Home Run Derby - MLB DFS Community Contest: Friday, July 8th
Happy Friday, Grinders! From hot and humid Orlando, Florida, I bring to you the Home Run Derby for a busy Friday night slate. The slate is loaded with plenty of games and likely plenty of heat. Tuesday night brought a decent amount of dingers with a couple important selections having themselves a day. Let’s peek at our July leaderboard.
Kyle Schwarber was the key pick on Tuesday night — beginning a two day streak of two-homer games. Several of our guys were on that play as well as hitters like Rowdy Tellez, Yordan Alvarez, and Mookie Betts. Westcrook1 continues to start off July with a bang, collecting two additional home runs to bring his monthly total to 5. Obviously, there is plenty of time left but if he keeps this up it might be a month for the record books. Let’s get into tonight’s slate.
Reminder! Prizes were doubled for each month. Spread the word!
Rules, Tiers, and Prizes
Here are the cliff notes from the introductory rules and guidelines set forth in our opening article. If you want a bit more clarification, here is the first article with a more developed explanation for the contest.
In short, pick three players in the comments for tonight’s DraftKings Main MLB slate. You may pick one player from each of the tiers below.
Luxury Box – $5,000 and above
Promenade – $3,500 – $4,900
Bleachers – Below $3,500
You will collect home runs for every home run your batters hit that night. Selections must be made prior to lock time in the comments section. At the end of each month, prizes will be award to the community members with the most home runs. At the end of the season, additional prizes will be awarded to those members who put together the best totals for the entire season (ending in August).
The following prizes will be awarded to players based on their home run total for the month (April, May, June, July, August)
First Place – 2 months of RotoGrinders MLB Premium
Second Place – RotoGrinders T-shirt and hat
Third Place – 2 weeks of SAO Premium
The following prizes will be awarded to players based on their home run total for the entire baseball season (April – August)
First Place – One month of RotoGrinders Combo Premium
Second Place – RotoGrinders Swag Pack
Third Place – One month of SAO Premium
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments or send me a message on Twitter.
Friday, July 8th MLB DFS Slate Notes
There are 14 games on the DraftKings Main slate that begins at 7:04 PM EST. The only game left off of the slate is the 6:40 PM Reds game. Three games will play in a dome while Coors Field is not on the slate.
I am writing this article the night before so I do not have a good feel for weather. As ever, let Kevin Roth help you out with his daily weather report and his appearance on Crunchtime.
Camden Yards hosts the Los Angeles Angels but maybe we shouldn’t pick on this game. Reid Detmers and Tyler Wells have shown they aren’t complete gas cans this season. Maybe we don’t attack this game full bore with lefties.
I am not sure who is pitching for the Red Sox but the Yankees in Fenway Park are extremely interesting to me. The Yankees and Red Sox are normally a hot feud but feels more like hammer versus the nail this year. That said, the Yankees showed the other day in Pittsburgh just hot potent this lineup could be.
The seething hot Braves lineup squares off against Erick Fedde at home in Atlanta. We could go several directions with this game. Matt Olson, Ronald Acuna, and Austin Riley must be considered with the auxiliary players as well.
Friday, July 8th MLB Home Run Picks
Luxury Box – Mookie Betts – OF – $5,300
Out west, the Dodgers lineup often gets overlooked… well, by me. All of the futures wagers on their World Series doesn’t prevent me from neglecting them in DFS lineups just because they play so late at night.
Mookie is back off of a quick injury stint and immediately brought the fireworks with him. At 48% fly balls and 44% hard hits, Mookie boasts a .269 ISO against right-handed pitching. We don’t really need to get into specifics, Mookie is an elite power hitter. Tonight, the Dodgers should be one of the top offenses against the Cubs but might go slightly underowned because of the slate size.
Mookie will open up my card. I can’t get odds at the time of this writing but I am going to assume he is north of 3/1… maybe closer to 4/1.
Promenade – Matt Olson – 1B – $4,300
The Freeman replacement, Matt Olson has been heating up in Atlanta over the last month. A doubles machine, Olson is always capable of going deep a couple of times in a game.
Erick Fedde is nothing special and Olson joins and Atlanta lineup that is rife with guys capable of multi-homer games. The lefty brings a 37% fly ball rate but more than 40% hard contact. This might explain the high volume of doubles. His 32 doubles lead the league but he still brings a side of 12 home runs. There is plenty of power on hand with Olson.
Olson joins Mookie on our card and should also be north of 3/1 to hit a home run.
Bleacher Seats – Alek Thomas – OF – $2,800
Well, the cheap seats. Another night of closing our eyes and throwing the dart against the board. Will tonight be our first bullseye in quite some time?
Alek Thomas, the rookie sensation brings plenty enough power in this range. We would surely prefer this game in Coors Field but a dome in Arizona isn’t the worst place to pick on Chad Kuhl.
We have seen enough of Chad Kuhl to know that he is nothing worth writing home about. Alek Thomas boasts 45.8% fly balls against right-handed pitchers. His fly balls aren’t too high and his ground balls are way too high… but… he is $2,800. I think we have seen the potential and I think we could do far worse in this range.
We finish our card with Thomas who would likely give us a well-needed odds boost after our first two picks. Good luck with your home run picks and parlays!
Thanks so very much for reading. Give me a follow on Twitter for sports betting banter, golf tidbits, and professional wrestling reactions. We will see you again on Friday for a recap, leaderboard, and home run calls.
Player Image Credit: Imagn