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Remember, this article is designed to get you pointed in the right direction. It’s not a slate write-up and it’s not a player picks piece. I would rather get you started, then have you interact with us in our VIP slack forums as we banter picks and strategies back and forth. Learning MLB the right way is the fastest way to grow your skill level.
DFS MLB Condensed Slate Breakdowns
Get a quick feel here, but watch the date. APRIL 27 is up now…
MLB DFS Slate Quick Glance
A 14 game slate is MASSIVE, and that’s what we have our hands on today. There are so many options a newer player might become overwhelmed easily. Lucky for you, we have the coaches in the Army that can help you. But, another solid piece of advice might be to play the smaller slates. Less information, fewer mistakes in regards to player picks, and tighter money lines combine to give less experienced players a better shot at winning some money. Leave the bigger slates to the sharks and pros. Always play with an edge….or at the very least, reduce the edge others have on you, if at all possible.
It looks like our smaller slates will be the 8pm starts: OAK vs HOU, CIN vs MIN, and CWS vs KCR, and the 10pm starts: NYY vs LAA, NYM vs SDP, and LAD vs SFG. I will try to consider the main slate, but I will try to focus on the smaller slates and how they reshuffle today as we break things down.
Main Slate Concepts –
deGrom, Kluber, and Strasburg appear to lead the way on the large slate tonight. San Diego and Arizona strike out quite a bit vs RHP (28% and 26%, respectively), so we won’t be targeting those bats. Our bottom barrel pitchers are: Tillman, Hughes, Lopez, and to some degree Holland and Manaea. I find it immediately amusing Manaea is “bottom barrel” coming off his no-hitter. It’s because he’s facing HOU, but truth be told, I wouldn’t exactly be stacking HOU against him. Something is up with those numbers.
The others, however, are stackable against. But, you have to use DET, KCR, CIN, and LAD, respectively. Of those, the only offense I’d actively avoid is the KC Royals. They are brutal and only have two players rated over a 75 on our Research Station. The others are stackable with DET and CIN containing plenty of bats rated in the 80s on our scale. I might toss BAL to the list being they draw Mike Fiers tonight, but upon looking at our DFSA Grades, Manny Machado carries only a 78 rating for the O’s. That’s not a super strong matchup….and doesn’t bode that well for the Orioles, in general.
Express Slate Concepts –
Bear with me, but usually the 8pm games mark the Express. Sometimes, though, we get 4 and 5 game slates. As-is, we have 3 games to look at. When we look at pitching, Luis Castillo grades the highest and it’s by a comfortable margin. I’m surprised Dallas Keuchel is 3rd and I expect him to be rather chalky, and I expect people to chase points a little in GPPs with Sean Manaea. But, as we saw, Manaea faces a pretty powerful HOU offense, so we might temper expectations there. It looks like the OAK/HOU matchup has two quality pitchers on the mound leading to a logical fade of both teams’ bats (outside of some one-off or BVP matchup you might find).
I would rather target Reynoldo Lopez and Phil Hughes. I mentioned before we don’t want to take KC bats, but that was for the Main slate where we had a lot of other choices. This is how slates shift around because as our options diminish, we sometimes need to take less than stellar choices because they suddenly become fairly strong. Lopez is pitching to a 5.23 SIERA currently and gives up a .214 ISO to lefties. You will quickly land on Moustakas on a short player pool tonight. All of the Reds are in play, and you can fill in the rest with one-offs from the other teams. I would only probably avoid Twins bats tonight on this slate.
Late Slate Concepts –
Well, if deGrom was good enough for the Main Slate, you can bet your bile duck he’s good on the late. In fact, one key I love practicing on the small slates is “stack against the chalk.” deGrom will definitely be the chalk with his 97 DFSA Grade, 577 KScore, and paltry contact against numbers. We can expect it to be a long night for Padres bats. However, baseball is a funny game. You don’t need it to happen often to win more than your money back in GPPs by playing long shots. Stacking Padres on the surface is dumb as hell. But, even ace pitchers falter about 20% of the time. If you catch the 20%, you might get lucky and have very low ownership in an offense that posts good numbers. Don’t write it off as stupid.
