DFS Alerts

Site Specific Values

Justin Bour is in play everywhere against Julio Teheran, but his FanDuel salary is just silly at $2,500. Teheran just isn’t any good against lefties with a 17.9% K rate, 17.5% BB, 42% fly balls and 43% hard contact. Bour hits the ball hard, and has power upside as well as a high on base floor in this matchup. He’s basically a must play in FD cash games at this salary, and even at high ownership, I’ll be on board in tournaments.

The Bat To Pay For Tonight

The hitting is sparse on this pitching heavy slate, and there is not a lot in must-spend territory. If you have a little salary to play with Paul Goldschmidt looks like the top bat tonight against Martin Perez. Perez has scary low 12.5% strikeouts, and so far this season hasn’t even been able to limit hard contact like he has in the past. Even if he were to get back to his previous average hard hit rates, Goldschmidt would override that with his extreme 51% hard hits, .316 ISO and .448 wOBA against left-handed pitching. He’s a top option in all formats on all sites.

He's...Bad

Forget about the humidor, the Diamondbacks enter Monday’s slate with the highest implied run total on the board (5.1) in a favorable matchup against Rangers southpaw Martin Perez. Martin Perez is….bad. Perez has been allowing a ton of hard contact (44.7%), has a walk rate (9.7%) that almost matches his strikeout rate (12.8%) and owns a slate high 5.34 SIERA. DBacks hitters will be chalky so you may have to be creative if you want a truly unique lineup (bottom of the order stack, perhaps?) but this is undeniably a good spot for them.

Expensive Chalk

My favorite stack of the day is unsurprisingly the most expensive and likely chalkiest stack of the day. There aren’t many strong hitting options on Monday’s slate and the Indians stand out as one of the few offenses with good context – good park, bad pitcher.

Ervin Santana only has one start under his belt this season so it’s hard to gauge his true skill-set at this point in his career, but it seems likely that he’ll be a below average starter, if not well below average starter. Santana put up strong surface stats in 2017 but his 3.28 ERA far outshined his 4.30 SIERA indicating he may have been a tad lucky (.245 BABIP, 79.5 LOB%). While Cleveland bats are pricey, there are plenty of mid-tier pitching options to make an Indians stack work.

Lineup Fillers

This blurb is going to be a little weird. Because I am going to recommend the Rockies while not actually recommending them. A classic tout move, I guess. The reality is that I would rather take a shot at CarMart in GPPs but Rockies hitters (removed from Coors) are noticeably priced down and squaring off against a pitcher that has had plenty of struggles this season. While I would avoid using an all out Rockies stack, Blackmon and Arenado are specifically guys that I can see myself using as lineup fillers because I simply believe they’re more skilled than their $4,900 and $4,800 price tags on DraftKings would indicate.

#Good This Season

It’s weird to say, but Derek Holland has been #good this season. Or at least good in the sense that he’s pitched a lot better than what we had come to expect out of him. Holland has been a slightly better than league average starter this season (4.04 SIERA, 24.1 K%) and that’s all you need to take advantage of a matchup against a Padres offense that is third in the league in strikeout rate versus LHP (24.9%) and a bottom third wRC+ (88). Holland is clearly a secondary mid-tier option on this slate (give me all the Ray + Price) but he does have some upside considering the matchup.

Fixed by the DL

Carlos Martinez has really struggled this season, largely due to control issues. CarMart owns the seventh highest walk rate in the league (11.3%) among starters that have thrown at least 90 innings. Despite all of his control issues, CarMart has excellent batted ball numbers – he owns a 49.4% ground ball rate, 31.7% fly ball rate, fifth lowest average exit velocity (84.8 mph) among starters with at least 150 batted ball events, and fourth best barrels/plate appearance (2.3%). Rostering CarMart will take a leap of faith that his short DL helped fix some control issues, and while it’s not a leap I am willing to take in cash games, I think he makes for a very strong GPP play at his price tag.

Great Matchup On Paper

Robbie Ray has been hit or miss this season, but he has a really good matchup at home tonight. Ray has a 4.90 ERA but his 3.63 SIERA suggests he’s getting a little unlucky this season. He’s been impressive against lefties, but he has a .390 wOBA with a .251 ISO against righties. With that said, Ray does have a 30.3% strikeout rate against right-handed hitters.

The Rangers’ projected starters have a .133 ISO with a 21.3% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching this season. They haven’t shown the power to dominate lefties and have a lot of strikeouts in this lineup. Ray is my favorite point-per-dollar pitcher on the slate, though I’m really hoping he can keep the walks down in this start.

Start of Sunday's CHC-STL game will be delayed due to rain

The start of the matchup between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday night will be delayed due to rain. There’s yet to be any confirmation of an official start time, and the Cardinals have not committed to a specific timeline for providing further updates. The confirmed late start is better news for the prospects of starting pitchers like Kyle Hendricks and John Gant not being pulled from their starts early because of a mid-game delay, but as Kevin Roth detailed in the latest update to his MLB weather forecast, storms appear poised to hold in the area throughout the evening, making it impossible to entirely rule out a late postponement.

