Monday has a split slate: There are five games in the 1:05 pm ET early slate and five games in the 7:05 pm ET main slate. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
There’s definitely a clear tier of high-priced pitchers in today’s slate of games, headlined by this foursome:
- Chris Sale: $12,400 DraftKings, $11,400 FanDuel
- Jon Lester: $11,300 DraftKings, $10,100 FanDuel
- Justin Verlander: $10,500 DraftKings, $10,400 FanDuel
- Jacob deGrom: $9,300 DraftKings, $10,000 FanDuel
Sale and Verlander are in the early slate; Lester and deGrom are in the main slate.
Sale, Verlander, and deGrom all had excellent outings in their first starts of the year, scoring 27.35, 29.45, and 23.70 DraftKings points, whereas Lester disappointed in St. Louis, scoring ‘only’ 17.85 DraftKings points in five innings pitched. That last part is important: Lester’s outing was certainly fine — he allowed a single earned run, walked only two batters, and struck out seven — but he had an abbreviated start. All four of these pitchers started their 2017 campaigns well.
In that case, it might be smart to take advantage of pricing disparities and to focus on matchups. deGrom is seemingly in a great spot, as he’s the cheapest of the foursome across both sites, and he has the lowest opponent run total of the day: The Phillies — who have the third-highest K rate (26.2 percent) so far this season — are currently implied for a day-low 3.5 runs. While the Phillies boast the fifth-highest team wOBA (.350) on the season, their implied run total suggests that number will regress soon. deGrom currently has the lowest K Prediction (5.6) of the four main studs, but he has perhaps the most safety given his price. The Mets are also getting 74 percent of the moneyline bets so far, which when combined with his opponent run total has yielded solid FanDuel production for previous pitchers (per our Trends tool):
For more on deGrom, see Matt LaMarca’s Three Key Players for today.
Sale, Verlander, and Lester all have worse matchups against the Tigers, Red Sox, and Dodgers, but they also have high K Predictions at 8.0, 7.1, and 7.9.
Sale: DFS Scouting Report
Sale looked excellent in his new digs, and Verlander struck out 10 White Sox in just 6.1 innings in his first start. Verlander averaged a velocity of 94.2 MPH, which is actually slightly higher than his average over the last year. These guys are certainly close in value, so spreading exposure in tournaments might be the way to go. Sale and Verlander have SO/9 rates superior to Lester’s mark, but the Dodgers also strike out more frequently than the Tigers or Red Sox. It’s possible that Lester could have the lowest ownership of the three, not least of all because his game has a chance of rain. Pro subscribers should review ownership trends in our DFS Ownership Dashboard shortly after the slate starts.
Value
If last game was your baptism into the Michael Pineda DFS life, welcome. It is the best and the worst. We certainly saw the latter, as he lasted just 3.2 innings in a pitcher’s park in Tampa Bay, allowing eight hits and four runs. He did strike out six during that time — an excellent K rate — but the hits eventually doomed him. That said, if we look at Statcast data for the start, we can see that Pineda actually didn’t have awful metrics: He allowed a 27 percent hard hit rate, and 72 percent of the batted balls against him were grounders. That is encouraging since he’s facing the very same team today (in New York this time), and it’s hard to deny his appeal in GPPs: He leads all pitchers today with an 8.3 K Prediction (a metric that Pro subscribers can see in our Player Models). For whatever it’s worth, this is only the third time Pineda has been projected for eight-plus strikeouts. The first two were also against the Rays, and he showed his range of outcomes:
One intriguing guy today is Tyler Glasnow, the 23-year-old Pirates pitching prospect who won the No. 5 starter job this spring. Last season, he pitched 23.1 innings over seven appearances, including four starts, striking out 24 batters and walking 13. This spring he also showed K upside, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “He allowed 12 earned runs in 17.1 innings in Grapefruit League play, striking out 28.”
The question today isn’t whether he has the ability to make guys whiff but how far into the game he’ll be able to go. He hasn’t gone more than 5.1 innings yet in his MLB career, so it’s understandable if you want to take a wait-and-see approach with him. That said, he’s also only $4,400 on FanDuel. He might be worth a couple of GPP darts on the chance that he makes it to six innings.
Fastball
James Paxton: He was great in his first start, going for 37.0 FanDuel points against the same Astros he’s facing today; he allowed just one walk and two hits over six innings and struck out five batters; the Astros are tied for a slate-low implied total of 3.5 runs.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. Since we have a split slate, let’s do a DraftKings stack for the early slate and a FanDuel stack for the main slate. Based on the player ratings in the Bales Model, the highest-rated five-man stack in the early slate belongs to the Athletics:
It is a straight 1-2-3-4-5 stack of Oakland, which has been mediocre this season with a team wOBA of .311 — the 19th-highest mark in the league. That said, the Athletics lead all teams across both slates today with a 77 Team Value Rating (TVR), which suggests that they’re underpriced relative to their implied total (4.2 runs), which has risen 0.2 runs since the lines opened. They get righty Ian Kennedy, who posted a -5.00 DraftKings Plus/Minus in his first start this year and owns a poor HR/9 allowed mark of 1.571 over the past 12 months.
On FanDuel, the highest-rated four-man main slate stack in the Bales Model currently belongs to the Rockies. Shocker.
It’s hard to move past the upside of the Rockies at Coors Field, as they’re implied for a whopping 6.3 runs. Per our Vegas Dashboard, that total is higher than any other across both slates:
Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado headline this stack and have excellent splits against righties over the past year, posting ISO marks of .278 and .286. They each have a homer over the last two days and a brilliant matchup today against Padres starter Jarred Cosart, who has a slate-worst past-year WHIP of 1.912.
Batters
If you look at the FanDuel stack image again, you’ll see two stacks, one for the Rockies and another for the Dodgers. I want to point out a major difference between the two highest-rated FanDuel stacks for tonight. Although the Rockies stack has a lot of upside, the Dodgers stack — while possessing upside — is also a whopping $4,300 cheaper. That pricing difference matters, especially with deGrom and Lester in the slate. If you elect to take a chance on Glasnow, you could probably afford to stack the Rockies. At the same time, Glasnow could have correlated ownership with Rockies players like Blackmon and Arenado, whereas deGrom could be in more lineups with Dodgers like Logan Forsythe and Corey Seager. Further, the Dodgers face Lester, which could drive down their ownership.
Brandon Belt has been incredibly consistent to begin the 2017 season, scoring at least 4.0 DraftKings points in every game:
Four points isn’t exciting production, but in cash games it’s nice to know that Belt is capable of putting up points in a variety of ways. San Francisco has a nice matchup today against Arizona righty Taijuan Walker, who has the second-highest HR/9 allowed (1.851) of pitchers in the early slate. He faced these very Giants in his first start and allowed four runs and seven hits across six innings. Belt went long against him, and he certainly has that upside again today: Over the last year, Belt has a nice .378 wOBA, .214 ISO, and .489 slugging percentage against right-handed pitchers.
Mike Moustakas is currently projected to bat second in the projected Royals lineup against Oakland righty Jharel Cotton, who got beat up in his first start, allowing five earned runs and eight hits across 4.1 innings of work. Mous has elite splits against RHP, posting a .394 wOBA, .341 ISO, and .614 slugging percentage over the past year. Take Statcast data with a grain of salt because of the small sample, but Mous has made great contact so far this season: Across six games, he has averaged a batted ball distance of 239 feet and exit velocity of 92 MPH. Additionally, 47 percent of his batted balls have been recorded as hard hits. The Royals are currently implied for 4.4 runs, and they have the fourth-highest DraftKings TVR across all slates at 76.
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:
