouts in 68.75% of his 32 elite-rated matchups. When carrying an elite strikeout rating, that number jumps to 76% across a 25-game sample.

At home this season, Wheeler owns a 26.6% strikeout rate and a 36.1% chase rate outside the zone. At plus money, this is worth a play. I would take it down to even money, but do not pay juice for it.

• Time: 6:40 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: NBCSP, MIAM

Juan Soto Over 1.5 Hits, Runs, RBI (-115)

An extremely tough price to pass up for one of the most dangerous bats in baseball, a hitter who is always on base, always a threat to score, and always a threat to collect a hit. New York Mets star Juan Soto to go over 1.5 HRR at -115 is a steal in my opinion.

Especially when he clears this prop nearly 60% of the time when sporting an elite rating. That comes across a 220 elite rating sample size. Soto was in a bit of a slump over the last two weeks, but has since turned it around. In his last 30 plate appearances against right-handed pitching, he owns an .868 OPS with a 23.3% walk rate, 59% hard contact, and a 9.1% barrel rate. Not to mention, he has a 99.3% arsenal coverage against Cincinnati Reds starter Chase Burns.

Burns has been allowing a ton of elevation to left-handed hitters this season. At home, those hitters have been elevating the ball nearly 70% of the time. Over his last 60 lefties faced, he has allowed a 12.9% barrel rate and a 70.9% elevation rate, while also carrying a .347 xBA and .679 xSLG against.

Burns does not walk a lot of lefties, but he also is not facing Soto-level hitters every day. I prefer the built-in safety of the HRR prop over the bases market here. Comfortable taking this up to -130.

• Time: 7:10 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: CINR, SNY

Junior Caminero Over 1.5 Total Bases (-113)

The very first prop I locked in today was for Tampa Bay Rays slugger Junior Caminero to go over 1.5 total bases, as he draws Los Angeles Dodgers left hander Eric Lauer, who enters today with one of the worst pitcher ratings on the slate. He also grades poorly in matchup ISO, strikeout rate, and ground ball rate.

Lauer has been struggling against right handed hitters at home this season, allowing a 71% elevation rate. Overall, right handed bats have posted a .504 xSLG and .349 xwOBA against him, while also producing a 12% barrel rate against the southpaw. In addition to that, 54% of Lauer's pitch mix is valued below league average, per FanGraphs. 

Caminero has been handling left handed pitching well this season, hitting .271 with a .457 SLG and .871 OPS. Over his last 30 plate appearances, he is hitting .304 with a .902 OPS, while generating nearly 60% hard contact and a 12% barrel rate in that span.

I am not the biggest fan of paying juice for bases props, but I would take this down to minus 120 at the most.

• Time: 10:10 p.m. ET
• Where to watch: ESPN

This article originally appeared on Covers.com, read the full article here and view our best betting sites or check out our top sportsbook promos.

It’s going to be 97 degrees where I live on Wednesday. The dog days of summer are officially here.

In the world of baseball, transaction season heats up with the weather. Such is the nature of establishing a trade deadline around the end of July – this season it’s on August 3rd – as teams become forced to classify the first 100 or so games of their season into one of two distinct evaluations.

Is this team good enough to invest in further? Should we give them the best chances to win as many games as possible this year?

Or, is this team the Cincinnati Reds?

Joking aside, that’s not completely true. While teams get lumped into the buyers or sellers categories as the trade deadline approaches, the Reds often don’t even do enough to qualify for either. And just last summer, they pulled off the remarkable feat of being a buyer at the deadline for a player who actively made them so bad in 2026 that it’s been a net negative investment.

This is a different Reds club than last year, obviously. This time around, their April magic has been replaced by hell from the injury gods, their record in close games having now been turned on its head by a threadbare bullpen. Across the entire sport’s highest level, only the Colorado Rockies have a worse run differential than these Reds, who once again reside in the cellar of the National League Central division.

So, it’s unsurprising that when asked at the end of last week whether or not this club should be a buyer, or a seller as trade season heats up this summer, roughly 3 out of 5 of you responded that they needed to start selling off players.

Digging themselves out of this hole is going to be difficult when Hunter Greene is still several weeks away. It’ll be difficult without half their bullpen, without Elly De La Cruz for another week or so.

The problem is, what Cincinnati has on the fringes of its long-term plan is a handful of players who haven’t exactly stacked up a ton of value on the trade market.

Eugenio Suarez is the biggest name of the bunch, but he’s having the single worst season of his career and will turn 35 years old this summer. The veterans signed to anchor the bullpen – Emilio Pagan, Pierce Johnson, Caleb Ferguson – are either injured or have been already this year, limiting the significance of any return if they are moved. Nate Lowe has hit well for most of the year, but there’s a reason why his market this offseason was so poor the Reds got him on a minor league deal in the first place. And pending free agent Brady Singer has the fourth lowest fWAR of the 130 pitchers who have thrown at least 50 IP so far this season.

