DFS Alerts
Danny P
One thing that immediately stands out when you look at Daniel Poncedeleon’s FanGraphs page, other than his ridiculous name, is his extreme fly ball numbers in AAA this season (28.9% GB rate). You have to be a rare breed to have success in the Majors giving up that many fly balls, especially if you’re pitching at Great American Ballpark where Poncedeleon will make his Big League debut on Monday night. Danny P does have strong strikeout numbers this season which likely makes this play pretty volatile but if forced to choose, I would rather stack the Reds than play Poncedeleon in GPPs.
Other tagged players: Joey Votto, Eugenio Suarez
Impending Doom
I wrote about the impending doom of the Brewers starting rotation over the weekend and I am back for more after Suter’s 6 ER, 3 IP Sunday implosion. Chacin fits the mold of Brewers starter that has performed much better (3.68 ERA) than his advanced metrics would indicate (3.94 FIP, 4.72 xFIP, 4.84 SIERA). To be fair, he does profile better than teammate Chase Anderson – his batted ball numbers aren’t terrible (getting hit a little hard but ground ball numbers are good) and there’s nothing that stands completely out of whack. He’s run a little pure in terms of HRs allowed this season (only 8 in 115 IP) and I would expect he wouldn’t continue to be as fortunate as the season progresses. The reason why I like the Nationals stack so much is because they are one of the few teams that can give you both power and speed upside and they are priced too low for their talent level.
Other tagged players: Juan Soto, Trea Turner More Savings In Another Prime Game
There are values everywhere, and high team totals everywhere tonight. On DK/FDRFT, I am going out of my way to find some value bats to make the high end pitching fit, and this Minnesota/Toronto game has a lot to like. The stand out value is Yangervis Solarte with his dual position eligibility on DK and the lowest strikeout rate of any batter in the Blue Jays lineup against lefties at just 10.9%. He’s even hit for some surprising power this year with a .242 ISO against lefties, but we’re really rostering him for the balls in play in the middle of a lineup that could be batting around a few extra times tonight against a beatable pitcher making just his second start of the season.
The Worthiest Spend
It’s really a buyer’s market on FanDuel tonight. There are a load of high end bats in good matchups, and with values to be found at nearly every position, it is not hard to spend top dollar on a couple bats. You can make the case for Jose Ramirez or Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts or J.D. Martinez, Matt Carpenter, Freddie Freeman, the list goes on and on. But for me, the best hitter in baseball is still Mike Trout, and he is not even the most expensive bat on the slate, and he is facing an attackable pitcher and a weak bullpen. Lucas Giolito just doesn’t have the stuff to get past the .304 ISO and .437 wOBA of Trout. With Giolito’s walks, he’ll have runners on base in front of him. If he gets walked, he can steal a base and score, and he has home run power against any member of this bad White Sox bullpen.
Ownership Discount
Patrick Corbin is extremely interesting to me. A suboptimal matchup against the Cubs (21.7 K%, 107 wRC+) clearly has him behind the Jacob deGrom and Luis Severino’s of Monday’s slate but temps in the low 70’s and wind blowing in at Wrigley may make the matchup a little less intimidating. Outside of deGrom, Corbin has the highest strikeout rate (30.4 K%) on the slate to pair with the second best SIERA (3.06). Despite a stellar year for the southpaw, we could see Corbin’s ownership come in at single digits with deGrom/Severino/Kluber drawing all the attention. I’m not going here in cash games but having access to Corbin’s upside at an ownership discount has me intrigued in GPPs. It should also be noted that Corbin is super cheap on FanDuel where he’s $8,700.
More Value Out West
There are a lot of teams out there tonight with the potential to blow the slate wide open, and the Angels could be somewhat overlooked in the lone West Coast game. The White Sox Lucas Giolito has an outlandishly awful 23:36 K:BB ratio against left-handed bats this season and when he does accidentally throw a strike, he allows a high 45% fly ball rate. Kole Calhoun should see the leadoff spot tonight looking to continue his resurgence from his early season woes. Calhoun has a 44% hard hit rate over the past month and five home runs in his last eight games. He’s cheap on all sites with on base, run scoring and power upside.
Too Cheap In The Heat
The 100-degree heat in Texas brings us the high total game of the night, and some affordable right-handed bats against beatable left-handed pitchers. Adrian Beltre doesn’t have a lot of home run power left in his bat, but he still hits the ball hard and often with a huge line drive rate against lefties. He hits in the middle of the lineup against a pitcher in Brett Anderson who has struck out just 13.4% of right-handed batters this season. Beltre is best used in cash games or Rangers stacks, but this FanDuel salary is just too low.
Value Out West
With high end pitching and some obvious bats at high salaries, we need a few discounts tonight, and Jose Abreu is a standout value on DK/FDRFT against a pitcher allowing power to right-hadned batters. In his rookie season, Jaime Barria has just 16.3% strikeouts to right-handed batters along with 48% fly balls and 42% hard hits leading to a .252 ISO allowed to righties. Abreu has always hit better against fly ball pitchers and is priced down due to a career low BABIP leading to a batting average that is likely to come up closer to his usual level.
Ace At A Discount
Of the five ace pitchers tonight, Ross Stripling is the one at a discount on DK/FDRFT. The discount comes from the fact that he sees limited pitch counts, which typically leave him at six innings. But that is priced in here, as his skills are every bit as good as the four pitchers above him. He has a 28.1% strikeout rate with just 3.7% walks and 29.9% hard contact allowed. Dating back to early May when he joined the rotation, he has allowed more than two runs only twice in 14 starts, and he has seven or more strikeouts in eight of those starts and 0-1 walks in 12 of them. There is just nothing to quibble with in these skills, so I’ll be happy to take the discount here.
The Ace To Play
We’ve got five solid pitchers up top with ace level skills, but Jacob deGrom leads the way with his home matchup against the Padres. His 30.7% strikeout rate is the highest mark on this slate, his 1.68 ERA is the lowest and his 23.3% soft contact rate is the highest. He has pitched at least seven full innings in 9 of his last 11 starts and has only allowed more than three runs once all season, and that was in early April. The skills alone put him into play regardless of matchup Add in a high strikeout, low power opponent and he is the easy play in cash games as long as the weather holds, and a top tournament target with a high floor and a high ceiling.
Start of Sunday's BOS-DET game will be delayed due to rain
The start of the matchup between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers on Sunday afternoon will be delayed due to rain. There’s yet to be any confirmation of an official start time, and the Tigers 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 Chris Sale not being pulled from their starts early because of a mid-game delay, and as Kevin Roth detailed in the latest update to his MLB weather forecast, this game has a great chance to play through without much concern following this initial weather stoppage.
As reported by: the Detroit Tigers via Twitter
Start of Sunday's ATL-WAS game will be delayed due to rain
The start of the matchup between the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals on Sunday afternoon will be delayed due to rain. There’s yet to be any confirmation of an official start time, and the Nationals 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 Max Scherzer and Mike Foltynewicz 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, there remains the possibility of additional delays with clusters of storms and showers upstream, which keeps starting pitchers extremely risky options, even if the contest is eventually played to completion.
As reported by: Jorge Castillo via Twitter Jesus Aguilar (hamstring) scratched Sunday; Keon Broxton replaces
Aguilar has been scratched from the Milwaukee Brewers original confirmed lineup and will not start in Sunday’s matchup against the Los Angeles Dodgers due hamstring cramping. He’ll be replaced in the lineup by Keon Broxton, who will play right field and slot into the leadoff spot in the order, which bumps Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich up to second and third, respectively. It goes without saying that there have been some noteworthy changes to this Brewers order, so be sure to check out the updated lineup on the Starting Lineups page as they face off against left-hander Alex Wood at home this evening.
As reported by: Adam McCalvy via Twitter Punt the Position
Beckham has two things going for him – he’s cheap and he hits toward the top of the order. The matchup against Happ isn’t a good one but his price tag and positional eligibility on FanDuel (SS) make him a focus of lineup construction. With Lindor off FD’s main slate it appears the best approach is to simply punt the SS position and Beckham is the best option to do so. While he’s not SS eligible on DK, Beckham is still only $3,100 which keeps him in play there.
Lead-off Hitter on the Cheap
I don’t love picking on J.A. Happ, but ever since Manny Machado was shipped out of town, Tim Beckham has been given the everyday shortstop role and has been leading off for the Orioles. This is one of baseball’s worst offenses, but Beckham will hold the platoon-advantage against Happ and is cheap across the industry. Beckham doesn’t have a ton of power, but he does have a 834 OPS against lefties this season and I don’t mind him as a punt if you need some savings.
