Million Dollar Musings: Friday, June 29th (FREE)
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Friday, June 29th
Since it’s Free Premium Week (welcome to the Musings!), I’ll be eating extra cookies today to celebrate along with you. I go to a coffee shop in Columbus, GA to enter lineups, and they make these super huge chocolate chip cookies. They are almost like individual pies; they are delicious. Last week I noticed while they were ringing them up that the register says ‘Premium Cookie’. Yeah, that’s right!
That cookie anecdote has nothing to do with anything, except to say that we have Premium Content, they have Premium Cookies, and we have Premium Aces on the mound tonight.
On this 14-game slate, there are four stand-out aces that are way ahead of the rest of the field. We’ll find a few arms to look at in the mid-tier, but it’s going to tough to get away from spending at pitcher tonight. There are always going to be soe high end bats to spend on for a full slate, and there’s plenty to look at, but we’ll see if we can’t find a few values to help us afford these aces.
FRIDAY NIGHT PITCHING
THE FOUR HORSEMEN
Gerrit Cole at Tampa
Jacob deGrom at Miami
Trevor Bauer at Oakland
Patrick Corbin vs San Francisco
These four aces stand out heads and shoulders above the crowd by any measure tonight. They have the four highest strikeout rates on the slate, all above 31% for the season and swinging strike rates above 13%. All four have an ERA below 3.25 and a SIERA below 3.05. The walk rates of all four are between 6.7%-8.2%. Add in good matchups and pitchers ballparks, and this is going to be a tough group to avoid tonight.
In trying to separate this group, we have to start by talking about the absurd strikeout pace that Trevor Bauer has been on recently. We opened the season with Gerrit Cole and Patrick Corbin hanging around the 40% K mark, but since mid-May, it is Bauer that has stood out from the crowd. In his last eight starts he has reached double-digit strikeouts six times and has a remarkable 67 K’s in his last 42 innings. Even his walks and hard hits have been slightly lower than his full season pace over the past month. The strikeouts are coming against both right and left-handed batters and while he is still a risk to allow some power, these strikeouts far outweigh that risk.
Oakland is not an extreme strikeout team, but they are slightly above average with a projected lineup K% of 22.8% and only one batter who comes in below 18%. There’s always some power risk with Oakland, certainly more than what Cole and deGrom are dealing with but until Bauer shows any sign of slowing down with these strikeouts, this is my top choice for upside.
Gerrit Cole still carries a sparkling 2.56 ERA, but there have been some chinks in the armor. First it was a drop in strikeouts, going from ridiculously elite to merely very good. But that is not a concern as long as he’s hanging around the 30% K mark, which he is. The concern is his walks shooting up to 11.2% over the past month and leaving him with the highest walk rate of this ace tier on the season. He has multiple walks in eight of his last nine starts, which when combined with home runs from his fly ball rate has brought his ERA up over a full run since early May. It’s really being pretty picky to complain about a guy who is regularly picking up 7-8 strikeouts per games and hasn’t allowed more than four runs all season, but we’re not trying to determine if he’s good, we’re just trying to find any reason to separate aces. Tampa is the highest strikeout team that any of these aces will face and the lowest power opponent on top of that. I’m still on the Bauer side for tournaments with the large gap in their recent performance, but I would be confident with Cole in any format tonight.
Jacob deGrom is the ace in this group who has by far the lowest ERA, mostly on the strength of a low 28% hard hit rate combined with the lowest walk rate of this group at 6.7% and the highest ground ball rate at 45.8%. Those ground balls and low walks are only decimal points ahead of some of these other aces, but the soft contact does stand out. He has been great against both right and left-handed batters, with the soft contact, high strikeouts and low walks to both sides. To me, this is the safest skill set among this tier of aces, and we’ve seen more consistency in run prevention from him than any of these aces. The matchup is not a huge plus for strikeouts, but it is a great landing spot for yet another quality start with upside for a 7-8 inning outing. I prefer his skill set to Cole and I prefer his matchup to Bauer, so I am planning to start with him as my cash game ace.
Patrick Corbin has been the least consistent of these aces after his well-documented velocity drop, but he came back with another 12-strikeout performance last week to remind us that he’s not done yet. I think we’ve seen enough to say that he will be able to continue generating strikeouts at this velocity, as he’s at the same 32% mark over the past month as he has been for the season. The real issue is that he still allowing a tremendous amount of hard contact, at 42% for the season and 45% over the past month and we’ve seen that bite him in three of his last five starts. He needs every bit of those strikeouts to overcome that hard contact. The Giants are the lowest strikeout opponent of any of these four, so even though he had the huge game against another low strikeout team last week, we should still expect a fair amount of balls in play here. He’s clearly fourth on my list, but he is also the only one of these aces with a significant savings over the other four. I’m not going to attempt to save the money in cash games, where I just want to make sure I get the ace I feel best about it, but it does add some intrigue to Corbin in tournaments.
CLIFF NOTING THE FOUR ACES (HORSEMEN?)
All four of these pitchers deserve to be rostered in tournaments. I will tell you my preferences here, but there is not a lot separating them. All have good matchups, and all are capable of posting a huge game at any time. I have to start by rolling with the Trevor Bauer strikeout streak in tournaments. Until he slows down, there just not much reason to overthink it. He has just been too good. So Bauer is my #1 option in tournaments. In cash games, I have a very slight preference for Jacob deGrom ahead of Bauer, as we have a much longer track record of consistency here and a friendlier matchup than what Bauer is looking at. I don’t think you can go wrong either way here, but I want to be getting heavy exposure to more than one of these aces, so splitting it up by cash games vs GPPs is one way I can accomplish that.
After Bauer and deGrom, I would much rather play Gerrit Cole in Tampa than Patrick Corbin against the Giants, but Corbin gets the far lowest salary of this group. Because the matchup is so nice for Cole, I wouldn’t have any issue at all with siding with Cole in cash games, but for me, he’s just the third guy in the mix for tournaments. Because Bauer, deGrom and Cole are all essentially the same salary, I’m directly passing on either Bauer or deGrom to pivot to Cole, without gaining anything elsewhere in my lineup. By pivoting to Corbin instead, I am gaining enough salary to significantly upgrade a hitter. For that reason alone, I might end up with about the same exposure to Cole and Corbin.
Again, these are all great pitchers, and any one could be the top scorer tonight, but for upside I go Bauer #1, for safety I go deGrom #1 and then I would place Corbin close to Cole based on salary. This does not mean I am recommending fading Cole tonight, I love the pitcher and I love the matchup, but he’s just not my first choice. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised by any one of these four being the top pitcher of the night, and it would be dangerous to fade this group altogether.
NOTE – With deGrom being scratched, I am simply rotating Cole in where I had deGrom and keeping plan of higher tournament exposure to Bauer with Cole being my cash game pitcher.
THE NEXT CLOSEST THING
Nick Pivetta vs Washington – Pivetta is the leftover name on this slate who has shown the upside to compete with the aces this season, but it’s not been consistent enough to put him in there tier. He’s also been down enough against lefties that he can be thwarted by a tough matchup, and the Nationals can send a solid group of lefties up against him. He’s not bad by any stretch against lefties, but it’s 24.7% K vs 31.9% K to righties with double the walks, lower ground balls and higher hard contact. If we get the full Nationals lineup tonight, we’re looking at just 17.8% strikeouts with good patience and a ballpark considerably tougher than the four aces. He’s not cheap enough for me to take the leap here, but if you want to take on a bunch more risk while keeping your upside intact in tournaments, this is your guy.
GOOD MATCHUPS IN THE MID-TIER
Rich Hill vs Colorado
Joe Musgrove at San Diego
Marco Gonzales vs Kansas City
Marcus Stroman vs Detroit
This is the tier I will coming to for my SP2 in cash games on DK/FDRFT, and if for some reason you were thinking about skipping the aces on FanDuel, this would be the group to look at as well.
Rich Hill vs Colorado – Things have looked decent enough in his two starts off the DL that I’m willing to put him back on the list at home against Colorado. He threw 89 and 90 pitches in these two starts, which for him counts as a full workload, and he has 11 strikeouts and three walks in 11 innings. That is nice, but still not nearly enough to make me completely overlook how awful he was earlier this season when he posted a 6.20 ERA in five starts with a 25:13 K:BB ratio. He’s shown so much strikeout ability the past few seasons (30.1% K in 2017, 29.4% in 2016) that it is reasonable to keep looking for that upside to re-appear, but he’ll need to show it with some level of consistency before I believe it. It’s a good, not great matchup with a Colorado team that has a lot of contact at the top of the lineup, but enough strikeouts down in the order to make them essentially an average opponent. My opinion is they get underrated on the road. Of course there is a huge drop-off in their numbers outside of Coors, but this is not a bottom dweller offense, as they rank right in the middle of the pack in most offensive categories on the road. (10th in runs, 16th in ISO, 17th in wOBA, 9th in HR). I love the salary for Hill based on his long term track record, though personally I view him as just one of the guys to mix into tournaments, and not the cash game option.
Joe Musgrove at San Diego – Musgrove’s overall numbers put him right in the middle of the field tonight in terms of strikeouts at 21% with low 6.1% walks and a decent 3.98 SIERA. He’s only pitched 33 innings this year, so those numbers are not locked in, but they are basically identical to what we saw in 2017 when he had 21.2% K, 6,1% BB and a 4.04 SIERA. His game log looks a little off with back-to-back rough outings, but a right-handed pitcher going into San Diego gets enough of a boost that with his overall skills at this salary, he looks like a very safe option. His brief sample size this year looks shaky against lefties, but that is just 64 batters faced, and if we combine the 2017-2018 data, his strikeouts jump to 23.7% to lefties.
There’s always some added strikeout upside against San Diego, but I’m never going to be chasing huge upside with Musgrove, it’s more about strong control and keeping the hard hits to a minimum. The big boost in the matchup comes from the lack of power from the Padres against righties, way down at the bottom of the league in ISO and wOBA with tonight’s projected lineup carrying a silly low .121 ISO and .297 wOBA this season against righties. I see more upside in Hill, but a safer matchup with a clearer path to a quality start for Musgrove.
Marco Gonzales vs Kansas City – Gonzales has similar overall numbers to Musgrove with 21.1% strikeouts and an even lower walk rate at just 5.3%. He’s had his two worst outings of the season in terms of runs allowed in his last two starts, but they were at Yankee Stadium and at Fenway Park, and even in those games, he still pitched six innings with his average 5-6 strikeouts and just one walk. His pitching style leaves him quite matchup dependent, and I view it as a good thing that he pitched the same as ever in those tough starts, and it should not be a surprise that better teams in better ballparks simply did a little more against him than what the rest of his season shows. We can count on him pounding the strike zone, with moderate 22.4% strikeouts to righties and basically average batted balls to both sides. This Royals team is not an easy target for strikeouts, though slightly higher against lefties than righties. But they are way down in the Padres territory in terms of low power, with a projected lineup with just a .127 ISO and .284 wOBA against lefties and not a single batter in the lineup with more than four home runs against lefties this season. The only way Gonzales get beat is when a team can string together a bunch of hits, or hit multiple home runs. The Royals in Seattle are not the team I would expect to make that happen. Of this tier, Gonzales is my preferred cash game target, though the strikeout upside still belongs to Rich Hill.
Marcus Stroman vs Detroit – After an awful start to the season, Stroman missed almost two months with shoulder fatigue, and in his first start back, he looked like his old self, racking up 80% ground balls in five scoreless innings. He threw 81 pitches, and should be able to take a step up from there. If I was certain that he was out of the woods with the shoulder, he would be right there with these other three guys as a safe option with his huge ground ball ability against just an OK at best opponent against right-handed pitching. Even in his early season struggles, he wasn’t that far behind his usual pace, with 18.8% strikeouts and 62% ground balls, he was just a little off with his control at 9.6% walks and allowing an unusual amount of hard contact. He’s enough of a savings from Hill/Musgrove/Gonzales that I would say it’s reasonable to use him as your cash game SP2 and just assume he’s fully healthy, but unless you’re scraping pennies, I would still prefer Gonzales.
In tournaments, the savings is useful and he’s got similarly moderate upside to Musgrove and Gonzales. I don’t feel like we’ll need a massive outing from a pitcher in this tier to stay in the hunt, and so I’m fine taking this savings and looking for a decent quality start even without tremendous upside.
TAKING SOME WILD CHANCES
Eduardo Rodriguez at NY Yankees – If you really want some risk with points per dollar strikeout upside, you can head into Yankee Stadium and roll the dice on Rodriguez. He is in a tier of his own in strikeout ability, clearly below the top four as well as Pivetta, but settling into 6th place with a 26.1% strikeout rate. The Yankees are about the same level of strikeout opponent as teams like Oakland and Miami and well ahead of Washington, so sure just for raw strikeout upside if everything goes perfectly, he could come in close to some of the better pitchers, but there is not just the obvious power risk, but also the high walks and patience of the Yankees to drive up his pitch count. I consider this to be an unnecessary risk tonight, but it’s not without its upside.
Felix Pena at Baltimore – In his first two starts, this cat Felix has 12 strikeouts in nine innings. He had a 26.8% strikeout rate at Triple-A prior to being called up, and in 55 career innings in the majors, mostly out of the bullpen, he has a 26.1% K rate. This is a guy with strikeout ability. It comes with the risk of sketchy control as well as inexperience and a likely limited pitch count. He got up to 83 pitches in his last start, so maybe the pitch count is not an issue, but I certainly wouldn’t expect more than 5-6 innings at this point. This is a great matchup for strikeout upside, but it comes with still yet another risk as a fly ball pitcher in a good hitter’s ballpark. So basically, everything is a risk with high walks, high fly balls, inexperience and limited innings, but…..strikeouts! He’s so cheap on FanDuel at $5,800 that you can do almost anything you want with your bats, and I do like the idea of taking a couple GPP shots and hoping the strikeouts outweigh the other risks. The DK/FDRFT salary is tougher, where he’s right in the mix with Stroman and just $1,100/$2,300 below Hill, but I would still throw a couple GPP darts here if you’re multi-entering.
Sandy Alcantara vs Mets – Alcantara is a highly touted prospect with a good bit of buzz, but he hasn’t shown much upside as he’s moved through the minors. He was piling up strikeouts at Single-A, but they fell to 19.1% at Double-A and 18% at Triple-A. He has a moderate ground ball lean, but nothing extreme. Based simply on his prospect status, salary and ballpark, I would say it’s fine to take a stab here, but with the Mets begin a much better team against right-handed pitching, I don’t see anything that screams must play here. Until we see him pitch at the major league level, we’re just guessing. I would play Pena ahead of him, where at least we’ve seen an ability to strike out major league hitters.
Julio Teheran at St. Louis – I am going nowhere near Teheran tonight, but it is worth pointing out that he gets a boost from facing a heavily right-handed opponent. I have a few problems here. First, outside of a magical unicorn in the forest start 10 days ago against the Padres, he has been really bad since early May. Second, his walk rate on the season is 11.4%, and you guys should know how I feel about high walk pitchers. Third, while he’s a big splits guy who is better against righties, it’s not as if he’s completely dominating righties, he is merely pretty good at 24.1% strikeouts with a fly ball lean and average hard contact. And fourth, this is not some jabroni-ish Padres-ish group of right-handed batters. Martinez, Ozuna and Molina are low strikeout righties with skill and Pham is not someone I want to attack. Add in Carpenter and at least two other left-handed bats, and it’s just a kind-of-OK at best matchup for me. There is some possibility of an upside start here, but I will be sitting this one out.
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
On a 14-game slate, there are always going to be a lot of ways you can go, and you could even pull out some more options than what’s listed here, but I like to narrow down as much as possible. It’s easy to narrow down to the top tier tonight, with the four aces leading the way.
Again, for me it’s Trevor Bauer on top in tournaments, Jacob deGrom on top in cash games, with Gerrit Cole sitting right there next to both for all formats, and then a slight drop to Patrick Corbin, but with a salary drop that keeps him in play for tournaments. I think it’s a necessity to use one of the top three in cash games, and in tournaments, I would recommend being overweight on this group overall, regardless of how you split it up.
NOTE – I’m shifting my cash game deGrom shares to Cole, it’s a pretty easy pivot, while I’ll be staying heaviest on Bauer in tournaments.
I’ll be passing on Nick Pivetta and Eduardo Rodriguez, but that’s where you can find riskier strikeouts in no mans land.
I’ll be living in this mid-tier for SP2 on DK/FDRFT, and in the few lineups on FanDuel where I skip an ace, this is my first look as well. The group is Rich Hill, Joe Musgrove, Marco Gonzales and Marcus Stroman. I’ve got Gonzales on top of my list for cash, with Hill on top for tournaments, and Musgrove a close third. I wouldn’t argue with any of those three in any format. I’m going on the assumption that Stroman is fine and ready to go, but I still put him last in this tier with a slightly tougher matchup, and like Hill, still some uncertainty after coming off the DL.
I can see some case to chase something cheaper, and I side with Felix Pena and his strikeout ability, though Sandy Alcantara is so cheap that based on his pedigree, he will stay on my list as the guy that is cheap enough to allow for an expensive stack.
FRIDAY NIGHT BATS
There are a lot of things you can consider on this 14-game slate, but I’m going to try and narrow down to the most preferred matchups for hitters tonight. There will be several games that don’t get mentioned, which doesn’t mean there’s nothing at all viable, but I always recommend trying to get your list as concise as possible on these big slates.
White Sox at Rangers – Dylan Covey at Yovani Gallardo
After a 5.42 ERA and 5.34 SIERA in 2016 and a 5.72 ERA and 5.27 SIERA in 2017, I thought perhaps we had seen the last of Yovani Gallardo. But, alas, he is back “throwing” in the major leagues, picking up where he left off with nine strikeouts and nine walks in 12 innings with a fantastic 12.08 ERA. LOL. If we go back to the 2017 data, we see a guy with low strikeouts and high walks to both sides of the plate with notably awful 12.4% walks to lefties. The one thing that has been a moderate skill is limiting hard contact, but that is because he is trying to throw to the outside edges of the zone, and so sometimes he gets swings on bad pitches, but usually they result in walks. He throws a few more strikes to right-handed batters resulting in a little more hard contact, with a moderate ground ball lean. This type of skill set can be a little tricky to pick out the right individual bats against, but the White Sox are highly stackable. As far as the individual bats, I expect Yoan Moncada to be the most popular play. He has the highest ISO and hard hit rate on the team against righties, and along with Matt Davidson (.194 ISO) and Daniel Palka (.203 ISO), their high strikeout rates are muted by the lack of dominance from Gallardo. I am more on board than usual with a batter like Moncada in cash games, as he has elevated on base upside to go with his power. His FanDuel salary looks way to low at $3,300. After Moncada, Jose Abreu is the White Sox batter I’m most interested in, at an equally low $3,300 on FD. As a right-handed batter, he is more likely to see a pitch to hit, and he has the lowest strikeout rate of any batter on the team against right-handed pitching. Avisail Garcia is another guy I would want to throw in White Sox stacks, and he has a standout salary on all sites as a way to get cash game exposure to this game. Tim Anderson is tougher sell on his own when he gets buried lower in the lineup, but he’s got power and speed from a difficult position, so I would put him in the mix with these stacks.
Dylan Covey has fallen back to his old ways over his past three starts, after coming out of the gate in surprising fashion this season. After allowing 10 hits in seven innings to Cleveland, he has come back with two starts of more walks than strikeouts with a very concerning 3:9 K:BB ratio in nine innings. On the good side, his ground balls have remained strong, but I worry that the book has gotten out on him, and teams have figured out to lay off the low pitches. In looking at his zone profile for the season, there are a tremendous amount of pitches that are coming in just below the strike zone. That is why he is getting ground balls when hitters are swinging at those pitches, but if they lay off, a lot of them are called balls, so the Rangers could manage to keep this control sketchy, as they have a lot of patient hitters.
Because of all these ground balls, if I’m going to pick out an individual bat, it’s going to be for tournaments, and it’s going to be an extreme fly ball hitter, and that is what Joey Gallo is, with his 50% hard hits and 51% fly balls against righties. I could throw Rougned Odor (40% HH, 45% FB) and Robinson Chirinos (47% HH, 51% FB) on that list as well. All three of those guys are high strikeout risks, as well as risks for simple fly ball outs even if they make contact, so I won’t be going overboard with any of them. But with the recent walks for Covey with the patience of this Rangers team and a very beatable White Sox bullpen, I do have a lot of interest in a tournament stack here. That is where I would end up at the top of the order with Shin-Soo Choo and Nomar Mazara followed by Elvis Andrus and Adrian Beltre.
LA Angels at David Hess – There are several weak pitchers on the mound tonight, but even with names like Gallardo, Blackburn and Romano, the lowest strikeout rate of any of these pitchers belongs to the Orioles David Hess at just 13.3% K. He is at just 11.8% K to righties and 14.6% K to lefties with high fly balls, average walks and no ability to limit hard contact. Quite simply, he is a pitcher without one plus skill to either side of the plate. He has allowed five runs in fewer than five innings in three straight starts, and there’s no reason that streak can’t continue against a high contact Angels team with good power travelling to a hitter’s ballpark.
Trout Fishing for Homers
On a slate filled with high end bats, Mike Trout is the top of the list, and if I could only pay for one hitter tonight, this would be it. He has low strikeout risk against Hess, he hits the ball hard and in the air, and carries a .313 ISO and .446 wOBA against righties. Just behind Trout would be Justin Upton who gets a boost when facing low strikeout pitchers with swings and misses being his only issue this season. He also hits the ball extremely hard with a 46% hard hit rate and .213 ISO against righties. We take another step down in power from Trout to Upton to Ian Kinsler (.203 ISO) and Albert Pujols (.172 ISO), but both guys have outstanding contact ability, Kinsler at just 10.7% K and Pujols at 13.6% K, so there will be ample opportunities for good things to happen here. We’ve also go Andrelton Simmons with the lowest strikeout rate in all of baseball at just 4.4% to righties, and he should have runners on base and balls in play. And then we’ve got cheap left-handed power potential with Luis Valbuena and Kole Calhoun. Both of these guys are low batting average hitters, but they are cheap enough to add into stacks. Valbuena qualifies as a GPP one-off for me on the basis of his extreme fly ball rate. Against a low strikeout fly ball pitcher, the ball is going to get hit in the air here.
Milwaukee at Cincinnati – Chase Anderson at Sal Romano
A good hitter’s ballpark on a warm night with two good offenses and two bad pitchers? Sounds good to me. Sal Romano is sort-of-OK against right-handed batters with 48% ground balls and average hard contact, so I’m mostly just interested in the beastly Jesus Aguilar here from the right side. He is having an outlandishly good season with a .319 ISO and .411 wOBA against righties on the back of 47% hard hits and 45% fly balls. But mostly it’s lefties we want against Romano with his 15.3% K, 10.9% BB, 40% hard hits and drop in ground balls. Assuming Christian Yelich misses tonight with a back injury, we’re looking at Eric Thames (.320 ISO, .360 wOBA) and Travis Shaw (.290 ISO, .376 wOBA) as the high end plays here. Shaw is the better all around hitter with much better contact, while Thames is more of a boom or bust hitter, in a good spot for the boom. We’ve also got a nice salary on Shaw across the industry making him my top choice here. If you want to get in on the Brewers at some savings with risk, Jonathan Villar and Keon Broxton (might start in place of Yelich) are high strikeout batters who both have power and speed upside and fit in the boom or bust category. I wouldn’t chase after either of them, but they are nice fill ins to a Milwaukee stack.
On the Reds side, both sides of the plate are in play here with Chase Anderson having a history of reverse splits power, along with poor skills to lefties this season. He has 17.9% K and 12.7% BB to lefties with 43% fly balls and 37% hard hits, while to righties it’s 19.6% K, 43% fly balls and 35% hard hits. The Reds have contact and hard hit ability all throughout this lineup. Because of Anderson’s current and long term problems with right-handed power, I would start with Eugenio Suarez (.272 ISO) as the tournament one-off. All the lefties with contact, Joey Votto, Scooter Gennett, Jesse Winker, Tucker Barnhart and Scott Schebler are cash game playable or stackable here. Votto (.419 wOBA) and Gennett (.371 wOBA) are the top plays, but their salaries are a little tough, and as far as expensive one-offs, there are things I like better, so I’d be saving them for stacks. Jesse Winker trails only Votto with a .404 OBP and he is the most affordable cash game piece here, with Barnhart being an OK value as catcher on DK.
Toronto Stack vs Francisco Liriano – Liriano really hasn’t been terrible this season, but he has some unpredictable control, that when combined with the Detroit bullpen, he is always going to make the list as a stack against pitcher. He has a 12.7% walk rate this season along with below average strikeouts and has seen continual drop in his ground balls to righties. With a fully right-handed lineup, it’s easy to see how things could go off the rails here. It is very difficult to pick out individual batters against a pitcher with this type of control issues, but a stack starting with Teoscar Hernandez, Justin Smoak and Yangervis Solarte is affordable, and the lower in the order hitters are a very cheap way to get an upside stack tonight.
Cleveland Indians Stack at Paul Blackburn – Blackburn is an extreme strike thrower with almost no strikeout ability who relies on ground balls and soft contact. We’ve seen both sides of what can happen with this type of pitcher. When BABIP goes wonky on him, he can allow eight runs in two innings like we saw against Houston a few weeks ago, or the six runs in five innings last week in Chicago. But he can also get help from his ballpark and fielders and BABIP his way into quality starts. With this many balls in play, I consider him to be a matchup-driven pitcher, and this is a terrible matchup for him. Between his low strikeouts and the relentless contact of the Indians, there will be balls in play all night. And while he’s trying to induce soft hit ground balls, most of these Cleveland batters hit the ball hard and in the air. Every single batter in the projected lineup has a hard hit rate above 36% against righties, and six of them have fly ball rates above 40% and wOBA’s above .350. Sure, he can always get fortunate, but I am firmly on the side of the Cleveland bats here. The high end and expensive plays are Francisco Lindor (.259 ISO) and Jose Ramirez (.351 ISO), and I would say they are tough spends on their own in this ballpark, but we should see bizarrely low ownership on players of their caliber. One of the first base duo of Edwin Encarnacion (.280 ISO, 44% FB) and Yonder Alonso (.194 ISO, 41% FB) should be added to stacks here with their home run upside. If looking for a cheaper GPP one off, the bottom of the order has some interesting names with Lonnie Chisenhall, Jason Kipnis and Tyler Naquin, but none of them are standout plays on this slate.
SEARCHING FOR POWER
Red Sox at Yankees Righty Power – Eduardo Rodriguez at C.C. Sabathia
We have two pretty decent left-handed pitchers squaring off in a rivalry game tonight. Sabathia has done an impressive job limiting hard contact this season and holding righties to a moderate 1.02 HR/9, but Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez have to be at least mentioned as tournament options here. They are tough spends when factoring in the Yankees bullpen, but we’re looking at a .410 ISO and .491 wOBA for Betts with 45% fly balls, and a 49% hard hit rate and .338 batting average from Martinez against lefties with a long history of power upside. I doubt they’ll make my cut tonight, but these are elite hitters. The Red Sox traded for Steve Pearce yesterday, and people love to play him against lefties, so I expect a little traffic there if he starts, but he’s a big pinch hit risk if he starts ahead of Mitch Moreland, as that should be a platoon.
Eduardo Rodriguez is also limiting hard contact to righties and combining that with a solid 23.2% strikeout rate. Like Sabathia, he is not one of the most attackable pitchers on this slate, but the Yankees power at home is worth a look almost every night, and certainly against a lefty, Giancarlo Stanton deserves a shoutout with his cartoonish 65% hard hit rate, .468 ISO and .493 wOBA. There is massive power from Aaron Judge as well, but with extreme strikeout risk in this matchup. The three skill sets that stand out to me, even more than Judge are Aaron Hicks (20.3% K, .277 ISO), Gleyber Torres (21% K, .268 ISO) and Miguel Andujar (16.9% K, .282 ISO). They are all much more affordable ways to get a piece of the Yankees power without breaking the bank. The Red Sox bullpen is not as elite as the Yankees, but still good enough that I don’t love either side of this game as a stack.
Seattle Power vs Ian Kennedy – Kennedy is an ideal pitcher to look for power hitters against. He allows high fly balls and hard hits to both right and left-handed batters with a 1.70 HR/9 to righties and 1.38 to lefties this season after marks of 1.76 to righties and 2.24 to lefties in 2017. There is a lot of power in the middle of this lineup starting with Nelson Cruz (.273 ISO) and Mitch Haniger (.222 ISO). They are worthy GPP spends tonight with Cruz looking to continue his hot streak. You might say it’s a three-week hot streak, I would call it a five-year hot streak. Either way, he hits a lot of home runs. Kyle Seager (.203 ISO) and Ryon Healy (.183 ISO) are next in line, with 10 and 11 HR and both at 40% hard hits against righties. They don’t rank near the top of my stacking list, but the Royals bullpen is bad enough that things could get out of hand if they get to Kennedy early with the power. This is also an OK spot to look at a DK catcher in tournaments with Mike Zunino and/or Chris Herrmann having home run upside.
Matt Carpenter vs Julio Teheran – I plan to be giving Carpenter multiple high fives as he rounds the bases tonight.
Julio Teheran just can’t figure it out against lefties, at an 18.1% strikeout rate with 43% fly balls and a 42% hard hit rate leading to 1.63 HR/9 to lefties this season after 1.51 HR/9 in 2017. Carp carries an extreme 51% hard hit rate with 48% fly balls and a .251 ISO against righties.
Paul Goldschmidt vs Andrew Suarez – You could throw John Ryan Murphy and Nick Ahmed on this list, but Goldschmidt stands out as an elite play against left-handed pitching, and at his salary on this loaded slate, I would have to think he sees almost no ownership. Suarez is a fine pitcher, but can’t do much more than throw strikes to right-handed batters, showing no ability to control batted balls while allowing a 51% hard hit rate. In 264 PA against lefties since the start of 2017, Goldschmidt has a .330 ISO, .431 wOBA and 51% hard hit rate with a homer every 12.4 AB.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
I could keep going on a full slate wit countless options, but these are the spots that stand out to me. As always, the purpose of this article is not to give you a fully exhaustive list of every possible play, but to help you understand the research process and the stats that go into finding the options. There are always going to be a multitude of options, both for stacks and one-offs, so I always recommend digging into PlateIQ as the day progresses to see what else you might find.
As for my initial leans, if looking for full stacks in tournaments, I would start with the White Sox-Rangers, Brewers-Reds and Angels. The Blue Jays and Indians are next on my list if I get deeper into building multiple lineups. Most of those games have individual power bats to look at for tournaments, and I would add Seattle to that list as well.
In the search for values to help afford aces and hitters with fish-related names, on FanDuel, I would look to the White Sox (Avisail Garcia, Daniel Palka), Angels (Luis Valbuena, Kole Calhoun), Blue Jays (Justin Smoak), Indians (Lonnie Chisenall, Tyler Naquin) and Mariners (Ryon Healy) as options.
On DK/FDRFT, some standout values include some of those same names with Garcia/Palka, Valbuena/Calhoun and Chisenall/Naquin along with the Reds (Jesse Winker, Tucker Barnhart), Russell Martin, Chris Herrmann and Cardinals lefties (Dexter Fowler, maybe Greg Garcia).
I’ll drop back in later with a look at some more value options and lineup construction thoughts.
AFTERNOON LINEUP THOUGHTS
The pricing is tight again today once you get one of the top three pitchers in your lineup on any site. I am still strongly on the side of an ace as your cash game anchor, with the top three of deGrom, Cole and Bauer in such good matchups, I would much rather take a couple risks with my batters. NOTE – With deGrom being scratched, I would go to Cole or Bauer in cash games, for me it will be Cole in cash with heavier Bauer exposure in tournaments. And on the 2-pitcher sites, I expect one ace/one mid-tier (Hill, Musgrove, Gonzales) to be the common cash game build.
We’ve gotten a little extra help already in the search for values with Kole Calhoun and Brad Miller both hitting leadoff for good teams with high projected totals on the road in good ballparks. Greg Garcia is also batting 2nd for the Cardinals against Teheran. Add to that the White Sox outfielders, and you can go so far as to get Mike Trout in your lineups along with an ace if you want to go that route, though that does leave with no other high end bats, so in cash games, I’ll likely stay off of Trout and save him for tournaments.
As an example on the start of a cash game build, on FanDuel, Cole, Calhoun, Miller, Garcia, Moncada leaves you with $3,150 per bat for your last four spots, which will allow you plenty of room to take two bats in the $3,500-$4,000 range (Shaw, Carpenter, Abreu, etc) with two additional values to round things out.
On DK, a Bauer/Hill pairing, with a start of Calhoun, Garcia (or Winker/Palka, etc), Miller (or Smoak) and a punt catcher like Russell Martin leaves you with a solid $3,800 per hitting slot. That will again allow to get a couple of $4k+ bats to build around.
Those aren’t the only value options, just a few that have shown up so far.
In tournaments, I see a lot of merit in going cheaper at pitcher to afford some stacks or high end combos that just simply can’t be bought with an ace. As an example on DK, starting with two pitchers in the mid-tier like Hill/Musgrove, you can start with Trout/Upton/Cruz in the OF and still have the same $3,800 per slot that you were left with after your cash game ace/value start.
On FanDuel, you can accomplish almost any build you want by starting with a pitcher at $7,400 or below, where Hill is. Hill, a Brewers stack of Thames/Aguilar/Shaw along with Trout/Upton leaves you with $2,500 per bat, more than enough to round out the last values need, especially if you just plug in another cheap Brewers and Angels bat.
My hunch is the difference in the offense between these ace-linupes and the mid-tier pitcher lineups is going to leave pitching ownership spread out enough that it shouldn’t be a huge issue. If anything, I think it puts the Hill/Musgrove/Gonzales price range guys into more risk of being overly chalky.
In larger field tournaments, I’m leaning towards more lineups with the cheap pitching while shooting for the moon with some expensive stacks and mini stacks. Even with deGrom being scratched, I’m still going aces in cash games, but now I will lean towards Cole in cash while sticking with Bauer as my tournament ace.
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