So, selling at the fringes here doesn’t even do much to improve the future, aside from saving a few million bucks that the owners likely wouldn’t pour back into the team 100% anyway. The question I should probably have asked – and likely will again soon – is whether there are pieces that still have more team control than that group who don’t look like they fit the future of this franchise’s next window to compete who should be marketed this summer. That’s the kind of move that could bring back something of significance, a move that could shake the foundation of a franchise that’s found a way to stumble through this rebuild almost as badly as it stumbled through the last two.

Regardless, it sure looks like this club has no business being a buyer this summer. And if that’s the case, they might as well end up sellers.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Or, in the Giants’ case, you mostly lose. It has been a year since the Giants traded for Rafael Devers, and like most of their big swings since allowing Buster Posey to take the reins of the front office, the team has come up empty and looked bad in the attempt. It turns out that the critics of the deal were spot on. Devers’ contract was underwater from the moment the Red Sox signed him to it and the collapse of his skillset came even faster than the projection. Do the Giants inspire failure or does everything they touch turn to garbage by sheer coincidence? In any case, there’s nothing that can be done to improve Devers’ hitting.

He’s hitting .235/.293/.413 on the season while playing every game. He has 9 homers and is tied for the lead league in doubles with 21; so, you know, it’s not all bad. But the underlying metrics affirm what we’ve seen throughout the year: a hitter who’s a mess at the plate. At the end of May, I looked at Matt Chapman’s hitting metrics and came away with the thought that he’s not in an age-related decline but instead a focus or talent disruption. I see a vaguely similar situation for Devers, too.

He still hits the ball hard. That counts for something. His 49.5% Hard Hit rate is 88th percentile and average exit velocity of 91.9 mph is 87th. His 9.5% Barrel rate is the only other category where he measures as above average (61st percentile); but, these are all still big declines from last year, and especially his heyday of 2021-2024 (.279/.354/.519 — 126 HR 384 RBI — +17.0 fWAR).

He’s also whiffing on pitches at the same rate over the past several years. It’s 31.6% this year (10th percentile), but compare that back to 2021:

2021: 27.7% (29th)
2022: 28.2% (25th)
2023: 26.1% (45th)
2024: 30.9% (14th)
2025: 31.6% (10th)
2026: 30.8% (17th)

The big line of demarcation in his career was going from 2023 to 2024 when the big problem cited for why the contract was already underwater first asserted itself: that’s his contact rate in the strike zone. From 21-23 it was 79.2% on average. In 2024, it dropped to 74.9% and last year it fell to 73.9%. This year, it’s at 74.2%. The league average in this stat is between 76-77% every year. Just to give you some more context, going back to 2021, here are the 10 worst zone contact rate guys who got enough at bats to qualify for the batter leaderboards:

10. Luke Raley, 76.8%
9. Patrick Wisdom, 76.8%
8. Zack Gelof, 76.0%
7. Chris Taylor, 75.1%
6. Christopher Morel, 74.7%
5. J.D. Davis, 74.3%
4. Gabriel Arias, 74.0%
3. Matt Wallner, 73.2%
2. Jose Siri, 72.6%
1. Joey Gallo, 72.3%

Because of his outstanding 21-23, Devers winds up ranking just the 13th-lowest; however, if we adjust the years to 2024-present, Devers experiences a dramatic reranking.

10. Kyle Schwarber, 80.3%
9. Ryan McMahon, 80.3%
8. Adolis Garcia, 80.2%
7. Teoscar Hernanez, 79.9%
6. Mark Vientos, 79.9%
5. Jazz Chisholm, 79.1%
4. Randy Arozarena, 78.4%
3. Oneil Cruz, 77.9%
2. Nolan Gorman, 76.6%
1. Rafael Devers, 74.6%

All this to say that Devers’ continued inability to make consistent contact in the strike zone is now crashing into his other declined skill: pitch recognition. From 21-23 he had a called strike percentage of 10.7%. In 2024 it rose to 12.3% and last year it was 13.2%. This year, it’s 15%. Now, this rate has maybe a lot to do with ABS. Called balls have been turned to strikes against Rafael Devers 7 out of 9 times. He’s won just 1 challenge out of 6.

But the increased called strike rate parallels with a trend of him simply swinging less. Prior to 2024, he was swinging at around 53.5% of pitches thrown. That rate has dropped to 50% the past few seasons. His 30.3% strikeout rate is the highest of his career by far — 22% for his career, 25.5% for 2024-2025. So, what’s happening? He’s swinging less often but getting more called strikes (ABS is a partial culprit, of course) and still swinging and missing a lot when he does pull the trigger.

