Saturday has a split slate: There are 10 games in the 1:05 pm ET early slate and five games in the 7:10 pm ET main slate. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
Today’s games are headlined by five pitchers $9,800 or higher on FanDuel:
As of early Saturday morning, we don’t have Vegas data for two of the pitchers — Jake Arrieta and Jacob deGrom — although that is common when the Cubs play in Chicago; the lines are usually the latest to be released, as bettors wait on weather and wind forecasts. Still, we do know that both Arrieta and Chris Sale are massive -211 and -255 moneyline favorites over the Rays and Pirates. Pittsburgh has been particularly poor this season, posting a low .281 team wOBA — the fourth-lowest mark in the league. Arrieta has been sharp to start his 2017 campaign, posting FanDuel outings of 52.0 and 46.0 points and striking out 16 batters in 13 innings. Over the past four years, pitchers with similar moneylines have been quite valuable, posting a +6.92 FanDuel Plus/Minus and 66.2 percent Consistency Rating (per our Trends tool):
Arrieta is likely the safest cash-game play of the high-priced studs, but he has only the 11th-highest K Prediction today among 30 pitchers at 6.4. Of the five guys listed above, he has the lowest K Prediction, which means that he’s likely a fine fade in guaranteed prize pools (GPPs), given the high ceilings (and likely lower ownership percentages) of the other pitchers. Sale leads all pitchers today with an 8.0 K Prediction, and that could possibly be low: While the Rays rank 18th out of 30 teams in past-year SO/AB, they’re actually second in the league in 2017 in strikeout rate, whiffing on a high 26.4 percent of at-bats so far. Sale has 17 strikeouts over 14.2 innings this season, and he’s historically been an absolute monster when he’s been favored and predicted for a similar number of Ks:
Really, there are many great GPP options at SP today; we haven’t even mentioned Corey Kluber, who has a 7.4 K Prediction — the fourth-highest mark today — and faces the Tigers, who are currently implied for just 3.5 runs. Of every game in our database (spanning four years and 24,311 pitcher starts), Kluber’s 90-point FanDuel outing in 2015 against the St. Louis Cardinals is tied for the second-highest mark. There’s no denying his upside in any slate, and he’s been predictably excellent over the years when he’s had a similar K Prediction:
Values
The following image is from our DFS Ownership Dashboard, showing the ownership across a variety of buy-in levels on DraftKings yesterday (April 14). As you can see, Clayton Kershaw was the highest-owned player in the $33 Sweet Spot at 40.8 percent:
Kershaw almost always has high ownership, but in general the ownership of studs is directly tied to the depth of the pool: The deeper the pitching value in the slate, the shallower the ownership of studs will be. Today is a good example of a deep pool of pitchers: There are a whopping 16 pitchers with K Predictions of six or higher. Guys like Arrieta, Sale, and Kluber have massive ceilings, but there are also other pitchers with relatively high ceilings and much lower salaries.
Kenta Maeda stands out in that regard, as he’s facing the Arizona Diamondbacks, who rank fourth in the league this year with a 24.3 percent strikeout rate. Their .330 team wOBA is the sixth-highest mark, but it’s also possible that they’ve been getting a little lucky: They own the second-highest team BABIP at .347. Our Recent Batted Ball Luck metric is a good proxy for analyzing production vs. performance, and it suggests that Arizona has been lucky this season:
Meanwhile, Maeda has been perhaps a little unlucky this season. He’s allowed a low 15 percent hard hit rate in his first two starts, and yet he’s had disappointing results:
The most recent game was at Coors Field, and today he’s back at home, where he’s been a superior pitcher in his short career:
- Home: 33.88 FanDuel points, +3.7 Plus/Minus
- Away: 30.67 FanDuel points, +0.9 Plus/Minus
Justin Verlander is intriguing today: He’s included in the ‘stud’ picture above because of his high $10,300 FanDuel price tag. However, he’s somehow only $8,500 on DraftKings, where he has a 94 percent Bargain Rating. For reference, in his first two starts of the season — against the Red Sox and White Sox — he was priced at $10,500 in both games and put up 20.75 and 29.45 fantasy points, good for Plus/Minus marks of +2.56 and +11.26, and somehow he dropped $2,000 in salary today. He does have a tough matchup on the road in Cleveland — the Indians are currently implied for 4.5 runs — but that’s quite a drastic price drop, especially considering that the Indians rank just 23rd in the league this season with a .298 team wOBA. In last season’s comeback campaign, Verlander’s opposition was implied for four-plus runs in 15 games. In those games, he absolutely dominated:
Fastball
Lance McCullers: He’s just $9,100 on FanDuel in a pitcher’s park in Oakland, he has an opposing implied run total of 3.6, and he has absolutely dominated so far in 2017, posting 46.0 FanDuel points in his first two starts and striking out 17 batters over 13 innings.
