The MLB Breakdown offers data-driven analysis using the FantasyLabs Tools and predictive metrics to highlight notable players within our MLB Player Models.
Thursday features a three-game slate starting at 1:10 p.m. ET.
MLB DFS Pitching Picks
MLB DFS Stud Pick
Ryan Pepiot ($8,100) Tampa Bay Rays (-158) at Los Angeles Angels
Thursday’s three-game slate is awful for pitching. Besides a lack of top names, just one team on the board is implied for fewer than four runs — the Los Angeles Angels.
This makes Pepiot the top DFS play effectively by default. He has an ugly stat line to start 2024, with a 5.40 ERA through three starts. However, his SIERA, xERA, and xFIP are all in the low threes. That means he’s been more unlucky than bad so far.
He also has an excellent 30.8% strikeout rate, which seems fairly sustainable based on his 14.8% swinging strike rate. That should come in handy against the Angels, who have a somewhat elevated strikeout rate as a team this year.
While Pepiot wouldn’t stand out on a typical slate, given the dearth of options today, he’s about as good as it gets. Since everyone else is working with the same player pool we are, we’ll take what we can get. He leads both THE BAT and FantasyLabs projections for median and ceiling on Thursday.
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MLB DFS Value Pick
Griffin Canning ($6,800) Los Angeles Angels (+133) vs. Tampa Bay Rays
Like his opponent Pepiot, Canning is also off to a rough start this season, though it’s putting it a bit more mildly in this case. His ERA is an ugly 9.88 with leading indicators around 6.00. To put it another way, he’s managed to be both bad and unlucky to start the season.
As DFS players, we need to decide if this is signal or noise. Canning has been a reasonably competent starter for the bulk of his career, with a 4.24 SIERA and 24.3% strikeout rate. In the grand scheme of things, his three bad starts in 2024 are just a blip on the radar.
Unless of course something is off with Canning. His average fastball velocity is the lowest it’s been since 2020 (which we could easily write off as an anomaly due to the pandemic), and he’s getting way fewer swinging strikes. Those are typically indicators of a pitcher operating at less than 100%.
Our models expect Canning to regress somewhere to his typical mean today. Thanks to his low salary, that gives him the best Pts/Sal projection on the slate. However, he’s extremely risky. I’m less convinced than the projection systems of his chances today, but it’s not like we’re spoiled with options.
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MLB DFS GPP Pick
Jack Leiter ($9,000) Texas Rangers (-109) at Detroit Tigers
The most interesting pitcher on today’s slate is the 23-year-old Leiter. He’s making his MLB debut today in Detroit following three starts in AAA where he struck out more than 40% of the batters he faced and had a 3.77 ERA.
Obviously his strikeout rate is going to regress in the big leagues, but that’s still an encouraging sign. On the other hand, his ERA was despite an unsustainably high 26.7% HR/FB ratio. That number should come way down, especially today. The weather in Detroit favors pitching, with a Weather Rating of 68 in our models. For what it’s worth, the Comerica Park dimensions are also somewhat larger than the Dell Diamond’s, where Leiter played his AAA home games.
It’s also a great debut matchup for Leiter against Detroit. They strike out at the seventh-highest rate in the big leagues so far this year while ranking 27th in wRC+. That’s not too much of a step up from some of the better AAA lineups he’s faced.
Of course, we have no idea how well the former number two overall pick’s stuff will play up at the big league level. There’s a fairly large risk involved in rostering him today, especially as the slate’s most expensive pitcher. However, that’s keeping his ownership projections well below Canning and Pepiot, making him a worthwhile GPP flier.
MLB DFS Hitters and Stacks
Notable Stack
With the Lineup Builder, it’s easy to incorporate stacks into DFS rosters.
Also, don’t forget that for large-field tournaments, you can utilize our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 300 lineups.
The top DraftKings stack in the FantasyLabs MLB Player Model when generated by rating using an aggregate projection set belongs to the Boston Red Sox:
Three of the six teams on today’s slate have implied totals between 4.8 and 5.0, so there’s plenty of similarly-projecting options in terms of teams to stack. However, Boston is absurdly cheap for their likely production, with their top five hitters averaging just $3,800 per player.
Paired with their slate-leading implied total, that makes them a pretty obvious stack today. They draw a strong matchup with veteran Carlos Carrasco ($7,400) today. He has a strong ERA of 3.55 this year, but he has xFIP and SIERA numbers over 5.00 following a 2023 season in which his ERA finished on the wrong side of six.
While this isn’t the most impressive Boston lineup with Rafael Devers getting the day off, their implied total staying high tells us everything we need to know. They’re a solid choice for all contest types today.
Other MLB DFS Hitter Picks
One of the great features of being a FantasyLabs Pro member is the option to purchase additional items in the FantasyLabs Marketplace.
In addition to our in-house MLB projections, THE BAT X from Derek Carty of RotoGrinders is available in our marketplace. With this purchase, you can use his projections alone or create aggregate projections within our Player Models.
For this example, we created a 50/50 blend with THE BAT X and the FantasyLabs projections to pinpoint some hitters that stand out.
Jose Ramirez 3B ($5,800) Cleveland Guardians at Boston Red Sox (Brennan Bernardino)
With Brennan Bernardino ($4,000) serving as the opener for Boston, it’s effectively a bullpen game for the Red Sox. This makes it hard to analyze the matchup for Ramirez and the Guardians, but that is still probably a good thing. Boston’s relievers have a middling 4.11 ERA this season, which should theoretically go up when stretched out to seven or eight innings.
More importantly, the abundance of value plays today means fitting Ramirez in lineups is fairly easy. He leads the FantasyLabs median projections for hitters while trailing only Boston’s Jarren Duran in THE BAT’s.
Mike Trout OF ($6,200) Los Angeles Angels at Tampa Bay Rays (Ryan Pepiot)
Given the overwhelming ownership we’re projecting on Pepiot, a sneaky GPP strategy is to target hitters on the opposing team. Not that we necessarily need PlateIQ to tell us who the Angels best hitter is, but let’s take a look anyway:
Surprise! It’s Mike Trout. He’s an excellent way to maximize your leverage against Pepiot in lineups that fade the chalky Rays hurler.
