Home Run Derby - MLB DFS Community Contest: Tuesday, August 23rd
Happy Dinger Tuesday, Grinders! FanDuel Sportsbook offers up another shot at free bets for home runs on a full Tuesday slate just as our MLB season is coming closer to a close. For our contest, we have a handful of slates left to crown an August champion and regular season champion. Feast your eyes on our leaderboard as we prepare to move on to today’s slate.
While we didn’t quite have anyone go 3-for-3 again, Joc Pederson provided a well-need home run for several members of our pool. Joc was by far the most popular dinger choice with a smattering of other one-offs getting the job done.
This is our first of three remaining slates left in the contest. With so much congestion on top of the August leaderboard, anything can happen!
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 awarded 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.
Tuesday, August 23rd MLB DFS Slate Notes
DraftKings presents a 15-game slate, tonight as the second leg of the Cubs-Cardinals doubleheader will be included. On the slate, Coors Field features the Rockies hosting the Rangers. We have three domes.
The weather seems to be okay as of early Tuesday morning with the exception of the Boston-Toronto tilt in Fenway Park. Surely, give a late look at the weather or tune into CrunchTime for Kevin Roth’s last-minute update.
Here is a list of the worst HR/9 numbers on the slate:
Zach Logue, OAK, 1.99
Jon Heasley, KCR, 1.92
Aaron Sanchez, MIN, 1.49
Josh Winckowski, BOS, 1.48
Robbie Ray, SEA, 1.46
German Marquez, COL, 1.41
We have a small caveat with this list. Many of the samples are rather small. Speaking of small samples, let’s shrink the window to the last 30 days:
Jon Heasley, KCR, 4.15
Zach Logue, OAK, 2.79
Josh Winckowski, BOS, 2.28
Taijuan Walker, NYM, 2.18
Zach Davies, ARI, 2.12
Robbie Ray, SEA, 1.80
Heasley and Logue make both lists. The Mets moved Jacob deGrom back a game to get Walker back into the rotation. We could see liftoff in the Bronx tonight as Walker has recently struggled to keep the ball in the yard.
So, here are my picks for the jam-packed Tuesday night slate.
Tuesday, August 23d MLB Home Run Picks
Luxury Box – Yordan Alvarez – OF – $5,700
I am a bit behind for the month of August. As we know, even if I don’t get a prize, I am in it to win it. For that reason, I needed to use Yordan Alvarez on tonight’s slate.
Why? Well, my guess is that Aaron Judge is going to be a popular selection in this range for a couple of reasons. First, he is always a popular pick. Second, the Subway Series should draw eyeballs in the friendly confines of Yankee Stadium.
Yordan Alvarez has a remarkable hard-hit rate against right-handed pitching at 55%. I don’t think we need to come up with a case, I just thought that number jumped off the page. We can count on Yordan smashing the ball when he makes contact.
Yordan is +255 to hit a home run on Fanduel.
Promenade – Rhys Hoskins – 1B – $4,600
Checking in for our second tier, Rhys Hoskins gets to square off against a lefty in the Philadelphia bandbox. Hoskins continues to be a left-handed crusher.
To his credit, Nick Lodolo does not give up too many fly balls at just above 30% against both sides of the plate. That said, Hoskins leans so extremely to fly balls that I am willing to ignore Lodolo’s numbers. Hoskins sits at exactly 50% fly balls versus lefties and just below 50% for hard contact. When he hits the ball, he hits the ball very hard and often in the air.
Hoskins makes for a nice second selection, tonight. He sits at +300 on FanDuel.
Bleacher Seats – Jesus Aguilar – 1B – $2,600
Given his peripheral statistics, one would think that Aguilar is putting together a very powerful season. Unfortunately, like many of his Marlin colleagues, Aguilar is struggling to attain mediocrity. Aguilar’s ISO at .138 versus lefties doesn’t seem to make sense given his 40.4 FB% and 50.9 Hard%.
In any event, Zach Logue continues to give up bombs in his small sample of batters. We will use this as our boost to Aguilar’s otherwise pedestrian power season. In this range, we latch on to whatever we can latch on to.
Aguilar’s +460 price would go a long way towards paying for our night as we aim to accumulate as many free bets as possible.
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