Jose Martinez (sore ankle) scratched Sunday; Jedd Gyorko replaces

Martinez has been scratched from the Cardinals original confirmed lineup and will not start in Sunday’s matchup against the Chicago Cubs due to ankle soreness. He’ll be replaced in the lineup by Jedd Gyorko, who will play third base and slot into the fifth spot in the order, which bumps Marcell Ozuna up one batting position to the cleanup spot and shifts Matt Carpenter over to first base defensively. It goes without saying that there have been some noteworthy changes to this Cardinals order, so be sure to check out the updated lineup on the Starting Lineups page as they face off against right-hander Kyle Hendricks at home this evening.

Astros righties look to capitalize on Mike Minor's massive splits versus RHB this season

The Houston Astros head into Sunday’s matchup with Mike Minor and the Texas Rangers looking to avoid a fourth consecutive game of scoring three runs or fewer and hope to salvage a win in this afternoon’s series finale. On the plus side, the Astros draw an exploitable matchup against Minor, who possesses some pretty straightforward splits, allowing a 0.347 wOBA, 42.2% hard-hit percentage, and 46.9% fly ball rate to right-handed batters this season. These metrics are very dissimilar to his numbers versus left-handed bats, as Minor has actually been quite good against lefties by limiting them to a 0.284 wOBA and 33.3% FB%, all while posting an impressive 20.8% K-BB% and 3.18 xFIP on the year. This makes the two Astros lefties, Josh Reddick and Tony Kemp, easy players to avoid in all formats given the drastic dropoff in Minor’s splits when sacrificing the platoon advantage. Unfortunately, Houston is currently down two of their more prolific right-handed hitters in Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa, but their absence does possibly present some value in Tyler White (0.190 ISO, 0.358 xwOBA since 2017) as a tournament stack filler, despite relatively uninspiring statistics thus far in his 26 career plate appearances versus left-handed pitching. This also leaves Alex Bregman (0.288 ISO, 0.4441 xwOBA vs LHP since 2017) and George Springer (0.236 ISO, 0.400 xwOBA vs LHP since 2017) as the two clear top targets from this Astros offense, and although Springer has struggled of late, he did belt a home run in Saturday’s loss, which can hopefully springboard him into more consistent success at the plate. Evan Gattis (0.248 ISO vs LHP since 2017) always has some extra pop in his bat when squaring off with a homer-prone southpaw, and he carries some additional appeal on DraftKings where he has catcher eligibility, though he does remain extremely cheap on FanDuel as well. As for Yulieski Gurriel, he continues to underwhelm from a statistical perspective, but he does have the definitive batting position advantage over a higher upside bat like J.D. Davis (61.9% HH%, 0.216 ISO, 0.489 xwOBA), who has flashed some upside in his 43 career plate appearances versus left-handed pitching, making him an intriguing one-off option or final piece of an Astros stack in large-field tournament formats.

Huge Price Difference

One of the more noticeable price discrepancies between the sites today is Matt Adams priced at 4.6K on DraftKings and only 2.7K on Fanduel. While the Draftkings price is a bit steep, on Fanduel Adams offers extreme value batting out of the cleanup spot in a potent Nationals lineup. All Nationals lefties profile well against Urena, who has allowed a .351 wOBA to LHH. On Fanduel, take advantage of the savings Adams provides, as he has a .952 OPS and .287 ISO against RHP this season.

Platoon Power

Gattis is one of the top catching options on Sunday’s slate and he is most notably priced extremely low on FanDuel where he’s $2,500. Altuve’s absence from the Astros lineup has led to Gattis hitting fifth for the last couple of days and I would expect a similar spot in the order for him on Sunday. Gattis has shown great power (.231 ISO) over the course of his career when he has the platoon advantage and he’s simply too talented of a hitter to be priced at $2,500. Gattis is more expensive on DraftKings but is still in play in all formats due to the weak catcher position.

Hard To Miss

It’s hard to miss but I do think it should be highlighted that J.D. Martinez is only $4,600 on DraftKings. That’s about $1,000 too cheap for one of the league’s best hitters who has put up absolutely insane numbers this season (172 wRC+, .318 ISO). A matchup versus Berrios is not ideal but J.D’s skill-set + price tag + park make him an auto-play in all formats for me on DK. Martinez is $4,700 on FanDuel and is more of a secondary option there.

An Affordable Massive Favorite

J.A. Happ couldn’t ask for a much better matchup for his Yankees debut than a Royals team that is selling at the trade deadline. Happ and the Yankees opened as massive -360 favorites, with the Royals initially projected for less than three runs. While Happ struggled a bit in July, he seemed to find his form in his last outing against Baltimore, striking out 9 in 5 innings of work. For a pitcher who has often been priced at or above 10K this season, he comes at a bit of a discount today, especially given the matchup. As long as he can overcome any “first home game as a Yankee” jitters, Happ provides both safety and upside on today’s slate.