FREE PREMIUM: MLB DFS Picks - FanDuel & DraftKings Expert Survey: Monday, April 18th
Curious to know the top tournament target? Want to know our analysts’ favorite stacks? Below we answer lineup-building questions to help you prepare for the upcoming slate. NOTE: Expert Surveys are only posted for main slates.
MLB Expert Survey: Monday, April 18
Who is your favorite hitter for optimal lineups?
CheeseIsGood: Bryce Harper
Dean78904: Kyle Schwarber
Stevietpfl: Bryce Harper
fathalpert: Bryce Harper
MrTuttle: Bryce Harper
Who is your favorite hitter for large-field contests?
CheeseIsGood: Nick Castellanos
Dean78904: Nick Castellanos
Stevietpfl: Kyle Schwarber
fathalpert: Kyle Schwarber
MrTuttle: Yordan Alvarez
Who is your favorite pitcher for optimal lineups?
CheeseIsGood: Frankie Montas
Dean78904: Sean Manaea (FD) / Frankie Montas (DK)
Stevietpfl: Sean Manaea
fathalpert: Frankie Montas
MrTuttle: Frankie Montas
Who is your favorite pitcher for large-field contests?
CheeseIsGood: Luis Garcia (FD) / Shane McClanahan (DK)
Dean78904: Aaron Nola
Stevietpfl: Frankie Montas
fathalpert: Eric Lauer (FD) / Shane McClanahan & Alex Cobb (DK)
MrTuttle: Luis Garcia (FD) / Shane McClanahan (DK)
Who is your favorite salary saver for optimal lineups?
CheeseIsGood: Rowdy Tellez (FD) / Cody Bellinger (DK)
Dean78904: Simon Muzziotti
Stevietpfl: Seth Brown
fathalpert: Rowdy Tellez
MrTuttle: Rowdy Tellez
Who is your favorite salary saver for large-field contests?
CheeseIsGood: Rowdy Tellez (FD) / Cody Bellinger (DK)
Dean78904: Rowdy Tellez
Stevietpfl: Billy McKinney
fathalpert: Randal Grichuk
MrTuttle: Hunter Renfroe (FD) / Cody Bellinger (DK)
Which player are you most afraid of being underweight on compared to the field?
CheeseIsGood: Clayton Kershaw
Dean78904: Clayton Kershaw
Stevietpfl: Kris Bryant
fathalpert: Clayton Kershaw
MrTuttle: Clayton Kershaw
What’s your under-the-radar home run call of the day?
CheeseIsGood: Seth Brown
Dean78904: Cody Bellinger
Stevietpfl: Kyle Tucker
fathalpert: Jared Walsh
MrTuttle: Sean Murphy
What is the top stack on the board for leverage in low-dollar GPPs?
CheeseIsGood: LAD
Dean78904: HOU
Stevietpfl: OAK
fathalpert: MIL
MrTuttle: HOU
Who are your five favorite stacks for large-field contests, ranked in order?
CheeseIsGood: 1) PHI 2) LAD 3) HOU 4) TBR 5) MIL
Dean78904: 1) PHI 2) LAD 3) HOU 4) TBR 5) COL
Stevietpfl: 1) PHI 2) LAD 3) OAK 4) HOU 5) MIL
fathalpert: 1) PHI 2) LAD 3) COL 4) HOU 5) MIL
MrTuttle: 1) PHI 2) LAD 3) MIL 4) HOU 5) COL
Expert Survey Tournament Stack Rankings based on analyst responses above
1.PHI
2.LAD
3.HOU
4.TBR
5.COL
How do you plan to beat the field of opponents? What tactic or strategy will set you apart?
CheeseIsGood: It’s always reasonable to fade extreme and obvious chalk like the Phillies. But my preference is just to play that chalk in a slightly different way. It’s going to be Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, along with J.T. Realmuto on DK and the cheap bottom of the order bats that are wildly chalky. You can build around guys like Nick Castellanos and Rhys Hoskins without sacrifcing any upside. In tournaments where I look to get away from the Phillies, while there’s nothing even remotely ‘sneaky’ about the Dodgers, they should be so far behind the Phillies that you get all the ownership drop you need.
