Covering The Bases: Saturday, June 23rd
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Saturday, June 23rd
Welcome to the weekend, Grinders! I hope you are able to dodge the raindrops wherever you may be. We’ve had three straight days of rain here in the Midwest, but we are staring at some much needed sunshine as I write this article on Saturday morning.
As usual, we have a full slate today, and we have a split slate that dramatically favors the afternoon slate once again. For the third straight week, we have just four games on the “main” evening slate. There are 11 afternoon games, but all the sites have removed the later start between the Indians and Tigers. That leaves a 10 game afternoon slate and a four game late slate on FanDuel and DraftKings. FantasyDraft has elected to chop off the three earliest games from their afternoon slate, as well, so the OAK/CHW, TEX/MIN, and MIA/COL games are not available on that site. I won’t really reference that throughout the article; since FD and DK have the full slate, I will simply break the whole thing down. Just know that the aforementioned three games are not available if you are playing on FantasyDraft.
With the housekeeping out of the way, let’s see what we have for options today!
Afternoon Slate – Searching for Top Arms Again?
Aaron Nola at Nationals – It seems like Aaron Nola only pitches on the slates where he is the clear top option on the board. That’s a smart move, Mr. Nola! (Yes, I realize that he has no control over that). His profile is rock solid across the board with a 53% ground ball rate and one of the lowest hard contact rates in the major leagues. He also gets an above average amount of strikeouts, even though he doesn’t have as much strikeout potential as some of the other aces in the league. The matchup is a little more scary now that the Nationals are getting healthy, but Nola has the skills to offset Washington’s elite left-handed bats. He actually has a better batted ball profile against lefties than righties this year, as he has held LHBs to a 24% hard contact rate while generating 57% ground balls. The price tag is high for Nola, so he doesn’t enter 100% must play territory, but I’m absolutely comfortable with him as my SP #1 on this slate.
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