FREE TODAY - Million Dollar Musings: Friday, March 29th
Is your lineup Premium Approved? In this space, either CheeseIsGood or STLCardinals84 will break down the slate from top-to-bottom like no one else in the industry can – exploring the matchups from every angle, steering you toward the best plays on the day, and helping you become a better and more complete DFS player as you continually expose yourself to the “process” and the “why,” rather than just looking at the “what.” Have a boat? We’ll teach you how to fish.
Friday, March 29th
I hope your Opening Day was glorious. Outside of a couple of weird happenings (Jordan Zimmermann and Chris Sale switching places), things went mostly according to plan. Just a note of caution, especially if you are new to MLB DFS: Don’t get complacent when a slate plays out as expected. We will have plenty of days when the “right” plays do the right things, but always remain consistent with your play and don’t ramp up your entries after a good run, as there are going to be days when everything goes haywire.
For most of the season, Friday is going to be one of the busiest days, with most weeks having a full slate of 15 games. However, due to the opening of the season on Thursday, we are left with just an eight-game slate tonight. This makes things a little bit easier to break down than a typical Friday.
FRIDAY NIGHT PITCHING – More than just a lump of Cole
We are loaded with upside pitchers tonight. I do see a couple of cash game standouts, but in tournaments, it is going to be tough to keep too tight of a core. Most of the upside comes with some risk, so I’m planning to keep it pretty well spread out.
The Ace
Gerrit Cole at Tampa – Cole finally lived up to his hype in 2018, posting a 34.5% strikeout rate, which was just a tick behind Verlander and Scherzer for the best mark in the league. His walks did come up a bit with them to 8%, which didn’t hurt his production, but did cut into his innings at times. He turned into more of a fly ball pitcher, especially to lefties, where he racked up an incredible 41% K rate along with 47% fly balls. Against righties, he was a little more human, but still with an excellent 28.3% strikeouts and better control. If he pitches similarly this season, he should enjoy Tampa with a ballpark that is friendly to fly ball pitchers and plenty of strikeouts in the lineup. It’s not a matter of whether or not Cole is the top pitching option tonight; it’s just a matter of how you want to spend your salary cap. We’ll get into this more in the hitting section, but there really aren’t a bunch of must-spend bats, so I will be going out of my way to start my cash game builds with Cole. There are enough upside pitchers at lower salaries that I will not go all-in on Cole in tournaments, but certainly I want him where I can make it work.
Maybe An Ace Again, At Least Tonight
German Marquez at Miami – If there’s going to be a chalky pitcher below Cole, it is probably the Rockies’ German Marquez. Not only did he end 2018 on an incredible run, he opens with what will be one of the most attackable pitching situations all season, in Miami. The Marlins were dead last in the league in scoring in 2018, and if anything, they are a little worse this year. Meanwhile, Marquez was pitching to a 33.9% K rate with just 5.5% walks in the second half which included double digit strikeout games in five of his last six starts. That was by far the most upside we’ve ever seen from him and it remains to be seen if he can carry this dominance over to a new season. In looking at his splits, I would say it looks real against right-handed batters, but he still looks like basically an average pitcher against lefties. Officially, I want to be under the field on Marquez early in the season, but man this Marlins lineup is tough to risk sitting it out. They will likely only have two or three lefties in the lineup, and none of them are very threatening. As much as I want to be out on a pitcher who has been good for such a short amount of time, if his second half skills were even partly real, then he would be in play in this matchup at this salary. Right now, my plan is to use him as my SP2 in cash games on two pitcher sites. I am nervous about how popular he’ll be in tournaments, but the points per dollar upside is even higher than Cole, so there’s no way I’m going to completely fade him regardless of projected ownership.
Strong Upside, High Risk
Jack Flaherty at Milwaukee – Flaherty was a top pitching prospect who started living up to his hype early, posting a 29.6% strikeout rate and 3.34 ERA in his first full season with St. Louis. His only question mark is with his control to lefties, where he walked 12.6% as well as allowing average hard contact. He is going to get strikeouts, even against a team like Milwaukee, so it’s really just about the risk from a powerful opponent in a hitter’s park combined with the sketchy control. There are several issues with the matchup in Milwaukee. First, the Brewers are just plain good. Second, the ballpark is hitter friendly, mostly for left-handed power. Third, they are well set up to specifically challenge his weakness, control to lefties. They have four left-handed bats with walk rates above 9% against righties, three of them over 11%, in addition to the fact that they are all legitimate power hitters. On this slate, with his salary similar to Marquez, I can’t make any case to go here in cash games. I would just rather take the guy pitching in Miami. In tournaments, once I get to about 10 lineups, I’ll want to start working in some Flaherty, but for the most part, this is a game I will sit back and watch, waiting to use Flaherty later in better spots.