James Paxton: He’s allowed six hits and zero runs through two games, striking out 13 batters in 13 innings; he is just $8,200 on DraftKings, where he has a 91 percent Bargain Rating; he’s facing a Rangers team implied for just 3.3 runs.
Jose Quintana: He’s had mixed results over his first two games and gets a Twins team today currently implied for 4.0 runs; he boasts a high 7.3 K Prediction and will likely have low ownership given the poor weather forecast for this contest.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. For the early slate let’s start with the highest-rated five-man DraftKings stack in the Bales Model, and then we’ll do a FanDuel stack for the main slate:
This goes against what I wrote in the Verlander section, but it should be noted that it is the highest-rated stack, which also means that it should be popular in GPPs. Take that however you want; you can stack the Indians and get the ‘value,’ or you can take a chance on Verlander and be contrarian. They’re implied for 4.5 runs and showed their upside just last night: They were down 7-0 going into the 8th inning against these very Tigers, and then the scored six quick runs over the final two frames, including a grand slam from Lonnie Chisenhall. He’s not included in this stack — he’s not projected to start — but there are still many elite bats, especially projected leadoff hitter Carlos Santana, who has dual 1B/OF eligibility and boasts an elite .272 ISO versus right-handed pitchers.
On FanDuel for the main slate, the highest-rated four-man stack belongs to the Los Angeles Angels:
It will be interesting to see their ownership in this small slate: They are implied for a nice 4.7 runs, which is the fourth-highest mark tonight:
That said, scattered storms are projected in Kansas City, which could lower the ownership of all players in this game. It’s supposed to be windy, and it’s blowing out, which is obviously helpful for batters (via our MLB Lineups page):
If they play, guys like Mike Trout and Albert Pujols have massive upside; if they’re low(er)-owned because of the rain, that’s even better for GPPs.
Batters
Here’s my daily look into our new Recent Batted Ball Luck metric, which is defined as thus:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
I like to pair this with a player’s ISO and ISO Differential: When a player I know is a great batter (using ISO as a proxy for this) is getting ‘unlucky,’ then I want to know. Take Neil Walker, who is projected to bat sixth for the Mets and has an excellent .266 ISO against left-handed pitchers over the past year. He has made good contact this year — he’s averaged a 221-foot batted ball distance and a 50 percent fly ball rate over his first 11 games — and yet he’s been unable to accumulate fantasy points. Eventually regression will (likely) come, and the best news about using Recent Batted Ball Luck to identify high-leverage plays is that they’re naturally low-owned; DFS users are often affected by recency bias.
Jake Odorizzi has been known to give up the long ball: Among all pitchers today, he has the third-highest HR/9 rate over the past year at 1.495. In his first two games, he’s already given up two homers to the Yankees and Blue Jays, the latter of whom have been amazingly awful this season. The Red Sox oppose Odorizzi, and they’re currently implied for 5.2 runs. Andrew Benintendi is projected to bat second, and he has excellent marks against righties over his young career, posting a .394 wOBA, .208 ISO, and .528 slugging percentage. He’s averaged a batted ball distance of 232 feet over his first 12 games of the season, and he’s certainly capable of racking up fantasy points at a cheap price.
One of my favorite ways to look for contrarian hitters is to sort by ISO in our Models and then look at projected ownership. Ryan Schimpf has a .307 ISO against right-handed pitchers over the last year and today faces knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, who has the second-highest HR/9 rate allowed over the past year at 1.510. Knuckleballs are hard to hit, but if they don’t knuckle, then it’s essentially a Major League baseball hitter playing softball. Schimpf is currently projected for two to four percent ownership on FanDuel, and that’s mostly because the Padres are 1) bad and 2) implied for 4.1 runs, which is merely average today. That said, Schimpf certainly has the power to swing some GPPs.
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:
