Thursday has a split slate: There are five games in the 1:10 pm ET early slate and six games in the 7:05 pm ET main slate. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
Madison Bumgarner will likely be extremely popular today, as he gets a Colorado team that has struggled at home in Coors Field lately and now has to travel to the best pitcher’s park in San Francisco. Bumgarner’s Vegas data isn’t just the best among all pitchers today — it’s the best by a mile. The Rockies are currently implied for a slate-low 2.8 runs:
Further, Bumgarner, who has accumulated 16 strikeouts over his first two starts of the season, boast the day’s highest K Prediction at 8.8 — a whopping 1.5 more than the mark of any other pitcher today. Per our Trends tool, his combination of Vegas data, K Prediction, and Park Factor has yielded a very desirable Plus/Minus and Consistency Rating:
He is the most expensive option by $1,000 on DraftKings and $900 on FanDuel, but fade him at your own risk.
Yu Darvish is in somewhat of an odd salary spot, as he’s the guy just below Bumgarner, who’s clearly the superior play: I mean, who would not pay the extra $1,000 or $900 for Bum over Darvish, who has looked poor in his first two starts, posting 17.3 and 8.85 DraftKings points on just nine strikeouts? That said, Bumgarner is in the main slate, while Darvish is in the early slate. He’s a small fish compared to Bum today, but he’s also hanging out in a small pond.
Darvish’s matchup today is something of a mixed bag: He’s facing the Angels, who are currently implied for just 3.6 runs and could be hurt by playing in Angel Stadium — a pitcher’s park. Those two factors plus Darvish’s status as a favorite have been historical indicators of success:
And now to the concerning part: Despite leading the early slate with a 7.2 K Prediction, Darvish has some strikeout downside. Among teams in that slate, the projected Angels lineup easily has the lowest past-year SO/AB rate at .202, and this year in particular the Angels have an 18.8 percent K rate — the sixth-lowest mark in the league. Further, they’re a good hitting team, ranking fourth in wOBA this season (.343). Their past-year wOBA (.318) ranks second in the early slate. Even if you think that the first mark — their 2017 wOBA — will regress, that might not matter much today.
Darvish isn’t a great ‘stud’ today, but, again, this early pond isn’t exactly filled with other great options. He has concerning marks, but he’s also the only pitcher with significant upside:
Values
Jon Gray certainly doesn’t qualify as a ‘value’ on DraftKings, where his $10,000 salary comes with a two percent Bargain Rating, but he certainly is a value on FanDuel at just $7,800. Gray is something of an enigma: He pitches for the Rockies, and yet over his entire three-year career he has scored more FanDuel points, posted a higher Plus/Minus, and hit his ‘Upside’ mark more often at home than on the road:
That said, the real advantage with Gray and his home/road splits has been his average ownership of just 2.3 percent at home. That said, because he’s in a slate with Bumgarner — and pitching against Bumgarner — his ownership could be lower than it typically is. Pro subscribers can review Gray’s ownership across tournaments of all stakes in our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after lineups lock.
For more on Gray, see Frank Casale’s Three Key MLB Players.
Hyun-Jin Ryu is another pitcher with an extreme salary difference between the two sites: He is $9,000 on DraftKings but just $6,800 on FanDuel, where he has a 98 percent Bargain Rating. He struggled in his first start of the year, lasting just 4.2 innings, striking out five batters, and giving up two runs and six hits. But since that was at Coors Field and the Dodgers gave him essentially no run support, it’s probably fine to take that outing with a grain of salt. That said, today’s matchup isn’t the easiest, either: He’s facing the defending champion Chicago Cubs, who are likely going to experience some batting regression soon: They rank 28th in team ISO as of this morning. With guys like Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo in the lineup, that should change at some point. But it might not change today, and Ryu’s salary is so low — and the rest of the early slate options are so uninspiring — that he’s worth some darts in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs).
Fastball
Luis Severino: He’s facing the Rays, who have the fourth-lowest past-year team wOBA (.282) among all teams today; he has a better opponent run implication (3.9) and K Prediction (6.7) than Ryu, and he’s $100 cheaper than him on FanDuel and $2,800 cheaper on DraftKings.
Robert Gsellman: He’s in a pitcher’s park in Miami, and he just struck out seven Marlins across five innings in his first start this past Saturday; he has the second-highest K Prediction of the slate at 7.3.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. Since the slates are similar in size, let’s do a DraftKings stack for the early slate and a FanDuel stack for the main one. Here’s an intriguing five-man stack on DraftKings today:
The Tigers are currently implied for 4.6 runs, which is just the third-highest mark in the early slate — the Red Sox and Indians are implied for 5.3 and 5.0 runs. That could work to keep ownership somewhat down for Detroit, which faces Minnesota righty Phil Hughes, who has an awful past-year WHIP of 1.528. Further, the Tigers have arguably been one of the unluckiest teams this year, as their .235 team BABIP in 2017 ranks 29th in the league. Miguel Cabrera still has a massive 95 Recent Batted Ball Luck mark, which shows that he’s been crushing the ball but hasn’t scored fantasy points.
On FanDuel, a stack that sticks out in the main slate belongs to the Milwaukee Brewers:
The Brewers are currently implied for 4.6 runs — the second-highest mark in the slate behind the Royals’ 4.8 — and they get Reds righty Bronson Arroyo, who is 40 years old; I remember playing him in Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. on the Nintendo 64, if that explains anything about today’s slate. Arroyo allowed two home runs in his first start this season against the Cardinals, giving up six runs in just four innings pitched. There could be more home runs and runs allowed today.
Batters
Our new Recent Batted Ball Luck metric is one of my favorite additions to the Models this season, so I’m going to keep harping on it. Here’s the definition again, in case you forgot:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
The Tigers’ Cabrera has a massive Recent Batted Ball Luck given his batted ball data and fantasy performance, and Eric Thames — listed in the Brewers stack above — also has a high mark, as he’s averaged a batted ball distance of 243 feet and a 96 MPH exit velocity over his first six games but hasn’t had much fantasy success. And another guy to keep your eye on is Joe Mauer, who has averaged a batted ball distance of 233 feet, an exit velocity of 95 MPH, and a hard hit rate of 50 percent over the last seven games and yet hasn’t scored many fantasy points. He is batting third for the Twins, who are implied for just 4.0 runs against the Tigers. He’s projected for just zero to one percent ownership on FanDuel, where his $2,800 price tag comes with a 76 percent Bargain Rating.
The Red Sox will likely be popular plays, especially a guy like Andrew Benintendi, who is hitting second and has an excellent .220 ISO mark against right-handed pitchers. That said, it might be wise to dip down below the top-four guys in the order and pivot to Mitch Moreland, who is on the wrong side of his reverse splits but still has a respectable ISO mark of .193 over the past year. He’s hitting fifth and has been making the best contact among all Red Sox starters: He’s averaging a 96 MPH exit velocity over his first eight games, and a whopping 62 percent of his batted balls have been categorized as hard hits. He has a 15 Recent Batted Ball Luck mark, which suggests he’s been a bit unlucky of late, and he could certainly put together a nice performance at home at low(er) ownership than the top-four Boston guys.
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:
