MLB DFS ‘Chop’s Chin Music’ Winning Lineups Strategy 6-23

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At the end of this article is a link to a new challenge I’m starting this week.  Follow along by giving it a read!

Quick Glance

Quick refresh on the columns.  Wx is your weather forecast for the day on a safety scale of 1-10, with 0 being played in a dome.  Vegas P helps determine the odds your pitcher will get the win.  Green is good.  Vegas B is the run total of the game for hitters.  Again, green is good.

For an even better look at the weather, give @dfsmlbweather a follow!  He has quickly become a friend and our in-house meteorologist when it comes to DFS MLB advice.  I have personally seen him say not to worry about three games this year where others around the industry were calling the game too risky.  When it comes to baseball, you don’t want a weather guy that lives in fear of making mistakes (like most of my local tv guys).  Also, find his page on site at DFS MLB Weather.

MLB Pitchers for Winning DFS Lineups

The first thing we look for is a solid pitcher with upside.  I use Vegas odds and KScore to point me in the right direction.  I tie-break with price.  If there are two similar pitchers in Vegas and KScore, I will opt for the cheaper one.  The win is important, but not like it used to be before Fanduel broke up those points into quality starts and the win.  Now, on all sites, strikeouts reign supreme in DFS MLB!

On large slates like this we usually have a lot of options.  Today is no different.  These are the top few I like and why.

Alex Wood (LAD) –  Wood leads the pack for me with the combination of price, Vegas odds, and KScore.  Furthermore, he has scored over 44 FD points in 5 of his last 6 starts against the Rockies.  He has faced them once this season where he dropped a 58 on them!  The night game in Chavez Ravine helps keep that ball in the yard as Dodger Stadium is the 2nd most friendly park to pitchers this year by some rankings.  COL strikes out at 23% vs lefites and Wood has a very low average exit velocity the past month, averaging only 84 mph off opposing bats.  Pretty strong stuff leading to a great matchup for Alex.

Trevor Bauer (CLE) – Bauer is my next choice due to a little better price and still very respectable Vegas odds and a KScore just under 500 at 495.  He’s a bit up and down in nature, but should be more up today.  In his last 4 starts vs MIN, he has posted scores of 49, 40, 44, and 34 leading us to believe he enjoys something about facing the Twins.  It might be that MIN strikes out 24% of the time vs righties.   This game, however, is a weather watcher, especially for the pitching.  Look up near the “at a glance” matchup for a link to our weather friend, Mark.  He has you covered for the forecasts near lock.

Stephen Strasburg (WAS) – Stephen draws what looks to be a fair matchup on paper, but he’s been a little “off” lately and CIN has been a rather potent offense this year.  That alone gives me some pause at a price tag over $10000.  Vegas loves the matchup, but for this price I feel the KScore is a bit low at 491.  Normally, that’s a great KScore, but I can get Archer, Wood, and Bauer all with slightly better scores for cheaper.  What I need, though, at 10k is to see consistency near 50 points, and I don’t.  I see a nice floor of 30ish, but going back 8 starts I only see two starts over 46 points.  Even if Strasburg grabs us 40 points tonight, I’m not going to be that happy at this price.  I’d rather look elsewhere and have confidence in some upside to 5X my price and beyond.

Dinelson Lamet (SDP) – Here is a GPP only pick for you, but it’s very reasonably priced in the mid 7k range.  This KScore is eye-popping at 575 and it leads the pitchers tonight.  The upside is there.  You won’t find a lot of competition on Lamet either because he is facing DET and is the underdog at a +120.  If you game log hunt him, you will also see some up and down nature to his starts.  However, there is upside to 45 points, DET strikes out at a 24% clip vs righties, and the Tigers have suppressed numbers in their team ISO and wOBAs as well.  This is a nice spot to take a shot at some upside and load up your bats.

Chris Archer (TBR) – DFS players will probably like some Archer tonight.  He is heavily favored by Vegas at 2:1 and carries his usual higher KScore into his start.  He’s up and down a bit, too, and looks to have a very hard floor of 30 points (making him pretty cash safe), but I don’t like his last three starts vs BAL.  Scores of 28, 26, and 20 kind of worry me…..especially after mentioning the hard floor of 30.  It feels like he will be testing the 30 more than the ceiling of 50 in this matchup.  You do get him at home where he averages 25% more fantasy points per start.  So, there’s that.  I just like the others at the top of this list better.

Soft Pitching to Attack

Next, we start looking to bats.  We start the process by finding the softer pitching.  Perhaps the best, and fastest, way to accomplish this is to look at the last couple years MLB SIERA numbers.  If you don’t know what SIERA is, ask in our VIP Slack Chat rooms.  Someone will answer it quickly for you.  I look for those running over 5.00 and then over 4.50.  I write them down on paper so I can see them in one list.  NOTE:  Opponents will now be in parentheses.

Over 5.00 SIERA – Urena (CHC), Junis (TOR), Pelfry (OAK), Blach (NYM), Cotton (@CWS)

I’m cross-referencing soft pitching with another set of parameters now, too, and they spit out this list (I’m looking for overlap in the teams facing the soft pitching:  WAS, CLE, TOR, PHI, and CHC.  From the overlap, we have stars lined up on TOR and CHC being that they are on both lists.  You will see they aren’t that high on the IRT list below, which might make them somewhat sneaky stacks tonight.

Implied Run Totals for DFS MLB Bats

Your next step is to look to Vegas to guide you in your quest for the best bats.  Implied run totals are not a great indicator of an actual score.  They are, however, a nice indicator of bad pitching, ballpark factors, and general good spots for our hitters.  I list them in order as I find them, crosscheck with where the pitcher shows weakness (handedness of bats), and then give you the best players (in CAPS) followed by the still playable players (lowercase).  If not on this list, you rarely find them in my MLB lineups.

NEW – bold players have what I’m calling #200on200 matchups.  This means the pitcher gives up a .200 iso, or better, to a particular handedness to a batter and the batter has a .200 iso, or better, on his career vs the handedness of the pitcher.  This is proving to be an ideal power matchup.  Remember, soft pitching matching up against power hitting leads to boomskies.

BOS left – BOGAERTS, bradley, young, benintendi, moreland

CLE both – CHISENHALL, JACKSON, RAMIREZ, EE

WAS – LOBATON, RABURN, DREW (it’s sad when these are the only hot bats in this lineup currently, yet Vegas thinks they will score a lot of runs.  I would say the big names are viable here, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending any with their current short term numbers.)

CWS right – ABREU, davidson, hanson, AGarcia

OAK both – JOYCE

NYY neither (Darvish handles both sides of the plate fairly well) – GARDNER (BvP spot), DIDI (BvP spot), HOLLIDAY, JUDGE, hicks, romine

TBR left – SOUZA, ROBERTSON, plouffe, beckham, morrison, dickerson

Honorable Mentions:  PHI both, TOR both, SEA both, HOU both, CHC both, LAD both

For more players, and a little breakdown of which I’m building around, you just need to become a VIP.  Yes, membership has it’s privileges.  Click here to become a member –> ChoppoDong sent me!

#DongCall!!

We played a fun little game last year where I posted a picture of my DFS MLB “Dong Call” of the day.  I tried to make the picture obscure enough it wasn’t just giving you the player’s name.  My #DongCall is pictured below.  Who is it?  Give me a follow and tweet me @ChoppoDong if you know, and tweet me yours, too!

Yesterday’s #DongCall was technically Yasiel Puig, but I hedged and tossed in Cody Bellinger and Justin Turner for good measure.