We already highlighted Luis Severino and James Paxton in our Saturday 5/19/18 picks article. We also highlighted the Yankees and Cubs as popular game stacks at their respective team price points. Here we will look at some value considerations for your GPP lineups.
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Opponent - ARI (Patrick Corbin) Park - NYM
FD - 30.15 DK - 15.74
We went top of the line in our picks article today with pitching on the main slate giving you arms like Severino and Paxton that will make it difficult to put some powerful bats into our lineup, especially on DK where locking two top-tiered arms can be quite the tough proposition. I wanted to give you some cheaper, albeit much more risky plays to consider here for your GPP lines. Through seven starts, Steven Matz has made it through six full innings only once, but he has managed to limit the damage, surrendering just two earned runs off 13 baserunners in his last two starts. The K/9 is up more than one full batter over his career numbers, and he is going up against a Diamondbacks team tonight that strikes out 26.2% of the time with the third worst team wOBA in the majors. Matz is extremely cheap across the industry, pairing him with Severino on DraftKings still leaves you with nearly $4K to play with per bat. You could potentially pair them in cash games and get away with it, but on FanDuel you'll want to reserve Matz for tournament lines only. Our top plays are in matchups against teams that despite being poor offenses don't strike out often, so pivoting to a cheap play like Matz with potential for some big K upside if he can find a way to give us 5+ innings could pay off big time.
Opponent - SD (Clayton Richard) Park - PIT
FD - 28.81 DK - 14.55
Nick Kingham gave the Pirates two impressive starts earlier this season before being optioned to triple-A with Pittsburgh managing to run a four-man rotation for a stretch. Now with a fifth arm needed they have recalled Kingham for a matchup at home against one of the leagues worst offenses, the San Diego Padres. San Diego comes into the day with the second-worst wOBA in all of baseball (.291), and it gets even worse, dropping to .285 against RHP. They strikeout at a whopping 26.5% clip and are a bottom five offense in runs, home runs, and ISO. There is nothing to fear even for a young rookie making his third start. The Padres for all intents and purposes are a Triple-A club, so Kingham should feel right at home on the bump today. I don't know that I trust that FanDuel price, but on DraftKings, You can consider Kingman as a strong SP2 option, perhaps even more so than Matz.
Texas Rangers vs. Lucas Giolito (CHW)
Opponent - CHW (Lucas Giolito) Park - CHW
FD - 11.72 DK - 8.86
Opponent - CHW (Lucas Giolito) Park - CHW
FD - 10.86 DK - 8.26
Opponent - CHW (Lucas Giolito) Park - CHW
FD - 10.12 DK - 7.77
Opponent - CHW (Lucas Giolito) Park - CHW
FD - 11.73 DK - 8.61
Despite have some top quality arms to put on the hill today, we still have some really terrible ones to take advantage of when looking to make our GPP lineups. Case in point, Lucas Giolito. We sort of covered this matchup as a mini stack in the picks article, highlighting Choo and Profar, but I wanted to take this a little bit deeper for you to show you just what we're working with here. Giolito has the highest xFIP among qualified starters this season, sitting at a crazy 6.94, and he's walking nearly two batters more per nine than he strikesout. While he's always been rather lousy, with a career 5.66 xFIP, 4.98 ERA, and 33.7 hard hit percentage, he's taking it to a new level in 2018.
As I mentioned in the picks article, Profar is an excellent value play at shortstop. He's got his wOBA back up over .300 and has been doing quite well at the plate over the past couple of weeks. Choo meanwhile has ridiculous numbers against the split (.382 wOBA, .882 OPS, .199 ISO for his career). Both are priced for excellent value options and free up salary to spend up on at least one if not both Mazara and Gallo.
Nomar Mazara leads the Rangers with a .363 wOBA this season, and nearly 40% of his hits have gone for extra bases including ten home runs. He's got a career .338 wOBA against the split with his OPS approaching the .800 mark. Then there's Joey Gallo, who has a .321 wOBA and leads the team with 13 home runs and a .266 ISO. If you can make both of these pieces fit (probably easier to do on FanDuel), then do so, but if I had to choose one to pair with Profar and Choo, I'd take Gallo easily. It's looking like a light wind will be blowing out to right in Guaranteed Rate Field tonight, under mostly cloudy skies with no concern of precipitation, so lock in the Texas bats with confidence tonight, they should have no trouble doing some damage to Giolito.
Boston Red Sox vs. Dylan Bundy (BAL)
Opponent - BAL (Dylan Bundy) Park - BOS
FD - 12.92 DK - 9.84
Opponent - BAL (Dylan Bundy) Park - BOS
FD - 11.44 DK - 8.75
Opponent - BAL (Dylan Bundy) Park - BOS
FD - 10.82 DK - 8.44
Opponent - BAL (Dylan Bundy) Park - BOS
FD - 10.43 DK - 7.89
For our next stack we're going to go a little more obvious, but still take a contrarian route. The Red Sox are favored for 5.2 runs today against Dylan Bundy and the Orioles, the second highest total on the night behind the 5.3 projection the Yankees hold. It's looking like a 69% chance of rain tonight in Fenway, so be sure to check the forecast before locking this stack in, but if they play ball in Boston you definitely want to have some exposure to targeting Bundy.
Bundy may not be as bad as Giolito, but he certainly is not good. He's coming into his tenth start of the campaign striking out nearly two full batters more per nine than his career totals, but still sports a 4.17 xfIP with almost two home runs surrendered per nine and a 34.6% hard-hit rate. We're talking about the guy who allowed seven runs on five hits, including four home runs without recording a single out against the Royals earlier this month. While a performance that bad comes along just once in a lifetime, that doesn't mean Boston can't put their own brand of hurt on the twenty-five-year-old right-hander.
The contrarian route I alluded to earlier, is to take the left-handed, mid-to-bottom of the order guys from the Boston lineup, who are a little cheaper than your Betts, Ramirez, and Bogaerts, though you can certainly consider those guys as well if you like, and have the funds to do so. Andrew Benintendi is my one, top of the order, more expensive play I'll look to tonight. Benintendi has a .371 wOBA against the split this season, with an OPS of .873 and a walk rate equal to his K percentage. He's also got seven stolen bases this season, second to just Mookie Betts allowing for some sneaky upside. After Benintendi, we'll look to the trio of Devers, Nunez, and Bradley. I covered Devers in the picks article, despite his numbers being down, he has been seeing the ball better over the past couple of weeks and is a great value play at third base given the matchup. Nunez and Bradley meanwhile allow us to round out our Red Sox stack with two of the top points per dollar plays at their respective positions according to our MLB lineup projection system.
The Red Sox are looking like a great plan of attack one through nine tonight against a struggling Bundy. This particular stack will allow you to separate yourself from the crowd a bit, but you can certainly play around with it and see what works best for you. Good luck tonight. Cheers!
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