Tuesday brings us a 14-game main slate with first pitch at 7:05 p.m. ET.
Pitchers
Luis Garcia is in a strong position tonight facing the Kansas City Royals. He is the favorite on the Bales Model for FanDuel at a great price. This will be his second straight start against the Royals. Last week, he went five innings and gave up three earned runs with three strikeouts. That was his lowest strikeout total since April.
The Royals have actually been a tougher team to strike out for most of the season. With the propensity that Garcia has displayed to rack up strikeouts, I doubt he puts up a similar performance in that department tonight.
Garcia hits for an impressive nine ProTrends and after losing to these Royals last night, the Houston Astros are strong -219 favorites tonight.
Corbin Burnes will be a popular name, as he makes his push for the NL Cy Young award. He is the favorite for the Bales Model on DraftKings. It is a great matchup of a dominant pitcher against one of the league’s best offenses in the Reds.
Burnes has some silly stats around his performance this year. He has allowed just one run in 21 innings in the month of August so far. The only other time he has faced the Reds this year, he went 8 1/3 shutout innings with 12 strikeouts.
As some pitchers have started to falter due to the better hitting weather, Burnes has seemed to turn the heat up on opposing hitters. He has allowed more than one earned run just once since June 19th.
Catching the Reds on the road makes a big difference, too. They are a league-average offense on the road based on runs per game, compared to third overall at home.
He will be heavily owned within cash games, but you will probably “have” to have him in your lineup. It may make sense to diversify off of Burnes in a GPP and hope the Reds’ offense has some success.
In only his third start back from injury, Jack Flaherty could make some sense to use tonight. Flaherty gets to see the Detroit Tigers.
The Tigers are still playing above the level that many were expecting them to this season, but have seemingly cooled their once-hot offense in the last week or two.
Since returning, Flaherty has been pretty dominant, so there should be no concerns there. He has thrown 12 innings and given up two earned runs with 13 strikeouts. He should be fully stretched out after throwing 92 pitches in his last outing.
It should be a good spot for Flaherty to receive a win, with the Cardinals being -224 favorites and Flaherty having received a win in 9 of 13 starts this year.
Flaherty hits for six ProTrends.
Fastballs
For a cheaper option, I think Tanner Houck could come through. Houck’s strikeout numbers have bounced around a bit this year, but he has shown the propensity to rack them up in bunches when he is on. Having faced the New York Yankees frequently the last month or so, I have been really impressed with his stuff.
Houck has 46 strikeouts in 34 2/3 innings. That is a relatively small sample size, but not every arm that gets called up to the bigs has the ability to showcase that elite potential in strikeout stuff.
Tonight, he gets a Minnesota Twins team that has all but punted on the remainder of the season. I think Houck gets a little longer leash tonight. Strangely, a lot of his starts have come in doubleheaders where he has not been asked to go deeper into games, and the Red Sox bullpen has been a bit of a nightmare (look at Monday afternoon) of late.
With the strikeout upside, Houck has the chance to do some serious damage tonight.
I’m not planning on using Jose Berrios, Dylan Cease, or Dylan Bundy. Berrios and Cease both yield some runs to dangerous offenses in an AL East park. They both give up too many hits for there not to be some damage in that game. You do get the ultimate revenge game factor with Bundy going up against his old team. That, again, comes in an AL East park. For all their troubles, the Baltimore Orioles still have 4.9 implied runs tonight.
Hitters
Notable Stack
The top stack of the evening belongs to the Boston Red Sox:
- 2. Rafael Devers (L – 21-25%)
- 3. Xander Bogaerts (R – 17-20%)
- 5. J.D. Martinez (R – 9-12%)
- 4. Kyle Schwarber (L – 13-16%)
This group is projected for 50.7 FanDuel points on a salary of $15,800. The Red Sox have an implied run total of 6.4, which is easily the highest on the slate. They are facing Griffin Jax who has given up 11 home runs in 10 starts. He has 86 fly balls to 50 ground balls. That may not go over too well in Fenway Park. The Red Sox are sixth in runs per game on the year and second when at home, behind the Colorado Rockies.
Other Hitters
Franmil Reyes is the biggest Bargain Rating on the Bales Model for tonight. He gets to face green left-hander Taylor Hearn, which is actually his poorer split this season. This should be a game in which the Cleveland Indians are able to score some runs. Reyes hits for five ProTrends, which is true for almost their entire lineup.
Tommy La Stella features well in the Lineup Optimizer. He has a hit in four of his last five games and is facing Tylor Megill. Megill has been hit around and seen his strikeouts drop in recent outings. Either way, La Stella should put the ball in play as he has only five strikeouts in August (he returned from IL on August 4th).
Photo Credit: Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images
Pictured: Corbin Burnes