Stronger Upside, Extreme Risk
Freddy Peralta vs St. Louis – Opposing Flaherty is an even more extreme version of a high-risk, high-reward pitcher. The Brewers’ Freddy Peralta has thrown 78 career innings in the majors and has a high 29.9% strikeout rate accompanied by a frightening 12.5% walk rate. Those extremes are not much different than what he showed in the minors. It’s not just that it’s all walks or strikeouts, he is also an extreme fly ball pitcher who allows hard contact. This makes Peralta the ultimate three-true outcomes pitcher. Strikeouts, walks, home runs. In his favor is the fact that his control is much closer to respectable against right-handed batters, with a heavily right-handed opponent tonight. He’s also been much better about controlling the hard contact to righties, so while it’s not anywhere close to low-risk, I will be much more willing to consider when his opponents lean right-handed. There are also only three high walk batters in the Cardinals lineup, so Peralta should have a chance to keep the walks under control. Ultimately, with his limited experience and wild skill set, this is a high-risk play best suited for large-field tournaments. If you are only building a lineup or two and are risk-averse, then sit it out, but if you are only concerned with the ceiling, then you’ll want to be at least even with the field in tournaments. He has an extremely attractive salary on Yahoo at only $32 as just the 10th most expensive pitcher tonight.
Robbie Ray at LA Dodgers – If you’ve been playing MLB DFS for any length of time, you are probably all too familiar with Robbie Ray. When he seems to be flying high and in a can’t-miss matchup, he misses badly. Just when you give up on him, he cruises in with dominant starts. He is eerily similar to Peralta, but pitching from the left-side of the plate with more of his control issues, fly balls and hard hits allowed to right-handed batters. Like Peralta, he has such elite strikeout ability, with two straight seasons over 30%, that he can have big DFS performances at any time. In 2017, he had more of the good, whereas 2018 was more of the bad. In looking at the matchup, the thing that jumps out at me is the high walks up and down the Dodgers lineup. Ray is at more risk when facing a team who will be patient and force him to throw strikes. My standard stance on Robbie Ray is that you are supposed to play him in tournaments anytime he is not going to be popular. And you are supposed to be cautious anytime he is going to be popular. We’ll keep an eye on the chatter throughout the day and the projected ownership, but I would expect him to be very low owned on this slate, especially on DK at that salary. It is a frightening matchup and a frightening skill set, but I am absolutely going to take some shots in multi-entry tournaments.
Matchup Aided Upside
Joey Lucchesi vs San Francisco – The Giants were saved from being the worst offense in 2018 only by the Marlins, and it may well be those two fighting it out again for spots 29 and 30 on the scoring list. They picked up right where they left off on Opening Day, picking up just five hits and no runs. While we still don’t know exactly what the starting lineup will look like every day, there’s no more than three right-handed bats with decent contact skills, and this team just looks bad against lefties. Lucchesi only has 130 career innings, but his 26.5% K rate is much higher than what yesterday’s starter Eric Lauer showed. The only blemish in his skill set last season was hard contact to right-handed batters, and that is just not a big concern against the Giants. When facing lefties, Lucchesi was nearly untouchable, with 28.9% strikeouts, 63% ground balls and just 25% hard contact allowed. The salary is very likeable across the industry, and I’ll have plenty of shares in tournaments on all sites. He probably won’t pitch deep enough to put up a monster game, but I think he’s better than where he’s priced. If unable to afford a Cole/Marquez combo, I would be happy with Lucchesi as an SP2 in cash games on 2-pitcher sites.
