Tuesday has a split slate: There are two games in the 1:10 pm ET early slate and 10 games in the 7:05 pm ET main slate. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
Carlos Carrasco is likely the best pitcher today, but he’s in the early and all-day slates, which is a shame, because there aren’t many safe options otherwise: Only five pitchers have opposing implied run totals of fewer than 4.0 runs:
Of those pitchers, Carrasco easily has the largest moneyline odds at -265, and he also has a lot of upside against a projected White Sox lineup that has the slate’s fourth-highest past-year strikeouts per at-bat rate at .285. If we put Carrasco’s range of Vegas data in our Trends tool, we find that FanDuel pitchers in similar situations have typically crushed value:
If you’re playing in the early or all-day slates, he’s an easy choice.
In the main slate, Matt Harvey and Jameson Taillon will likely be chalky choices because of their opponent implied run totals: They aren’t as beneficial as Carrasco’s 3.2, but they’re significantly better than the opponent totals for most of the pitchers in this batter-filled slate. Both had solid first outings this season, going for 21.20 and 22.95 DraftKings points. Both have solid matchups against the Phillies and Reds, whose projected lineups have bottom-five past-year wOBAs and top-six past-year SO/AB rates. Neither guy has a super high K Prediction (6.8 and 5.7), but that is because neither pitcher relies on strikeouts: They both have SO/9 rates below 8.0 over the past year. Taillon has perhaps less upside, but he also has a superior opponent run total and moneyline odds, and he’s at home in Pittsburgh in a pitcher’s park. They’re $100 apart on DraftKings, while on FanDuel Harvey is $700 more expensive.
Values
Robbie Ray is the second-most expensive pitcher on DraftKings today at $9,200, but he’s just the 11th-most expensive pitcher on FanDuel at $7,500; for that reason, he has the slate’s highest FanDuel Bargain Rating at 94 percent. That, in itself, is valuable:
And that says nothing of his strikeout upside: He leads all pitchers today with an 8.3 K Prediction and has a massive past-year SO/9 rate of 11.762. Further, the opposing Giants are implied for ‘only’ 4.0 runs — which is a little lower than you’d might expect given their .321 wOBA this season. It helps that they’re playing in San Francisco, which gives Ray a perfect 100 Park Factor. (The pitcher opposing him, Giants’ Jeff Samardzija, has a Park Factor of 93, which is lower than Ray’s because Samardzija is a righty and Ray is a lefty; our Park Factor metric adjusts for handedness for pitchers and batters.)
For whatever it’s worth — and it may not be much given the small sample — this is only the fourth time in his entire four-year career that Ray has had a K Prediction of eight-plus. He crushed the first three time:
For more on Ray, see Matt LaMarca’s Three Key Players.
Drew Pomeranz is a direct pivot from Ray on FanDuel: He sits at $7,800 against the Orioles. On DraftKings, he’s the superior option given price: His $7,300 salary there is considerably lower than Ray’s $9,200. This will be Pomeranz first start of the year for the Red Sox; he was on the disabled list to start the season, and both he and stud shortstop Xander Bogaerts (bereavement list) are now active again. Pom has the day’s second-highest K Prediction at 7.5 and faces an Orioles team that has a past-year SO/AB rate of .266. When he’s had a K Prediction that high in the past, he’s typically done well:
That said, it’s hard to ignore the Orioles’ current implied run total of 4.7 — the seventh-highest mark in the slate. Pom is still a slight favorite because of Boston’s massive 4.9-run total, but this is not a great game for pitchers. However, the matchup will likely result in lower ownership for Pow, who has still shown upside in poor matchups:
With FantasyLabs ownership projections of just five to eight percent on FanDuel and zero to one percent on DraftKings, Pom warrants some consideration in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs). Pro subscribers will be able to review Pom’s ownership in our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after lineups lock.
Fastball
Dylan Bundy: He dominated the Blue Jays in his first start of the year, allowing just one run and four hits across seven innings and striking out eight; he has a brutal matchup against the Red Sox, but he’s only $6,800 on DraftKings and ranks first in the slate in exit velocity allowed (86 MPH) over the last 15 days.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. Since the early slate is so small, we’ll keep our stacks and batters to the main slate. Let’s generate the highest-rated five-man stack (per the Bales Model) for DraftKings:
Intriguingly, it is actually a 1-2-3-4-6 Nationals stack that takes the top spot in a Coors Field slate, which is surprising, as the Nationals (4.6) are currently implied for substantially fewer runs than the Rockies (6.9), who have the slate’s highest implied run total:
And what makes the Nationals especially intriguing is that after exploding for 14 runs last night against the Cardinals they likely won’t come with an ownership discount. If we look at the DFS Ownership Dashboard for April 10, we’ll see a lot of Nats with high scores and relatively low ownership:
That might not be the case again today.
On FanDuel, the top-rated four-man stack also belongs to the Nationals. After them, it’s a 1-3-4-7 stack of the Rockies:
The Rockies have disappointed so far at home relative to their implied run totals, but the Vegas line suggests they could regress to their productive mean soon. You likely won’t get any ownership discount on the Rockies despite their struggles, but it’s hard to deny the massive upside of the top guys like Charlie Blackmon, Carlos Gonzalez, and Nolan Arenado — especially against a righty.
Batters
You’ll notice another FanDuel stack in the image above. The four-man FanDuel stack with the third-highest rating in tonight’s slate belongs to the Marlins — and it costs a whopping $5,700 less than the Rockies stack. For reference, that difference is $1,900 more than the difference between Harvey and Reds pitcher Rookie Davis. That $5,700 is more than Mike Trout ($5,000) costs. You can do a whole lot with an extra $5,000 in a 10-game slate. The Marlins with their implied total of 4.6 runs don’t have the Rockies’ upside, but it’s not a bad spot for Miami: The Marlins are facing Atlanta righty Bartolo Colon, who allowed a 78 percent fly ball rate in his first start of the year. Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich each have past-year ISOs of greater than .200, and they’re both projected for just two to four percent ownership.
On the other side of that game, the Braves face Dan Straily, who got beat up in his first start of the year, allowing five earned runs and striking out zero batters in 3.1 innings against the Nationals. Further, his 1.534 past-year HR/9 allowed is the fourth-worst mark in today’s slate. The Braves don’t have a great run implication (4.0) despite the positive matchup, but that should keep their ownership low. That’s great news if you want to roster someone like Freddie Freeman, who has as much power as any hitter in the league, as evidenced by his .295 ISO against righties over the past year. Take Statcast data for the season with a grain of salt since it’s still early, but Freeman’s metrics suggest he’s doing well with an exit velocity of 93 MPH through six games. He went off for 55.6 FanDuel points on Sunday in a double-dong night, and he certainly has that potential again today.
The Mets have been awful this year: They have the slate’s third-worst team wOBA at .266 on the season. That said, there’s reason to believe they could experience positive regression soon: They have by far the worst BABIP in the league at .217, and they still employ great hitters like Jay Bruce, Curtis Granderson, and Yoenis Cespedes. Our Recent Batted Ball Luck metric (new this year) is somewhat similar to the idea of BABIP, which also measures luck in a sense. Here’s the definition:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
Cespedes has a batted ball distance of 251 feet, an exit velocity of 94 MPH, and a hard hit rate of 47 percent — all elite marks. And yet he’s scored single-digit fantasy points in six of his seven games this year. Those fantasy points could come in a hurry, and he’s projected for just five to eight percent ownership on DraftKings.
Good luck, and be sure to do your own research with the Labs Tools!
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
