Game 2 of the World Series is Wednesday night with lock at 8:08 p.m. ET.
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Tampa Bay Rays (Blake Snell) at Los Angeles Dodgers (Tony Gonsolin)
The Dodgers controlled the action in Game 1, after both teams had a quiet first three innings.
Vegas sees the Dodgers as favorites again, at -130, so closer than last night’s game. The implied run totals have the Dodgers at 4.3 runs and the Rays at 3.8 runs.
The Dodgers are going bullpen game as they start with Tony Gonsolin. The Bales Model really likes Gonsolin on DraftKings, but I am not so sure. In Game 7 of the NLCS, which was Sunday, Gonsolin threw 41 pitches. I think that could be close to his same allotment for tonight.
That means you most likely will have Blake Snell in your lineup, and he does rate well on the Bales Model for DraftKings as well.
The issue with Snell so far, in terms of DFS, is that he has not been accumulating many strikeouts in the postseason.
He has 19 K’s in 19 2/3 innings. If you take away his first start against the Toronto Blue Jays, he has 10 K’s in 14 innings.
The New York Yankees and Houston Astros were difficult teams to strikeout in the regular season, I’ll give you that. The Dodgers were also a difficult team to strikeout in the regular season, but had 11 strikeouts in 24 outs last night.
I would roll with Snell on DK, but maybe not look to use him in the Captain spot.
Yesterday, I wrote that I like to look at batter vs. pitcher career numbers to see if there is any edge to gain. Bellinger had strong success off of Glasnow — and what do you know, Bellinger kicked off the party in the fourth inning with a two-run home run.
There is almost zero familiarity between these two teams and the opposing starting pitcher. The one player who has familiarity with Snell is Mookie Betts thanks to his time in Boston.
Similarly to yesterday, Betts likes seeing Snell. He is 7-for-23 lifetime with two doubles and a home run. With the day that Betts had last night, he should be licking his chops.
I will gladly utilize Betts on both sites tonight.
The Bales Model has Manuel Margot as its favorite DK positional player and favorite Rays positional player on FanDuel. A lot of that has to do with the projected lineup having Margot as the leadoff hitter.
Kevin Cash did some peculiar things with his lineup for Tuesday’s game and I expect to see more shuffling around for Game 2. I think he needs to consider moving Brandon Lowe down in the lineup, same thing for Willy Adames, and maybe move Kevin Kiermaier up a few spots after last night. Lowe and Adames are just automatic outs right now and have been for most of the postseason.
I like the value Margot brings, if he does hit leadoff. He has five home runs in the 2020 playoffs so far.
With the lefty Snell on the mound, A.J. Pollock has to at least be on everyone’s radar. His platoon splits are almost laughable considering how much of his success is predicated off of lefties. For the regular season, he went 19-for-55 off of lefties with 12 extra-base hits.
I do not like Justin Turner as much as the Bales Model tonight. He is of course a top-of-the-lineup hitter, but has actually struggled against lefties in 2020. He features a .340/.419/.495 against RHP and .234/.362/.383 against LHP in 2020. He is a fantastic hitter, but most likely his first three appearances are against Snell.
To mix in more Rays into lineups, I think I start to lean toward the bottom of the order (or at least those projected there). The Rays’ offense in this postseason has been extremely reliant on the home run ball. Hence the popularity of Randy Arozarena. He has seven postseason home runs with 11 RBIs and no hits with men in scoring position.
The Rays need to start scoring in more avenues than one or two-run home runs to have a chance against the Dodgers.
Mike Zunino and Kevin Kiermaier are both worth a look to mix in some of the higher priced Dodgers’ hitters. They both can go deep at times, as both have featured in the playoffs and Kiermaier offers stolen base upside. Kiermaier showed no concerns for his wrist injury last night with the way he was swinging.
