Baseball is back! Let’s look at Friday’s slate of games.
Big Picture
There are 15 games today, but Cubs-Rangers at 2:20 PM ET is on only FanDuel for the all-day slate. The rest of the games begin at 7:05 PM ET, so we have a nice 14-game slate to kick off the second half of the MLB year.
Overall, projected scoring seems to be down for tonight: Last Sunday, there were 11 teams that had implied run totals of at least five runs. Today, only the Yankees currently hit that mark. This likely has to do with teams adjusting their pitching rotations because of the All-Star Break: Both Madison Bumgarner and Carlos Carrasco, for example, pitched Sunday and are getting the start today.
On the hitting side, we could use the Trends tool to see how batters have performed the last several years right after the ASB. However, that isn’t really useful, as it’s a very noisy sample: Because all batters face the same circumstances, even if we were to find that most hitters were amazing or awful in the first couple of games after ASB then we would still need to find the batters who separate themselves from their peers. There’s relatively little usable value here.
Pitching
Stephen Strasburg is the elite option tonight. He currently leads all pitchers in K Prediction (9.6), implied Vegas opponent run total (3.1), moneyline (-195), and Pro Trends on both sites. His elite 0.925 WHIP is second only to small-sample Lucas Harrell, pitching for the Braves. Strasburg has also been in great recent form in his last two starts: He has allowed a batted-ball distance of only 180 feet and a hard-hit rate of only 20 percent. Pitchers with those marks have historically had good Plus/Minus values and Consistency:
And that’s before adding filters for Strasburg’s super-high K Prediction and moneyline:
I normally don’t like using trends with such a low count, and while you don’t have to take the +15.21 Plus/Minus as gospel for that reason I do believe that the count is fairly telling. Only six pitchers have had these marks in the last couple of years, sure — but only six pitchers have had these marks in the last couple of years. Don’t overthink Strasburg.
If you want to get off Strasburg, then Madison Bumgarner is the other elite option to consider. Although he had been struggling a bit the last couple of weeks — comparatively, of course — he threw a straight gem Sunday, going the distance against the Diamondbacks while racking up 14 strikeouts and allowing only one walk and one hit. Strasburg is the superior option today for the reasons mentioned above — plus Bumgarner is actually more expensive at FanDuel — but Bumgarner does have elite Upside as shown by his last game. And it only helps that he’s playing in a pitcher’s park in San Diego.
Hitting quickly on a couple other pitchers: Carlos Carrasco is the final expensive option, but get your exposure at FanDuel instead of DraftKings: His 95 percent Bargain Rating at FD is due to the fact that he’s the most expensive pitcher at DK. (He has ‘only’ the third-highest salary at FD.) In the lower salary range, Jaime Garcia — $7,900 at FanDuel and $7,700 at DraftKings — faces a Marlins team that struggles against lefties: The projected lineup’s .276 Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) is the third-worst mark in the slate. Garcia is implied to allow only 3.7 runs, is pitching in St. Louis (Park Factor Rating of 82), is projected to win (moneyline of -137), and has allowed a batted-ball distance of only 181 feet in his last two starts. Pitchers with those marks have historically been very valuable.
Stacks, Stacks, Stacks, Stacks, Stacks
If you sung that to “Work from Home,” you’re welcome. If you didn’t, you are now. Enjoy that in your head today. All day.
Using our new Stacking tool, let’s look at the top DraftKings stack in the Bales 2016 Model for today.
Currently, a 1-3-4-5-6 stack of the Reds’ projected lineup has the highest combined rating in the Bales Model. Billy Hamilton — projected to hit second and ‘sporting’ an awful .074 Isolated Power (ISO) — is notably absent. This is a great stack for both cash games and tournaments for the following reasons:
Cash: The Reds are implied for 4.9 runs currently, making this an optimal stack with great hitters. Like, really great hitters: Duvall has a recent hard-hit rate of 52 percent.
Tournaments: This isn’t a straight 1-5 stack, so although it won’t be unique (given the implied run total), it will have a greater chance of being in a unique lineup because of the frequency with which people blindly stack the top spots.
I’ll give you one more stack, just because we’ve all been missing baseball lately and I’m feeling nice.
Here’s the top FanDuel stack in terms of average ISO:
The Red Sox have several lefties that crush right-handed pitchers. And that is particularly interesting today given that today’s best Park Factor Rating is for lefties at Yankee Stadium, where the Red Sox are opening a road series. Oh yeah, Michael Pineda gives up a ton of home runs, as shown by his third-worst HR/9 mark of 1.598. Mookie Betts isn’t a lefty, but he’s a no-splits guy, equally good against right- and left-handed pitchers. That’s typically an indication of elite hitting, and his .214 ISO against fellow righties suggests that he’s elite.
Three Intriguing, Stand-Alone Hitters
Jake Lamb was on a crazy heater: Prior to his three-game series in San Francisco, he had scored double-digit FanDuel points in seven straight starts, and six of those were at least 18-point FD games. If people judge him harshly for his poor performance in SF — the best pitcher’s park in MLB, by the way — take advantage of that recency bias and load up. Lamb’s .249 ISO and projected cleanup spot tonight against Bud Norris is wonderfully laughable given his low $3,500 salary at FanDuel.
Curtis Granderson also might be the subject of recency bias tonight: He’s coming off a series against the Nationals in which he faced Strasburg, Max Scherzer, and Steven Matz in three straight games. Tonight he gets Jeremy Hellickson, who is allowing 1.453 HR/9 in the last year, a bottom-four mark. He has a .251 ISO and .516 slugging percentage versus right-handed pitchers in the last year.
Assuming Yasmani Grandal gets the start tonight, he is in a great spot going against Patrick Corbin and his high 1.432 WHIP. Grandal has a recent hard-hit rate of 57 percent and a recent batted-ball distance of 243 feet. Sure, his three-HR game a week ago certainly helps those numbers, but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily any less predictive. We want to find guys crushing the ball and he certainly qualifies. He also currently has 10 Pro Trends at both DraftKings and FanDuel.
Be sure to consult our Lineups page throughout the day for our most up-to-date information.
Good luck tonight!
