DFS Alerts
Close to the Minimum Salary
Max Fried is far from the highest projected pitcher of the slate, but dollar for dollar, he’s my favorite play. He’s the ninth ranked prospect for the Braves and has shown upside in the minors. He’s basically free on DraftKings and he’s facing a Mets’ team whose projected lineup has a .283 xwOBA and a 22% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching this season. The fact that he’s barely an underdog against Jacob deGrom makes me feel better about the play.
Late Afternoon Hitting
The Reds send Homer Bailey back out on the mound with his unmatched ability to allow hits in bunches. With low strikeouts and a dangerously high hard hit rate, he has allowed 40 earned runs on 75 hits while collecting just 35 strikeouts in 58 innings. That is horrendous! David Peralta has stepped up his skills this season, coming in with a huge 52% hard hit rate along with 79% contact, and should have all kinds of balls in play from the top of the lineup at a very reasonable salary.
Late Afternoon Hitting
The game in Arizona features two of the lowest strikeout pitchers on the slate, and could provide some fireworks on both sides. Joey Votto is the elite hitter here with his mix of contact and power from the middle of the lineup. He continues to hit line drives at a high pace and his average continues to creep up after his early season slump. His plate skills are likely to send him to his 4th straight season hitting over .300 with a pile of runs and RBI.
A Top Offense To Target
At 11.6%, Alex Cobb has the 4th lowest strikeout rate of all pitchers with more than 30 innings thrown. Against left-handed batters, it’s not just the low strikeouts, but he also loses his ground ball ability and ability to limit hard contact. If you have salary to spend, Bryce Harper is the elite play here, but at a significant savings is his teammate Matt Adams. Adams has been crushing right-handed pitching since the start of 2017 with a 40% hard hit rate, .289 ISO and .381 wOBA. He has a home run once every 13.4 AB against righties and heads to a home run friendly ballpark in Baltimore.
Leading Off With Savings
Assuming Cozart leads off today for Anaheim, this is too good a value to pass up. The surface numbers look a little rough so far, but under the surface it’s nothing but good news for Cozart this season. Against left-handed pitching, he has just 10.2% K rate along with 42% hard hits, yet has suffered from a low .205 BABIP. As long as he keeps making hard contact, the numbers are going to catch up. Hitting in front of Mike Trout only increases his value.
Middle Of The Order Value
The Cardinals get a big ballpark boost traveling to Milwaukee, and have a top of the lineup loaded with right-handed power against a left-handed starter who is just average. Shortstop is a tough position to find value on FanDuel, and Jedd Gyorko fits the bill perfectly. With some injuries in St. Louis, he has been getting a middle of the order lineup spot against lefties, and his numbers against LHP since the start of 2017 have been near elite with a .303 ISO and .425 wOBA along with low strikeouts.
Play One Of The Aces
There are two aces on the mound today with skills far above the rest of the field, Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom. If salary were no issue, I would side slightly with Verlander in all formats, but the savings to deGrom is meaningful enough that I’m more likely to end up there. It’s not an ideal matchup against the low strikeouts Braves, but deGrom’s skills are flawless and matchup proof. He has a 33.3% strikeout rate (5th best in the league), a 6.9% walk rate, a 2.74 SIERA (4th best in the league), all while allowing just 25.2% hard hits (5th best in the league). Anyway you slice it, this is one of the best pitchers in baseball and he already has a 10-K game against these Braves this season showing there is still upside in this matchup.
Don't Let The wOBA Fool You
It’s always fun to stack against Doug Fister, and while we don’t have a great ballpark to attack, I’m still going to target hitters against him on this slate. He continues to be a lower strikeout guy, and while he does have a decent wOBA and groundball rate, he’s still giving up a ton of hard contact. Fister is allowing a 44.6% hard hit rate with a .186 ISO against lefties this season. Don’t let the low wOBA scare you away from Kyle Seager in this spot. He has a .215 ISO with a .400 CXwOBA and a 39.2% hard hit rate against righties. He has a very .212 BABIP, which indicates we could see a lot more production from Seager this season.
Cheap Leadoff Hitter
I like Matt Boyd and I’ve been using him more and more as the season goes along. That said, I don’t like this spot for him. The Angels are full of right-handed hitters, and while Boyd has been better this season, he has still allowed a .336 wOBA against righties since the start of 2017. Zack Cozart should hit leadoff for the Angels, and he’s one of my favorite value plays on the slate. Third base is a productive position when constructing lineups, but there is also some value to be had at this price. Cozart has a .257 ISO with a .389 wOBA and only a 12.3% strikeout rate against lefties since the start of 2017.
Hitting The Ball Well Right Now
I keep playing Marcell Ozuna waiting for his big blow up game, and while he’s 10 for his last 20 at the plate, he only has one extra base hit in that span. The ISO is .105 for Ozuna against lefties this season, but his average exit velocity is 93.6 and he has a 51.6% hard hit rate. After crushing lefties early in his career, Ozuna hasn’t shown a lot of power against them over the last two seasons. Still, he’s hitting the ball well right now, and his price is too low to pass on in this matchup. Suter has a 35.7% hard hit rate with a .239 ISO against right-handed hitters this season.
Limited Cheap Pitching Options On FanDuel
With FanDuel cutting a few games off the main slate, we lose some really decent pitching options, and because of that, I think Luke Weaver is in play. It’s not the greatest spot in the world, but there is certainly strikeout upside in this Brewers lineup. The projected starters have a 22.5% strikeout rate against righties this season and all but two of them are over 20%. Weaver has a very impressive soft contact rate this season and continues to have an above average hard to soft contact ratio. While he has a high wOBA against lefties, he still has a very low ISO and a respectable strikeout rate. He’s been very good against righties this season, as he has a .251 wOBA with a .121 ISO and a 26.1% strikeout rate against them.
Great Spot On Paper
I’m quickly becoming a fan of Caleb Smith, and I particularly like his strikeout upside on this slate. He has a 31.6% strikeout rate with a 3.94 xFIP this season. What’s most impressive about Smith’s strikeout rate is he’s doing it against both righties and lefties. He has a very good swinging strike rate, and he’s getting hitters to chase out of the zone on 30.5% of his strikes. He continues to have a very good ISO, and he draws a great matchup against the Padres. The projected starters for the Padres have a .323 wOBA with a .173 ISO and a 26% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching this season. As a team they rank 22nd in wOBA against lefties this year.
Getting Hit Hard
Raise your hand if you rostered Alex Cobb his last start out against the White Sox. Embarrassingly, I took a shot at Cobb in GPPs and it went about as well as expected – he allowed six earned runs in 3.2 IP. There had been some hope that Cobb had been trending in the right direction prior to his start in Chicago but it turns out it was simply false hope. Even if I still had some hope for Cobb, this is undeniably a terrible spot for him against the Nationals at Camden. Cobb is allowing a barrel every 6.9 plate appearances (that’s not good) and owns the 12th highest average exit velocity (90.5 mph) of all pitchers that have recorded 100+ plate appearances. His .391 xWOBA places him 15th of 134 pitchers that have recorded 150+ plate appearances. All of this is just a fancy way of saying that Cobb is getting hit, and getting hit hard, this season and that’s likely to continue on Monday versus the Nationals.
Other tagged players: Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Juan Soto, Anthony Rendon
Wide Splits
The Red Sox are the top overall stack of the early slate and Boston lefties particularly have a good matchup against Aaron Sanchez who has struggled mightily against LHB throughout his career. While Sanchez has been terrible against hitters from both sides of the plate this year he does own some pretty extreme career platoon splits – .323 wOBA, 4.69 xFIP vs LHB; .259 wOBA, 3.67 xFIP vs RHB. Devers specifically is real cheap on DraftKings ($3,600) and he’s seemingly been a bit unlucky this year despite hitting the ball hard – he owns the 13th highest average exit velocity (92.7 mph) of all hitters with at least 100 plate appearances.
Other tagged players: Mitch Moreland, Rafael Devers League Average
David Price has truly been mystifying over his last two years with the Red Sox as he has done his best Jekyll and Hyde impression – he’ll string together a few strong performances only to get completely blown up. Price has allowed 5+ earned runs in 4 of 21 starts over the last two years and four runs in two other starts. His advanced run prevention metrics have him as a league average pitcher (4.05 SIERA in 2017; 4.11 SIERA in 2018) and I have no problem attacking a league average lefty with right handed power bats at Fenway.
Other tagged players: Justin Smoak, Yangervis Solarte, Russell Martin, Teoscar Hernandez