Dean78904: The field is going to be loading up on the Phillies, and rightfully so. I’ll dabble in some of the massive contests but I mostly concentrate on single entry / three entry max contests so I typically don’t have to beat more than 1000 people or so. If you play these contests you’ll know that the good chalk OWN% can be significantly higher than large field contests. That said, you don’t have to be as ambitious to be different than you would in a massive field. What am I getting at? I’m thinking of playing the Phillies but leaving out either Bryce Harper or Kyle Schwarber (or potentially both??). Cue the Anchorman “I immediately regret this decision” gif.
Stevietpfl: This slate is straightforward for me with pitching. I want to play Manaea, Montas, and Garcia. I’ll mix in some lower owned bats to pair with the Phillies. I will let others overthink this slate, but I do like Oakland and Houston a lot on the lower owned side of this slate.
fathalpert: Get weird. We lost a game to weather and I’m not thrilled about the cold weather in the SF/NYM and TB/CHC games (so I may limit my exposure more to pitchers in those games). That condenses the offensive spots that I’m targeting. I’ll play PHI but I may get different by targeting primarily the lefties against Chad Kuhl (Harper/Schwarber/Gregorius/Camargo/Muzziotti) and go underweight on the popular righties (gulp). Or I may get off the PHI chalk and target the Rockies in Coors against Nola, the A’s against Watkins, or the Brewers against unproven Zach Thompson.
MrTuttle: Avoid poor weather spots for hitters. ARI/WAS has been PPD. The SFG/NYM forecast is in the 40’s with rain and heavy wind blowing in. The TBR/CHC forecast is for temps in the 30’s which should negate the heavy winds blowing out. All of this to say that the already hitter friendly enviornments of MIL and COL should see an even bigger advantage on this slate. Even more neutral enviornments like HOU and LAD rate more favorably in comparison and are strong places to target for tournaments.
Who is your top overall pitcher (when considering price, matchup, projected ownership, etc.) on the board and why?
CheeseIsGood: Frankie Montas – It’s tough not to call Clayton Kershaw the clear best pitcher here after his near-perfect game last week. But on this slate, every last dollar is going to matter, and we get far better matchups with Frankie Montas and Sean Manaea. On DK, the salary gap is so big that it’s a no-brainer with Montas, and we will need to start worrying about extreme ownership. But even on FD where they are priced the same, I start with Montas at home against the Orioles. This Baltimore lineup has six batters above a 25% strikeout rate with very little power to speak of. Montas has one of the highest pitch counts in the league so far this season and gives you a great combo of floor and ceiling for his salary.
Dean78904: Frankie Montas – I debated featuring Montas (26.6% K / 6.9 BB%) vs Sean Manaea (25.4% K / 5.5% BB) as they are well stretched out and have a similar strikeout upside as both have exceptional matchup to rack up some punchouts. The tie-breaker? The wonky 7.3k asking price for the Oakland ace on DK. I mean, dude is cheaper than Huascar Ynoa and is somehow the 11th most expensive SP on the slate. Montas has the benefit of throwing in a ballpark that suppresses HRs while facing a mostly mediocre, K friendly Baltimore lineup. As it stands right now, I’ll be pairing these two for DK cash games. If forced to make a call right now, I’d probably give a slight lean to Manaea on FD where they are essentially the same price, but its almost a coin toss and I can see opposing lineups/projected OWN% factoring in later in the day (lefties like Jake Fraley, Mike Moustakas, and Tyler Naquin in the CIN lineup would be a boost for Manaea).
Stevietpfl: Sean Manaea – Since the start of last season, Manaea has a 3.85 xFIP with a 25.4% strikeout rate and a 5.5% walk rate. He does an above average job of getting ahead in counts and attacking hitters. The projected starting lineup for the Reds has four left-handed hitters. The combined lineup has a .163 ISO with a .304 wOBA and a 24.3% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching since the start of the 2021 season. This is a great matchup and ballpark; I’ll be overweight on Manaea.
fathalpert: Frankie Montas – We just saw Nestor Cortes shred this Orioles offense for 12 strikeouts yesterday, so there is a bit of recency bias here. But Montas has now thrown 89 and 92 pitches is his first two starts of the season, proving he’s not going to have any leash concerns if he’s cruising. It has only been nine games, but the Orioles rank dead last in team HRs (4) and are bottom-four in team OPS. I do like Clayton Kershaw, Sean Manaea, Shane McClanahan and Alex Cobb (weather permitting), but from a point-per-dollar perspective, Montas is my favorite pitcher on this slate.
