Thursday has a split slate: There are six games in the 12:35 pm ET early slate and four games in the 7:10 pm ET main slate. The DraftKings early slate is a little different: It starts at 1:10 pm and includes seven day games. Let’s jump in.
Pitchers
Studs
The pickings are rather slim at the pitcher spot today: On FanDuel, John Lackey is the highest-priced pitcher ($8,700) in the early slate, and the Giants’ Jeff Samardzija is the highest-priced pitcher ($8,600) in the main slate. I usually have “Studs” and “Values” sections in the breakdown, but the studs today aren’t at all like those of the last four days, so I’ll just talk about all of the pitchers together: They’re all close in price, and it’s generally an ugly day for the position. If you want to pay for batting, today is maybe the first day of the season in which the slate itself is guiding you to that strategy.
The Cubs continue their series against the Cardinals, whose current projected lineup has a past-year wOBA of .309. That’s not ideal — and Jake Arrieta was even something of a contrarian play on Tuesday partially because of the matchup — but Lackey is about as good as it gets today. Per our Vegas Dashboard, the Cardinals are currently implied for 3.7 runs, which is the second-lowest mark in the slate. I’m pretty much always in the camp of chasing strikeouts, but that may be less important today: Lackey leads the early-slate pitchers with a low 5.9 K Prediction. For reference: There were 10 pitchers in last night’s main slate with higher marks — headlined by Danny Salazar‘s 9.5. Instead of chasing strikeouts, you might want to find (relative) safety at the position — no pitcher has that much upside — and then look to your batters for high-upside situations.
Lackey and Jason Hammel seem to be fairly sturdy options in the early slate on FanDuel, and Brandon McCarthy is an option on DraftKings, which is including the Dodgers-Padres game in the early slate. The Padres are currently implied for 3.2 runs — the lowest mark today — and they finished with only a single run last night. McCarthy has a low K Prediction, but he still has upside and is easily today’s largest favorite with a -214 moneyline. Even on DraftKings, where strikeouts are (usually) king, pitchers with his Vegas data have historically done well (per our Trends tool):
In the main slate, it gets even harder: No pitcher faces a team with a run total of less than 3.6.
Matt Harvey has the best Vegas data and is the largest favorite at -159, but (as I’ve mentioned on the last couple of live Inside the Lab shows on our Premium Content Portal) the Braves are improved in 2017. They had a bottom-five team wOBA in 2016, but the 12-month wOBA of their projected lineup is the second-highest mark in the main slate. That may not be enough to deter you away from Harvey — Jacob deGrom was able to handle the Braves last night — but make sure to adjust your data for new rotations and batting orders. The easiest way to do so is to use our Player Models, in which a pitcher’s opposing wOBA is adjusted on a player level.
Marcus Stroman should be a popular option in the main slate. He’s facing the Rays, who rank first among all projected lineups in past-year SO/AB rate (.300). He’s not a huge strikeout guy — he’s averaging just 7.582 strikeouts per nine innings over the last year — but he has upside against this team, and he also gets the benefit of playing in a pitcher’s park in Tampa: He has a 78 Park Factor. I’m going to steal an image from today’s Three Key Players piece: Labs writer Ryan Sheppard found that, while Stroman averaged a -2.35 FanDuel Plus/Minus over the first half of last season, he exploded in the second half of the year:
Per our Trends tool, he’s been a favorite with a Park Factor above 70 five times over the last couple of years. In those situations, he’s averaged 30.2 FanDuel points and a +2.21 Plus/Minus. Given the options, that production will do just fine.
There are some boom-or-bust options as well. Take guys in the main slate like Blake Snell and Robbie Ray, for example. Ray is probably more bust than boom, as he’s facing the Giants, who again are implied for 4.7-plus runs. But Ray also leads the late in SO/9 rate over the past year (11.548), and he’s put up big games in the past. Expecting one against San Francisco is probably unwise, but he at least has upside. Snell is in a similar boat: He has a massive SO/9 rate over the past year (10.401), but he’s facing a high-powered Toronto offense.
Blue Jays: DFS Scouting Report
Snell does have a strong 95 Park Factor as a lefty in Tampa, but he also owns the worst past-year WHIP in the slate (1.698). Again, he’s boom-or-bust, but at least he boomed at the end of last season in this very matchup:
Notable Stacks
With our Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters. Since today brings a split slate, I’ll generate a DraftKings stack for the early slate and a FanDuel stack for the main one.
Sorting by rating in the Bales Model, we get a Washington Nationals 1-2-3-4-5 straight DraftKings stack at the top:
The lineup is headlined by young phenom Trea Turner, who has excellent splits against righties in his short career: Over the past year, he’s posted a .414 wOBA, .260 ISO, and a .610 slugging percentage. He went 0-4 last night with two strikeouts, but he has a nice matchup today against Marlins pitcher Tom Koehler, who has a poor past-year WHIP of 1.482. Turner is so valuable as a DFS asset not only because of his bat but also because of his legs: He’s second in the entire MLB in stolen bases per game at .453. Oh yeah, and Adam Eaton, Bryce Harper, and Daniel Murphy aren’t too bad against righties, either.
On FanDuel, the top-rated four-man stack in the main slate is a 1-2-3-4 straight stack of the Diamondbacks:
David Peralta is projected to be the second hitter in today’s lineup, and he’s especially cheap at only $2,600, where he has a 93 percent Bargain Rating. His splits aren’t great — he has a poor .284 wOBA and .164 ISO against righties in the last year — but it’s hard to ignore the value of a two-hole hitter at his price on a team implied for 4.8 runs. Paul Goldschmidt and Jake Lamb sit right behind him, and the latter has especially great splits against right-handed pitchers over the last season — a .372 wOBA, .284 ISO, and .553 slugging percentage. The projected lineup’s past-year wOBA of .315 sits first among all teams in the main slate.
Batters
That said, as you can see above, the Giants have a four-man stack that’s No. 2 in the Bales Model and also significantly cheaper than the Diamondback’s stack. It does skip over projected cleanup hitter Buster Posey, but that could actually be a sharp contrarian move in tournaments. Per our DFS Ownership Dashboard, Posey had the fifth-highest ownership on DraftKings last night and he was actually owned in a ridiculous 40-50 percent of contests on Tuesday:
Given the volatility of hitter performance, if a guy approaches 50 percent ownership in a contest he deserves strong fade consideration. Posey has seemingly qualified for that distinction all week, and there’s no reason to believe he’ll be low-owned in a four-game slate tonight. Skipping over him while still getting exposure to a high-upside Giants stack with guys like Brandon Belt and Hunter Pence could be the way to go.
George Springer went off last night, going 2-of-7 for a home run and five runs batter in. He finished with 38.7 FanDuel points, and he’s in another great spot today against Seattle lefty Ariel Miranda, who owns the highest HR/9 allowed in the slate at 1.885 over the past year. Springer has the sixth-highest ISO (.276) among main slate batters, and he has positive splits against righties. His teammate, Carlos Correa, is also in a good spot. Correa is projected to bat cleanup again for the Astros, and he’s crushed the ball so far this season, averaging a ridiculous 103 MPH exit velocity over the last two games. The Astros are projected for 4.8 runs today, and they could certainly rack up a lot of homers.
Astros: DFS Scouting Report
Finally, two Mets — Jose Reyes and Yoenis Cespedes — rank among the top-five batters today with massive ISOs of .347 and .276 against their opposing pitcher’s handedness. Both have been very poor to begin the season, but facing a lefty is a nice way to rebound, and you could make the argument that the Mets have been very unlucky. We have a new statistic this year called “Recent Batted Ball Luck,” and it’s defined as “the difference between a player’s percentile rank in batted ball distance and fantasy scoring over the past 15 days.” This will be more relevant with bigger samples, but early returns suggest the Mets have been a little unlucky: Cespedes and Neil Walker have averaged batted ball distances of 240 and 232 feet, yet they haven’t seen much fantasy success. That could turn around 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:
