Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Team Preview: Toronto Blue Jays
Baseball is almost here! With an eventful offseason in the books and spring training underway, it’s time to preview all 30 teams in Major League Baseball. With the help of RotoGrinders PlateIQ Premium, DFS ownership trends from Chris Gimino, and our resident Premium MLB guru Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood), we take a look at some information that is definitely interesting and possibly helpful for the upcoming 2019 MLB season.
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Toronto Blue Jays Preseason Overview
— Vegas Win Total O/U: 75.5
— World Series Odds: 200/1
— Key Additions: Vladimir Guerrero, Freddy Galvis, Matt Shoemaker, Clayton Richard
Other Noteworthy Players for DFS: Teoscar Hernandez, Vladimir Guerrero (will start in minors), Devon Travis, Luke Maile
— Outlook: The DFS usage of this lineup is going to far exceed the Blue Jays real life production in the win column. Top prospect Vladimir Guerrero will be in AAA early on, but should join the team after a month or so to give them a big boost. PlateIQ is already showing us quite a bit of punch in the contact ratings department, and overall bats won’t be their biggest issue. We’ll be making some Jays stacks sooner than later in MLB DFS.
The projected lineup above shows Billy McKinney as the starting left fielder, but that spot will be a platoon split with slugger Teoscar Hernandez. He’ll join Vlad Jr., Gurriel, Smoak, Morales, and Grichuk at the core of this lineup. Each of Smoak, Grichuk, Morales, and Hernandez had over 20 HR last season, which is more than enough pop tp keep us interested for DFS. Of course, they also had 536 combined strikeouts. The boom bust potential will keep things interesting without a doubt.
As for pitching, it looks like a disaster. Four of the five projected starters delivered a PlateIQ overall rating under 46 last year. What’s worse for DFS is that there are almost no strikeouts to be had on this entire team. None of the four pitchers who had substantial action in 2018 had a strikeout rate over 18%. When we saw his last full season in 2017, Matt Shoemaker blew his colleagues away with a rather average 21% strikeout rate.
They weren’t much better preventing runs either. In terms of SIERA, only Stroman was better than a 4.5 a season ago and only Borucki escaped with an ERA under 4.89. Pitchers like these are not going to find our rosters regularly, and support the idea that a sub 80 win expectation is more than fair.
— DFS Ownership Trends: We could be stacking games in Toronto this year, which is something we did a lot in 2018 already. Toronto was the 5th most popular park in terms of DK ownership, and their questionable pitching will have us interested in stacking their opponents without a doubt. Toronto as a team was just the 19th most popular lineup, but we should expect that to rise a spot or two once Vlad enters the fray. The hype train is absolutely out of control on this character.
As for rostering pitchers, the Blue Jays don’t have one of the 100 most popular options from 2018 on their team. Stroman falls just outside that zone, and there really isn’t any reason to believe the field has it wrong here. We’re looking at one of the least popular pitching groups for DFS here in Toronto.
Other Noteworthy DFS Players: Vladimir Guerrero, Teoscar Hernandez, Devon Travis, Luke Maile
Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful Notes
— Last season, Kendrys Morales hit an astounding 52.6 percent of his batted balls at 95 MPH or greater; that mark ranked third-best in MLB, just a shade better than J.D. Martinez (52.2%). Morales was a gem in DFS last season, perpetually priced on the low end of the first base pool, yet still able to hit the ball with just as much authority as ever, even as he approaches the end of his career. He’ll be worth a look as a salary saver in the right matchups.
— Since 2016, MLB pitchers have posted a 60 percent ground ball rate over a full season (min. 100 IP) on six occasions; Marcus Stroman is responsible for three of those seasons, exceeding 60 percent grounders in 2016, 2017, and 2018. While ground balls are good in the sense that they aren’t home runs, they’re also bad in the sense they aren’t strikeouts. And therein lies the problem of rostering Stroman in DFS. Unless he can unlock some untapped strikeout potential, he’s doomed to being a “better in real life than in fantasy” guy, reserved only for great matchups and/or small slates.