MrTuttle: Frankie Montas – DraftKings made this an easy decision by randomly pricing Frankie Montas as SP11 on the slate at $7,300. Montas projects as one of the top pitchers on the slate regardless of price thanks to a solid matchup against Baltimore at the pitcher friendly RingCentral Coliseum. Montas isn’t the clear play on FanDuel as he’s similarly priced to Sean Manaea and Eric Lauer offers a significant discount to both. I’ll give Montas the slight nod as SP1 on FanDuel but could see lineup construction dictating a lower-priced Lauer who allows you to play the big Philly bats with ease.
Who is your top overall hitter (when considering price, matchup, projected ownership, etc.) on the board and why?
CheeseIsGood: Nick Castellanos – Very obviously, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber are the two best bats on this slate. What I think we’re going to see is something that looks like 3-4x the ownership on Harper/Schwarber over the right-handed Phillies of Nick Castellanos and Rhys Hoskins. There is no difference in the upside of any of these top of order Phillies. Castellanos should be sitting in the ideal lineup spot after Harper gets walked and he trails only Harper in hard hit rate for this Phillies lineup, at an extreme 51.5, to go along with 26% line drives and a .390 wOBA that is also second only to Harper (who may just get walked 4 times).
Dean78904: Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper – I don’t really want to choose here as 1) these are the slate’s two best hitters and 2) its really not all that hard to get both of them in your lineup. They both have immense power, will have the platoon advantage, and get to take their hacks in hitter friendly Coors Field. Opposing SP Chad Kuhl has the 2nd highest SIERRA on the slate among tonight’s SPs and he is especially vulnerable to left-handed sticks. Additionally there is only one LHP in the COL bullpen. Of course you don’t have to play either of these dudes in tournaments as OWN% is a thing and goofy, unpredictable baseball things happen all the time, but I’d feel pretty silly if I did not feature them as the best bats on the slate.
Stevietpfl: Seth Brown – Harper and Schwarber are the top two hitters on the slate tonight, but to fit them in, we need to save some salary. Sounds like it will be Watkins taking the hill first, but overall, it’s going to be a bullpen type of game for Baltimore. Brown has a .286 ISO with a 50.3% fly ball rate, and a 41% hard-hit rate against right-handed pitching since the start of the 2021 season. I love his price across the industry, and I like what him and McKinney open up as far as the rest of my lineup builds.
fathalpert: Bryce Harper – We’ve been conditioned to play lefties against Chad Kuhl, and it doesn’t get any better than Bryce Harper against Kuhl. In cash games I think you build around him but there’s plenty of merit to a tournament fade if you’re bold enough. We have him projected at 30% projected ownership on both DraftKings and FanDuel so given those numbers, there’s at least a route where omitting him from some lineups is a viable strategy.
MrTuttle: Bryce Harper – This one is as simple as “really good hitter versus average (at best) pitcher in Coors”. However, to elaborate just a tiny bit, Chad Kuhl has struggled big time against LHB throughout his career allowing a .361 wOBA and has been susceptible to power from both sides of the plate. It’s also worth noting that the awesome hitting environment that is called Coors Field figures to be even more pronounced on a slate where there is gross weather all around.
What is your hot take of the day?
CheeseIsGood: The Phillies score a bunch of runs? Hot! OK, also, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker combine for 3 HR and 7 RBI.
Dean78904: Sean Manaea strikes out 10+ Reds
Stevietpfl: Billy McKinney hits for the cycle.
fathalpert: The Rockies outscore the Phillies.
MrTuttle: Yordan Alvarez returns from the COVID-list and immediately slugs two HRs.