That bat speed doesn’t look good.

Statcast only tracks bat speed back to 2023, but take a look at this decline:

2023: 73.4 mph (68th percentile)
2024: 72.5 mph (61st)
2025: 71.6 mph (42nd)
2026: 71.7 mph (44th)

This is getting down to around LaMonte Wade Jr.’s at the start of last season, when he looked so bad I wondered if it was a portent of doom (it was!). LWJ’s wound up falling all the way down to 70 mph last year, but in a very small sample with the Astros this season (13 PA, where he has a 1.135 OPS) it’s up to 73.2 mph.

So, it’s not impossible that Devers makes some adjustments and optimizes his skills, some of which are working for him this season. But it’s hard to envision him making that turnaround… at least this season.

Luis Arraez was a free agent who set out to prove himself as a second baseman. Yes, Ron Washington has been there to give him some very relevant support, but it started with his tenacity. Jung Hoo Lee’s hitting seems to have improved because he’s been studying Luis Arraez. So, whatever turnaround to his career that might happen will have to come from Rafael Devers himself. Hitting coaches rarely get credit for fixing hitters and the Giants’ current coaching staff seems a lot more hands off or outright bad as any in recent memory.

But before you go thinking that I’m calling Devers’s character into question, let me put it this way: I think he’s taken to first base just fine, and that doesn’t happen if he doesn’t put in the work. When I watch him play the field, I see a goofy guy with a baseball-only body doing his best to field… and he’s okay. Definitely closer to terrible than great, but I wouldn’t characterize the play as outright bad. He’s also playing every day, which I think is a credit to him for having a degree of focus that would keep him interested in doing exactly that.

So, the focus is there, which only leaves buy in. Does he think he needs to make some changes to his swing or approach?

The Giants probably don’t feel like they know him well enough to have that conversation either. The coaching staff turnover being part of that and the green-ness of the current staff the other part. But also, as much as we’d like to think that the data revolution brought Apple Store-level service to every player, where a quant with an iPad just scoots up next to a player and is able to help them with a few graphics and optimized phrasing, I think it still comes down to the player seeking out what they need and doing the important work of actually incorporating changes into their approach. That’s why the headline reads as it does. Athletes aren’t often able to remake themselves on the fly in part because it’s hard to accept that the usual way of doing things has stopped working.

So, I guess in a way, this post is a lot like that Matt Chapman post. Unlike Chapman, though, Devers is definitely experiencing a physical decline of some sort (he’s not hitting the ball as hard), but the decline from a good player to a practically useless one appears to be entirely self-engineered. It’s unlikely that a 29-year old goes out like this based on aging alone. But, as Buster Posey is fond of saying, baseball is hard.

The situation isn’t hopeless, especially since Devers wound up having a good year after a rough time following the trade last year. It’s just that nothing the Giants have done this year and most of the last decade should give anyone hope for a better future.

The Mets are dealing with yet another injury, with right-hander Christian Scott hitting the IL.

The club announced that Scott has been placed on the 15-day IL, retroactive to June 12, with right hip impingement. Right-handers Tobias Myers and Jonathan Pintaro have been called up, and righty releiver Daniel Duarte has been optioned to Triple-A Syracuse.

Additionally, the Mets claimed infielder Zack Short off waivers from the Detroit Tigers and transferred infielder Jorge Polanco to the 60-day IL.

Scott pitched 4.2 innings against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday in his most recent outing. 

Overall, Scott has made nine starts this season, pitching to a 3.10 ERA over 40.2 innings. 

The Mets already have Kodai Senga on the IL, and with Sean Manaea and David Peterson pitching out of hybrid starter/bulk reliever roles, Scott, Freddy Peralta, and Nolan McLean were the only three definitive starters. 

While Scott’s next start likely would have fallen on Tuesday, the Mets have left things vague with their rotation plans for the upcoming series in Cincinnati. 

Myers will start on Monday night, but the team did not announce starters for the following two games.

There would seem to be a strong possibility that Jonah Tong will eventually get recalled to take Scott’s place in the rotation. Tong made three appearances for the Mets earlier this season, posting a 3.60 ERA. Since being optioned back to Triple-A, Tong has allowed eight earned runs in 9.0 innings over two starts.

Left-hander Zach Thornton is also on the 40-man roster, making him a possibility as well. 

Meanwhile, moving Polanco to the 60-day IL doesn't seem to be any reason for concern, as he hasn't played since April 14, making this more of a paper move than anything else. 

The 31-year-old Short played 10 games with Mets in 2024 and spent this year's spring training with the Yankees. He played 23 games with the Tigers this season, hitting .167.