MLB PrizePicks Predictions Today: Top Plays for Tuesday, June 18th
Traditional MLB DFS formats aren’t the only way to profit from daily fantasy baseball. MLB PrizePicks is a great fantasy pick’em site where we can take today’s projections versus theirs and combine two or more baseball predictions for sizeable payouts.
In this space, we’ll explore a few PrizePicks plays for the upcoming MLB slate. This article isn’t the be-all, end-all of great plays or a recommendation for a full ticket; it’s simply a starting place for you to explore thinking about the game within the game. Maybe you want to scatter these plays across entries. Maybe there are only two or three you think are worth playing. Daily fantasy pick’em gives us the flexibility to make only the plays in which we think there is value rather than being forced to create a full lineup while competing against the best DFS players in the industry.
PrizePicks is daily fantasy baseball made simple, and our MLB PrizePicks picks tool makes the process even simpler.
If you haven’t signed up for a PrizePicks account, make sure to use the PrizePicks promo code ROTOBONUS and get a $100 deposit match. Also, check out more apps like PrizePicks.
All stats cited are since the start of the 2024 season unless otherwise noted.
MLB PrizePicks Predictions for Tuesday, June 18th
- Freddie Freeman MORE Than 2.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
- Lance Lynn MORE Than 5.5 Strikeouts (DEMON)
- Nestor Cortes LESS Than 17.5 Outs
- Jake Irvin LESS Than 28.0 Fantasy Points and MORE Than 5.5 Hits Allowed
- Griffin Canning LESS Than 25.5 Fantasy Points and MORE Than 5.5 Hits Allowed
Freddie Freeman MORE Than 2.5 Total Bases (DEMON)
The Dodgers in Coors is where we start looking at hitting DEMONs. Freddie Freeman and his 2.5 projection is a bit soft, according to our projection of 2.9 total bases. It’s a lefty vs. lefty situation, but we don’t really care, as Freeman has a .390 wOBA and a .247 ISO on a 10.1% barrel rate against southpaws since the start of the 2023 season. We’ve never been afraid to play him in fantasy against lefties, and he gets to face one of the worst pitchers in the game in Austin Gomber tonight, who has allowed a 9.9% barrel rate on an 81.4% contact rate. This is a high-contact, high-power spot for Freeman.
Lance Lynn MORE Than 5.5 Strikeouts (DEMON)
In DFS, I dislike Lance Lynn because of the homers he gives up, but he has one of the longest leashes in the game when he’s rolling and is getting nearly a strikeout per inning. With an implied total under 4.0 (3.66), Vegas tells us that the Marlins will struggle to knock Lynn out of the game, making his projected 95 pitches go a long way. In these scenarios, we should always like Lynn to get to 6 Ks. We only have him projected for 5, but the DEMON boost is just good enough for us to get there with the 6th K.
Nestor Cortes LESS Than 17.5 Outs
Nestor Cortes can go 7 innings, or he can go 5 in just about any start against any opponent in any ballpark. Against maybe the best offense in baseball in Yankee Stadium as one of the most extreme fly-ball pitchers in the game, his floor and ceiling get reduced. Cortes is a good pitcher, but when the floors and ceiling get reduced against an opponent like the Orioles in a ballpark like this, 17.5 is just a really high threshold to cross. We have Cortes projected for 16.1 outs, which seems about right.
Jake Irvin LESS Than 28.0 Fantasy Points and MORE Than 5.5 Hits Allowed
The Diamondbacks are really pesky. Arizona has just a 20.8% K rate against righties, with only one player over 22%, while Irvin only has a 21.4% K rate. They’re gonna tag the ball at a high rate. Factor in Irvin’s 48.9% hard-hit rate and 8% barrel rate, and we should love that we have Irvin projected for 25.4 fantasy points and 6.5 hits allowed. Irvin’s been good recently, and the Diamondbacks haven’t been a fantasy juggernaut. This is an average real-life pitcher against a really good real-life offense.
Griffin Canning LESS Than 25.5 Fantasy Points and MORE Than 5.5 Hits Allowed
Not gonna lie; I think Griffin Canning gets smashed tonight by the Brewers about by about as much as any other pitcher outside of Coors Field. His K rate is only 15.2%, while his hard-hit rate is 50.6%. The Brewers’ projected lineup has some thump with 3 barrel rates of 11% or more. In a sneaky-good ballpark for homers, we should be lining up the Brewers’ bats for DEMON plays against Canning for LESS than 25.5 fantasy points or MORE than 5.5 hits allowed. We have Canning projected for 23.9 fantasy points and 6.3 hits allowed. Considering that his floor for fantasy points is in the single digits (if not negative), and these are auto-plays for a lot of my contests.
All projections referenced are accurate at the time of writing but subject to change.
Projections aren’t soft across the board, so I’m playing about half of my normal volume tonight, but I’m gonna max out my tickets with standard projections plus one DEMON. Look out for the Shohei Ohtani and the Brewers’ DEMON projections to go live and measure that against our projections.
Image Credit: Getty Images