Is That All The Good Pitchers? No, There Are Morton
Charlie Morton vs Houston – Morton has seen a late career surge, drastically improving his strikeout ability the past two seasons when he was a member of the Astros. Moving to Tampa, he’ll be looking to repeat his 28.9% K rate from 2018. Even if he can’t quite get back there, his 26.4% rate from 2017 is more than acceptable for a guy who has consistently limited hard contact throughout his career and piled up 53% ground balls to right-handed batters last season. He is 35-years old, and he slowed down a little in the second half, so there is some risk here, but the overall numbers of the past two seasons say he’s a strong option. The other risk would be that we’ve seen Tampa do some weird things with their pitching staff, and I would be surprised if they want to push the innings of Morton early in the season. Houston does not look like a good opponent for strikeout upside for Morton. He got the majority of his strikeouts against lefties, while focusing more on the ground balls to righties. The Astros will likely have seven righties in the lineup, and only two of them have above a 20% strikeout rate. There are enough other good pitchers going tonight around the same pricing tier that Morton will be just a secondary option for me, but he’s viable in any format.
Ross Stripling vs Arizona – Joining Morton in the questionable innings category is Dodgers starter Ross Stripling. His teammate Hyun-Jin Ryu was outstanding on Opening Day, and was removed from the game after six innings and 82 pitches despite his dominance. In 2018, Stripling was brilliant with near elite skills across the board, but was allowed to throw 100+ pitches only once all year and only reached seven innings once. He spent about half his time in the bullpen and like all Dodgers pitchers, is going to be subject to questionable innings all season. However, I am not as overly concerned about this as I might be later in the year. I don’t expect any pitchers to have a full leash in their first start, so if we can get six innings out of Stripling tonight with the skills he showed last year, there is still plenty to like. Arizona should have six lefties in the lineup tonight, and Stripling was dominant against lefties in 2018. He had a high 29.4% strikeout rate with just 5.1% walks, while picking up 48% ground balls and allowing just 26% hard contact. That led to a .289 wOBA against lefties. I love the pitcher, I like the matchup, I just don’t love the innings upside for the salary. The case to use Stripling tonight is that all the high risk strikeout pitchers could see bad starts, and a quality start with Stripling’s solid and safe skill set could easily outpace them all. But, he misses the cash game cut and his pure upside is not at the top of the list either.
If You Want To Get A Little Sneaky
Matt Boyd at Toronto – The Blue Jays provided the world with a good laugh on Opening Day, nearly allowing Jordan Zimmermann to throw a perfect game and finishing with just two hits in 10 innings. Toronto is not a good team, but they are also not really quite that bad. Somebody has to be the dud on Opening Day. But for a left-handed fly ball pitcher like Boyd, this is still a plus matchup. Their biggest power threats are also high strikeout batters and there is not a lot of patience, with only two hitters in the projected lineup with a walk rate above 9%. Boyd was quietly solid in 2018 with a 22.4% K rate and 7.2% walks, which improved as the season wore on, carrying a 24.3% K rate with just 5.1% walks after the All-Star Break. In 2017, Boyd threw his slider just 11% of the time, and in 2018, that number jumped to 31%, and the strikeouts went up with it. I am heavily invested in Boyd in season long leagues (whoop-dee-doo) and generally want to be on him in DFS early in the season while his salary is low. The unfortunate thing tonight is that we don’t desperately need the savings, and there are a lot of other good pitching options. He is my top pitcher for savings but I don’t expect to need that savings in cash games. In tournaments, I’ll absolutely use Boyd on lineups where I want to load up the bats.
Derek Holland at San Diego – Holland was a true jabroni in 2017 when he walked 12% of batters with just 16.6% strikeouts. However, he turned things back around in 2018, posting a 23.3% strikeout rate with a closer-to-respectable 9.2% walks. The big problem for Holland is that he still allows a ton of hard contact to right-handed batters and can’t keep the ball on the ground. There is absolutely some strikeout upside here, but there is also enough right-handed power for San Diego, that I would be more on the side of Padres bats in this matchup. The salary, notably on DK, is pretty great, but like with Boyd, I don’t see this as a night where we desperately need to chase low salary pitchers. Because Holland struck out 25% of righties, I am going to take a stab or two in DK tournaments, but this is not a high priority option on this slate.
Trevor Richards vs Colorado – As a rookie, Richards was decent with a 23.8% strikeout rate and 9.9% walks, but had trouble keeping the ball on the ground and allowed too much hard contact. The sample size was not huge, but he was very reverse-splitsy in 2018, allowing 45% hard contact to right-handed batters. His numbers against righties looked nearly identical to those of Derek Holland, but they make much more sense coming from the lefty Holland. Richards was just shaky enough with the control to both sides of the plate, that it is a concern when combined with the hard contact and the fly balls and line drives. I like pitchers in Miami, and playing against Colorado on the road is usually a fine idea as well. Officially, I have Boyd ahead of Richards in this tier tonight, which means I won’t have a lot of exposure at all to Richards, but he is on the list. I will be at least 10-15 lineups deep tonight before I get to Richards, so if you’re not multi-entering, he would miss my cut.
