Sunday has a nine-game main slate at 1:07 pm ET. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
On both sites, Jon Lester and Carlos Carrasco are the two highest-priced pitchers of the slate. There’s a big difference in their salaries on DraftKings — Lester is $11,300 and Carrasco is $8,800 — but the difference is negligible on FanDuel: Lester is $10,300 and Carrasco is $9,900.
Lester certainly has the easier matchup of the two against the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have shown a spark of life but still rank 25th in team wOBA (.293) on the season. As of early Sunday morning, we don’t have an implied run total for this game, which is fairly normal for a game in Chicago. We saw yesterday how strong gusts of wind out to center can affect the game: The Pirates and Cubs combined for 15 runs. Today’s wind forecast doesn’t seem as drastic as yesterday’s, which certainly boosts the value of Lester, who has been solid if unexciting through two starts in 2017, going 11 innings, striking out 14 batters, and allowing just two runs and three walks. He boasts the slate’s second-highest K Prediction of the day at 7.7, and favored pitchers with comparable K Predictions have provided value in the past (per our Trends tool):
And Lester specifically in 10 instances with similar data has been quite solid, averaging 40.9 FanDuel points on 70 percent Consistency.
Carrasco has a lower 6.6 K Prediction — that mark ranks sixth out of 18 pitchers today — but he’s an absolutely massive -218 favorite over the Detroit Tigers; his offense is currently implied for a whopping 5.2 runs. That in itself is a valuable trend: Pitchers with moneylines of at least -200 over the last four years have scored 40.12 FanDuel points and averaged a +6.76 Plus/Minus. If we add additional filters — say Carrasco’s K Prediction range — things get even better:
Carrasco has been excellent to start his 2017 campaign, striking out 14 batters and allowing just eight hits and three runs in 12.2 innings. He will likely be the most popular option in the slate, especially on DraftKings, where he comes with an 81 percent Bargain Rating. The Tigers’ run total of 3.4 is the lowest of the slate — although that could change once the Cubs-Pirates line is released.
Values
Gio Gonzalez is the third-highest priced pitcher on FanDuel at $9,300, but he’s just the sixth-highest priced pitcher on DraftKings at $8,000. He has a nice matchup against the Phillies today, who are currently implied for just 3.7 runs — the second-lowest mark in the slate (again, that might change when the Cubs’ line comes out). Gio has been solid to start the year, striking out 13 batters across 13 innings and allowing just a single earned run. Philly has the fourth-lowest past-year team wOBA of .279, and they own the sixth-highest strikeout rate in 2017, whiffing on 23.8 percent of their at-bats. Players with similar metrics to Gio’s today have been quite consistent, meeting value 62.9 percent of the time.
Drew Pomeranz faces the Rays, who are currently implied for 4.2 runs, which isn’t ideal, but he also leads all pitchers today with an 8.1 K Prediction. He’s cheap across both sites at $7,500 on DraftKings and $7,800 on FanDuel, and he was very solid in his first start of the season, striking out six Orioles across six innings and allowing just four hits and a single earned run. If you think Pom is really cheap compared to his high K Prediction, you’re right: Over the last four years — the entire sample of pitcher games during that time is 14,596 on DraftKings — there have been just 41 pitchers priced at $7,500 or below with a K Prediction of 8.0 or higher. They’ve offered nice value, especially as favorites:
Fastball
Matt Harvey: He has the lowest K Prediction among pitchers priced $8,500 or higher, but he’s been solid to start the year — a +3.84 Plus/Minus on FanDuel through two starts — and he faces a Miami team implied for just 3.8 runs.
Dylan Bundy: Both Bundy and Toronto’s J.A. Happ have K Predictions of 7.0 today, but Bundy is $1,300 cheaper on DraftKings, where his $7,200 price tag comes with a 77 percent Bargain Rating.
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. The highest-rated five-man stack on DraftKings, per ratings in the Bales Model, is a 1-2-3-4-7 stack of the Red Sox:
Boston will likely be the most popular team to stack, as the team’s 5.3 implied run total is the highest mark in the main slate. The Red Sox face Tampa Bay righty Alex Cobb, who has the second-worst past-year WHIP of 1.518 and the highest HR/9 allowed mark of 2.143. He’s allowed three home runs through his first two starts of the year, and the Boston batters certainly have power: Pablo Sandoval, Mookie Betts, Chris Young (who isn’t even in this stack but is projected to hit eighth today), and Andrew Benintendi all have past-year ISO marks of at least .200 versus right-handed pitchers. In 10 games this season against RHP, Benintendi has gone for double-digit FanDuel points five times.
On FanDuel, the highest-rated four-man stack also belongs to the Red Sox. And so does the second-highest rated stack. But moving to the third-highest rated one, we find a 1-2-3-5 stack of the Cleveland Indians:
They will likely be incredibly popular as well, as they have the second-highest implied team total at 5.2, and they boast one of the most explosive offenses in the league, as evidenced by their 13 runs and four home runs yesterday against Justin Verlander and the Tigers. Verlander had been excellent to begin his year but promptly gave up 11 hits and nine runs, including three of those four home runs, in just four innings of work. It wasn’t pretty. If they can do that to Verlander, what can they possibly do to Matt Boyd, who owns the third-highest past-year HR/9 mark of 1.545? The entire projected Indians lineup today — ranging from leadoff hitter Carlos Santana to Austin Jackson — has a Bargain Rating of 50 percent or higher on FanDuel. It should come as no surprise that their 87 Team Value Rating (TVR) on FanDuel is the best mark in the slate.
Batters
It’s hard to figure out what to do with Eric Thames, who has done this so far in 2017:
He’s averaged a robust +9.81 FanDuel Plus/Minus over his last 10 games, and take a look at his last three games:
He has six hits and four home runs over his last three games, and he now boasts a massive .429 ISO mark against right-handed pitchers. He’s averaged a 261-foot batted ball distance, a 98 MPH exit velocity, and a 57 percent hard hit rate this season. He remains very cheap on FanDuel at $2,800 and will likely be one of the most popular bats today given his recent play. That probably warrants a fade in GPPs, but it’s a scary one for sure.
Here’s my usual segment on our Recent Batted Ball Luck metric. This is the definition, if you haven’t seen yet:
The difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days
One guy who stands out in this regard today is Anthony Rendon, who is currently projected to bat second for the Washington Nationals. He leads all batters — tied with Francisco Lindor — with 10 FanDuel Pro Trends, and his recent Statcast data is far superior to his fantasy production. He has averaged a batted-ball distance of 244 feet, an exit velocity of 92 MPH, and a fly ball rate of 60 percent this season, and this is how he’s done fantasy-wise:
Things could turn around for him starting today.
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:
