Home Run Derby: Tuesday, August 6th

by Joe Cistaro (joeycis) Last Updated 2019-08-06 18:08:53

Calling home runs, besides great fun, often makes the difference between a wildly profitable night in DFS and missing the cash line. Throughout the 2019 MLB season, I will endeavor to find a few home runs in three salary tiers on DraftKings. Join me throughout the year and call your home runs for monthly and seasonal RotoGrinders prizes. Without further ado, let’s play Home Run Derby!

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Throughout this season, I will produce the Home Run Derby for main slates on DraftKings 2-3 days per week — selecting a home run from three different pricing tiers. If you want to call your home runs, please use these tiers for your selections to be eligible for any Derby prizes. Here are the tiers.

Luxury Box – $4,500 and above
Club Seats – $3,500 – $4400
Bleachers – Below $3,500

Hitters must be selected from the DraftKings Main Slate.

Schedule this Week: Monday, Tuesday, Friday

Happy Tuesday, Grinders! Fifteen games and a bunch of rain. Tuesday should be fun if you can find a way to dodge weather trouble as we see the maximum number of games for an MLB slate. The Yankees are still in Baltimore. Andrew Cashner pitches in Fenway Park against Jakob Junis. The wind blows in tonight in Wrigley Field. Chase Field plays host to two sub-par pitchers. Here are my picks for tonight followed by a leaderboard update from Monday night.

The statistics for each player are for the 2019 season.

Luxury Box

Aaron Judge — OF – $4,900

Judge in 2019 – .215 ISO, 27.0 FB%, 56.3 Hard%, 97.1 MPH aEV

Wojciechowski vs RHH – .197 ISO, 89.9 MPH aEV, 54.5 FB%, 36.4 Hard%

Believe it or not, I am not in love with the upper-tier, tonight. My distaste has me lean towards the Yankees in Camden Yards again. The Yankees hit five home runs last night. Despite all of the home runs coming off the bats of Romine, Ford, Gardner, and Tauchman, my thought is that every Yankee will be in play for the home run hunt during this series.

Judge has never been a heavy fly ball guy but is struggling to get the ball in the air this season. That said, Asher (I am not typing his name out again) is a heavy flyball pitcher. Targeting heavy flyball pitchers with ground ball hitters benefits the hitter because they won’t need to lift as much. Judge’s pure power needs no explanation. Somebody in pinstripes is hitting a home run tonight. I hope Aaron gets his turn, tonight.

Club Seats

Hunter Renfroe — OF – $4,400

Renfroe in 2019 – .318 ISO, 48.7 FB%, 48.3 Hard%, 90.2 MPH aEV

LeBlanc vs RHH – .199 ISO, 90.0 MPH aEV, 36.2 FB%, 34.0 Hard%

The Padres take a trip to the American League to face Wade LeBlanc and a bullpen that is recently giving up bombs. Over the past 30 days, the Mariners bullpen is allowing 1.9 HR/9. LeBlanc himself gives up plenty of powers — especially to righties — and will see plenty of hitters on the wrong side of his platoon splits.

Renfroe is the poster boy for fly balls. Against righties, Home Run Hunter Renfroe possesses a 56.7 FB%. He hits the ball very hard. Renfroe sits in the ballpark-agnostic category for me when it comes to power. I don’t care where he is playing when he faces a lefty.

Bleachers

Jose Martinez – OF – $3,300

Martinez in 2019 – .139 ISO, 26.5 FB%, 39.4 Hard%, 88.6 MPH aEV

Kershaw vs RHH – .151 ISO, 86.8 MPH aEV, 30.0 FB%, 42.5 Hard%

Wooh, baby. This tier is gross, tonight. This season, Jose Martinez does not possess great overall numbers and is putrid against right-handed pitchers. That said, he does have a .317 ISO against southpaws. Yes, I know the same is 66 plate appearance. Please, do not sick Derek Carty on me. This tier is just so very bad.

In a bigger sample, Kershaw is giving up more hard contact this season against righties than he did in his previous years. Father Time always wins. I need to cling to something to justify taking a flier on Martinez. I mean, maybe he runs into one? So, cheap — but for good reason. Gross.

Leaderboard (sortable by column)

Twelve games brought 35 home runs on Monday night. Our contestants put forth a strong performance. BigPod, GBRollClones, and sochoice led the way with a pair of home runs apiece as BigPod pushed himself to a tie with shanekern03 and DJESQUIRE for the early August lead. Shane is running away with the overall prize. Somebody needs to go on a run and build some intrigue as time winds down. Sorry, Shane.

Will Mother Nature take away a potentially hard-hitting evening of baseball? Can the Orioles pitching staff survive the Yankees? Do we Bo-lieve in the power of Bichette (can’t help myself)? So many storylines. So much intrigue when we have fifteen games. I will see you back on Friday with a recap of all the action and a few more home run picks. Until then, good luck, everyone.

I am happy to announce that at the end of each month I will be rewarding the highest home run total with a RotoGrinders T-shirt. Having a rough month? Don’t let up. The RotoGrinders member with the most home runs throughout the season — until the end of August — will be awarded a 3-month Combo Premium subscription to start the NFL season!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed the article, stick around for the rest of the MLB season. Want to compete against me? Drop your expensive, mid-tier, and cheap home run calls in the comments (DraftKings pricing). Otherwise, give me a follow on Twitter where I typically post slate-relevant statistics and embarrassing comments about professional wrestling.

Statistics for this article are obtained from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, RotoGrinders Daily Research Console, and Baseball Savant.