Matt Shoemaker vs Detroit – This is just plain old guesswork against a bad opponent. Shoemaker threw just 31 innings in 2018 and 77 innings in 2017, so we simply don’t know what we’re getting. Way back when he was healthy, he was an average strikeout pitcher with good control, allowing a lot of fly balls, though showing no consistent issues with hard contact. He was basically a decent pitcher with occasional upside. He is cheap enough, and the Tigers are bad enough to get him onto the list. I prefer his opponent tonight, but the bottom line here is that I just don’t know what we’re going to see from Shoemaker. I wish I could tell you what to expect here, but I am not going to make a random guess on something we can’t know. He will make it into my tournament mix on DK once I get to about 20 lineups, but he will not be a key part of my builds tonight.
Nate Eovaldi at Yusei Kikuchi – I’m not going to play Kikuchi against the Red Sox. I am also not going to start making ‘Yusei’ jokes; I am above that. I think you should know by now that I do not make dumb jokes and I do not like puns. The whole ‘Yusei’ Kikuchi, I say Kikachi thing is already out of hand. I do not have time for nonsense.
I suppose you can make a case for Eovaldi tonight, despite the Mariners blowing up Chris Sale last night. Seattle has a solid lineup, but a pitcher with the elite control of Eovaldi will always have a chance for strong starts on those night when BABIP is in his favor. He’s not quite enough of a strikeout guy to get me excited and the salary is not low enough to match the point per dollar upside of the other tournament options. I am basically ignoring the pitchers in this game, though it’s not out of bounds to use them.
Pitching Cliff Notes
CliffSSSSS Notes! My mind was blown yesterday by joemoney42, who pointed out in the comments that Cliff Notes is actually CliffsNotes. I had no idea. What this shows is not only did I fail to read all the books I was supposed to read in high school English class, I didn’t even carefully read as far as the cover on the cheat sheet version of those books. That is fantastic. So, on the Wikipedia page for CliffsNotes (yes, I went to the Wikipedia page for CliffsNotes), this is what is says – CliffsNotes (formerly Cliffs Notes, originally Cliff’s Notes and often, erroneously, CliffNotes). Erroneously? But Cliff (space) Notes is not even there. And so, it’s not erroneous.
Cliff’s Notes came from a guy named Clifford, and were named after him. I guess that makes a lot of sense. So we are now officially going to say that the Musings Cliff Notes were inspired by the great Clifford Hillegass in 1958, were then to be amended as Cheese Notes, but given the greatness of Sir Clifford Hillegass, I wanted to keep his name at the forefront. So, Cliff Notes it will remain. Play ball!
OK, back to the pitching. This is a strong pitching slate, especially for tournaments. The cash game breakdown is pretty simple for me. Play Gerrit Cole. He’s the best pitcher going, the matchup is great, the ballpark is great- just play Cole. On FanDuel, if you just don’t want to spend that much, then German Marquez would be the next choice down. If you really want to save salary at pitcher, which I don’t think is necessary, it would be Joey Lucchesi for me.
On DK, a Cole/Marquez pairing looks the ideal to me. If you need more salary space than that, you can again go down to Lucchesi, or even down to one of Matt Boyd or Trevor Richards.
That’s really it. However, things open up a lot once we get into tournaments. I see Charlie Morton and Ross Stripling as two of the best actual pitchers on this slate, but I don’t love them in DFS tonight. The salary is tough on Stripling, and the matchup and potentially fewer innings are less than ideal for Morton. If playing on Yahoo, that looks like the place where Stripling would become a stronger option at just $35.
The most interesting names tonight are Jack Flaherty, Freddy Peralta and Robbie Ray. These three are the very definition of high risk, high reward. With all of these guys, I do not want to be over-exposed due to the risk, but all should be relatively low owned compared to their upside. I’ll keep an eye on the projected ownership, but I would expect we see a ton more Marquez than any of these three tonight. I’ll spread it out amongst them while anchoring my Marquez exposure in cash games on 2-pitcher sites.
Cole, Marquez and Lucchesi can all be used in tournaments anywhere and everywhere as well. When we get to the lower tier, I like Matt Boyd a good bit, especially on DK. I’ll also mix in a little Trevor Richards and Matt Shoemaker, and possibly some Derek Holland, though I’m not decided on that yet.
Friday Night Bats
It is tougher to find hitting tonight than it is to find pitching. Because of what we talked about with the high-risk, high-reward pitching above, there is also some high-risk, high-reward offense likely to appear at very low ownership. But let’s start with the few spots that look the best for offense tonight.
Angels at A’s – Matt Harvey at Marco Estrada
If you’ve been with me the past couple seasons, you know one of my favorite pastimes is making Dark Knight jokes about Matt Harvey, since he completely fell off the map in 2017. However, he was a bit Two-Faced in 2018, as he was much less of a Joker with an improved second half of the season. He still allowed a lot of hard contact to lefties, but put a bit of a Freeze on righties with a more respectable 46% ground balls and 34% hard contact. He stayed around the strike zone all season, walking just 5.6% of batters from both sides of the plate, so it’s really all about the hard contact. I’m certainly comfortable playing Khris Davis or Matt Chapman, both of whom hit the ball hard and in the air against right-handed pitching.
Khris Davis vs RHP – .315 ISO, 45% HH, 52% FB
Matt Chapman vs RHP – .258 ISO, 44% HH, 42% FB
Stephen Piscotty doesn’t have quite the fly ball lean of those two, but is another righty who hits the ball hard 42% of the time against same-handed pitching. This Oakland team is not set up as well from the left-side of the plate, although they did bring in Kendrys Morales to fill in for the injured Matt Olson. If Morales gets into the lineup with his new team tonight, he will be high on my board, as he continued to hit the ball hard against right-handed pitching in 2018 with 44% hard hits and a .220 ISO. Other than Morales, we’re looking at a cheap Robbie Grossman if he’s in the leadoff spot and a fairly priced Jurickson Profar, both of whom showed good contact skills against righties. Profar has a little power as well, and would be my first choice here, while Grossman is just a fine fill in option as a salary saver.
Marco Estrada is one of the most extreme fly ball pitchers in the league, so Oakland is a great landing spot for him. Still, he has a long climb back up to respectability after the worst season of his career in 2018. He posted just a 16.6% K rate, which is well below his career average of 21.1, and with just an average 8% walk rate and his 55% fly balls, he ended with a 5.64 ERA. He’s a similar pitcher to both sides, but has always allowed a bit more power to right-handed batters, so when picking players against him in tournaments, I’ll look first for right-handed power. It just so happens that that Anaheim has an Angel In The Outfield who is right-handed, and has as much power as anybody. Of course, Mike Trout is an elite play just about every day, but this is a particularly strong matchup for him. If you are spending up on a bat, this is as good a choice as any. Unfortunately, with Justin Upton on the IL, it gets pretty dicey after Trout. The next two biggest power options, Justin Bour and Kole Calhoun are lefties, where Estrada is tougher to square up. We’re likely to see a lot of balls in play from the lower half of the order tonight, but it doesn’t come with a ton of power. I would say that Albert Pujols is the next place to shop for a home run, and he’s cheap, but certainly not a standout play at first base. He still makes a lot of contact, but is not the hitter he used to be. After Pujols, Estrada will run into four more batters with contact rates above 81% – Andrelton Simmons, Zack Cozart, Jonathan Lucroy and David Fletcher. Any of these guys are viable fill ins or stackable just in the hopes that we see a bad-luck BABIP parade from Estrada, but there’s nothing worth chasing here. The highest ISO for any of those four was the below average .145 of Cozart and none reached the 36% plateau in hard hits.
Tigers at Blue Jays – Matt Boyd at Matt Shoemaker
Matt Boyd has some things going for him, but he’s pretty easy to figure out how to attack. He is a left-handed pitcher who allows 50% fly balls to right-handed batters. Even with just an average 11% HR/FB rate in 2018 he allowed 1.44 HR/9 to righties, and he’s at 1.60 HR/9 to righties for his career. With all those fly balls, we’re simply looking for righties with home run power here. The two names that fly to the top of the list are Randal Grichuk and Teoscar Hernandez. They are the only two Toronto batters who had an ISO above .200 against lefties, with a .234 for Grichuk and a .243 for Hernandez. They are both strikeout risks: 27.3% K for Grichuk and 31.9% K for Hernandez, so I wouldn’t go overboard.
One thing I want to touch on here is the idea of playing a hitter against one of your pitchers in tournaments. Generally, most players just completely avoid playing any batters against pitchers that are on their roster. While that makes logical sense, there are actually quite a few cases where there is nothing wrong with being in play on both sides of a matchup on difficult slates. Matt Boyd is useable tonight, but it’s not as if we should expect a shutout. He is the type of pitcher who can post a very strong start while allowing a solo home run or two. When it’s clear which batters are the most likely targets for that power, I have no issue playing one of them in that spot. In addition, we also have a bad Detroit bullpen behind Boyd, so even if we see six good innings, they will get an at bat or two against a reliever.
The Tigers are going to be a tough team to get excited about this season. Christin Stewart finally got something done in the 10th inning last night, and is an interesting power option, but basically, this team is Nick Castellanos, then maybe Stewart or Niko Goodrum, followed by the shell of Miguel Cabrera. As discussed in the pitching section, we have very little idea what to expect from Matt Shoemaker. He has thrown just 108 innings over the past two seasons, but was a decent pitcher once upon a time. Taking his career splits, he’s been even to both righties and lefties as a pitcher with solid control, average strikeouts and a fly ball lean. This is the type of pitcher I just want to look for some power against. That leaves me with the aforementioned Nick Castellanos (.205 ISO, 47% hard hits) as the top option, and possibly adding Christin Stewart (.180 ISO, 46% hard hits) and Niko Goodrum (.215 ISO, 39% hard hits) to the mix. Because this slate is so low on quality offense, I will grab a couple of Tigers stacks in the event that Shoemaker is just not ready to go, but for the most part, this will be a place to hit a tournament one off here and there.
Padres Righties vs Derek Holland – Holland really came back to life in 2018, but the one thing he still didn’t solve was hard contact to right-handed batters. He allowed 45% hard hits and 39% fly balls to righties last season, leading to a .205 ISO and .344 wOBA against despite a solid 25.1% strikeout rate. The unfortunate thing tonight is that this will probably not go overlooked at all. On a full slate with spread out pitching, we could expect very low ownership on San Diego, but with the addition of Manny Machado and the rookie phenom Fernando Tatis, I expect the Padres to be a fairly popular team early in the season. I would say they are certainly stackable here, but my interest is mostly in individual power upside in tournaments. Manny Machado is an elite hitter against lefties, just 8.4% strikeouts to go with his .238 ISO last season, and along with Mike Trout is one of the top bats on the slate. Play him in all formats, cash and tournament. Wil Myers is next in line with his .232 ISO and 46% hard hits against lefties, but much more strikeout risk than Machado at 25%. Past Machado and Myers, I will be looking to Franmil Reyes (.253 ISO, 50% HH) and/or Hunter Renfroe (.240 ISO, 47% HH). It’s unclear whether Reyes and Renfroe will see the field at the same time, but whichever one draws the start is near the top of my tournament list. I would be fine to throw in Austin Hedges as a cheap catcher on DK, as that is a very weak position tonight. The rookie Fernando Tatis is likely to have bumps in the road with a high strikeout rate, so while I’d gladly throw him into a stack, he is not as much of a priority as the other righty bats here.
Boston at Yusei Kikuchi – It’s going to be a couple months before we can really know what to expect from Kikuchi. He was a great pitcher in Japan, but doesn’t project to be a huge strikeout pitcher in the majors. It’s also been said that they plan to carefully monitor his innings this season, so there is the likelihood of getting into the shaky Seattle bullpen for much of the game. I am hopeful that Boston will be somewhat of a forgotten team tonight, as they typically get far more ownership at home. I’m not going to spend on Betts and Martinez in cash games ahead of players like Trout and Machado, but I love these guys, as well as a full stack in tournaments. Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez are two of the top overall hitters in the league, and both were outlandishly good against lefties in 2018:
Mookie Betts vs LHP – .368 ISO, .496 wOBA, 13.5% K, 44% HH
J.D. Martinez vs LHP – .244 ISO, .410 wOBA, 22.8% K, 42% HH
Xander Bogaerts is also high up my tournament list. Though his .139 ISO against lefties does not look inspiring, he had a 43% hard hit rate with 35% line drives, implying there is plenty more upside there. Everything else for Boston will be saved for stacks, but this is one of my top stacks of the night.
GETTING SNEAKY AGAINST GOOD PITCHERS
Cardinals Stack at Freddy Peralta – As mentioned in the pitching section, Peralta is a total wild card. This goes both for him and against him. It’s a risk to play batters against him or to try and pick out the right hitter, with so many walks and strikeouts. However, when the walks come all together and then the fly balls show up at the right time, it’s easy to see how some big innings can appear. In his limited sample size, he has been better to attack with left-handed bats, which gives us our old friend Matt Carpenter (.280 ISO, 49% HH) as the prime option, along with Dexter Fowler or Opening Day hero Kolten Wong. Fowler and Wong are extremely cheap on FD, and fine to throw into some lineups there, but despite the 2-HR from Wong, these guys do not jump off the page. Even with Carpenter, I don’t see him as a must spend, with the highest likelihood outcome of any at bat being a walk, a strikeout or a fly ball out. I am more interested in a full stack here, adding in the big righty bats of Paul Goldschmidt, Marcell Ozuna and Paul DeJong, and just hoping that Peralta is wild, leading to too many base runners and an ill-timed home run or two.
Milwaukee Lefty Power or Stack vs Jack Flaherty – Flaherty is a pitcher that I do not want to play against much this season. On a normal slate, I would just cross off all bats against him, but this is not a normal slate. I will not touch a Brewers bat in cash games, but in large field tournaments, I will take a few shots on a lefty power bat and potentially even a low percentage stack. If Flaherty’s questionable control to lefties Flaher’s up, we could see some baserunners with the patient approach of Christian Yelich, Travis Shaw, Mike Moustakas and Yasmani Grandal. All of those lefties have the power to do the damage on one swing with a couple runners on base. Again, this is a low percentage play against a talented pitcher, but worth looking at on this type of slate.
Dodgers Stack vs Robbie Ray – This goes in the same bucket as the Cardinals-Brewers game. No individual batter is going to stand out as a great play against a pitcher with a 30%+ strikeout rate. But, there are always likely to be runners on base with the 15% walk rate of Ray against right-handed batters. He’s also known to allow hard hit fly balls, so when he’s not striking guys out or walking them, home runs are on the docket. He allowed a 1.47 HR/9 in 2018 and the Dodgers will have the low strikeout Justin Turner (13.8% K) along with A.J. Pollock (21.6% K, .220 ISO), Chris Taylor (22.9% K, .195 ISO) and Enrique Hernandez (15.7% K, .182 ISO). You could take a stab on one of these righties on their own, but my preference would be at least a mini-stack of Dodgers, knowing that we’ll see some baserunners and have the potential for some big innings from all over the lineup.
Seattle Power vs Nate Eovaldi – Eovaldi is a pretty good pitcher, and not a guy to go out of your way to attack. But like we’ve seen in other places on this slate, there is just not a lot there. The one thing we can count on with Eovaldi is seeing a lot of strikes, he walked just 2.2% of righties and 6.5% of lefties. He’s pretty good at limiting hard contact and above average with ground balls, so we need batters who can provide their own power and get the ball in the air. That would be Edwin Encarnacion (.247 ISO, 41% HH, 42% FB), Jay Bruce (.147 ISO, 35% HH, 49% FB) and Mitch Haniger (.219 ISO, 36% HH, 39% FB). You could certainly take a shot on Domingo Santana or Tim Beckham who have both started their season on fire, but they both lean towards ground balls and are not high on my target list personally. Nothing here stands out, and I certainly won’t have a Seattle bat in my cash lineups tonight.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
There are no can’t miss spots tonight on offense. There are no teams approaching a 5-run team total and no game totals over 9 runs.
In cash games, I see this as a night to be sure and spread out. I would not want to be heavily invested in any one team in my cash lineups, with every team having a clear path to a disappointing night. If you have some salary to spend, Mike Trout and Manny Machado would be the building blocks, although I won’t sacrifice Gerrit Cole in order to get both. You’ll notice I have all three of Cole, Trout and Machado marked as Core Plays, but this does not mean that you have to use all three in the same lineup. The Trout/Machado is more of an either/or and I wanted to give you both of the top options.
In tournaments, spreading out is also viable, but I’m very interested in stacking several spots tonight. Even though nothing jumps off the page, it is always likely that at least one game gets out of hand and into a shaky bullpen. I have Boston at the top of my list, followed by San Diego, but I’m equally as interested in the risky stacks against high variance pitchers, which brings the Dodgers, Cardinals and maybe even Brewers into the picture. Both sides of the Tigers-Blue Jays and Angels-A’s game are also stackable, though my preferences there lie with individual bats and mini-stacks.
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