The smart money, though, will be on Dodgers and Yankees bats. I’m not sure what they can afford if they run deGrom, so I’d give a bump in ownership to Hyun-Jin Ryu tonight. At $7800, he’s a nice bargain for those opting for bigger bats and stacking vs weaker pitching. The 480 KScore isn’t terrible, the Giants aren’t intimidating, it’s a night game where the air is heavy and the ball won’t travel, and the Giants carry a team wOBA of only .281 vs LHP. Ryu makes a nice pivot to load up on bats.
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MLB DFS Teams to Stack
Main Slate Stacking –
Shown above are the top 13 hitters according to our DFSA Grades and I have placed colored dots next to those on the same teams. I often scan quickly to see who our Research Station is identifying as “stackable.” In this case, it checks with what we’ve been discussing already. CIN and DET are in great spots tonight with a side dish of LAD. Focus your energy on researching these teams, unless you want to be intentionally suboptimal for a more contrarian stack. DFS MLB is about playing the solid numbers day in and day out and letting the long season work itself out. Does it work every night? Nope. Do hall of fame hitters hit homeruns and score 8 runs every night? Nope. Will Boston win every night? Nope. But, it looks like they will win a few more games than they lose. You, as a DFS player, should set similar expectations for yourself, not unrealistic ones.
Express Slate Stacking –
To further drive the point home, look at the utter domination our rankings show for CIN tonight. If playing the Express Slate, you have two options: 1- Eat the chalky bats that will be Votto, Winker, Gennett or 2- Fade them, hope they falter, and you have much lower ownership that pans out in GPPs. That’s really all these smaller slates are about most nights. Find the chalk, and decide if you want to eat it or fade it. If you are less experienced, get good at that on the smaller slates and then take your game to the bigger slates where the sharks swim.
Late Night Slate Stacking –
Well, we see our other offense from the main dominating the Late…..those LA Dodgers. I’m trying to show you how your priorities can shift from slate to slate, but it’s not as drastic tonight as it can be. You might focus on CIN and LAD on the main slate and be just fine. However, we never mentioned the NY Mets, or the Yankees for that matter, on the main slate tonight. But, look how they jump into play on the late slate. When we remove all the premium choices on the main slates, we see other teams become the better options on their own smaller slates. I think that’s the teaching point here. Things change and evolve. Take what the slate gives you, and be flexible.
The Dodgers will be the top stack on the late slate due to facing weaker pitching in Derek Holland. Mets and Yankees will mix in, but remember…..if you want to get Yankees, you can’t likely run out deGrom. You can turn to Ryu as your secondary option, and that decision will likely be the difference between winning and losing the slate tonight.
The only place you are going to find this Research Station I reference is inside the VIP progam at dfsarmy.com. And, the only place you will learn how to drive the race car is from our coaching as a VIP. In a nutshell, if you are ready to stop being “good” and start being “great,” you need to simply join us and use the same tools and optimizer we are using to keep our army hats on top of the leaderboards daily. Hope to see you there!
#DongCall Time!
This section takes on a change. I will simply leave it at my #200on200 guys for the foreseeable future. Posting pictures on the web is becoming more trouble than it’s worth, and it’s not like many people comment out on Twitter anyway. That’s a shame because it was fun.
#200on200 – #DongCall worthy
Tyler Austin, Stanton, Sanchez, Judge, Blackmon, Machado, Moustakas, Kemp, Miggy Cabrera, Dahl, Mancini, Duda, Morrison, Adam Jones, Duvall, Carlos Santana, Kepler, Rosario
Ok, we have a HUGE list tonight. We can draw a solid conclusion here……..tonight might contain a lot of fireworks. It would behoove you to focus on stats like ISO and SLG when looking at your players and stacks. If the money lines go high, you will need home runs, not walks, to get you to the cash. Bear that in mind…..and good luck!
Final MLB DFS Thoughts
For MLB cash games, keep the stacking to a minimum. You can’t afford to grab stack Rockies in Coors and have them fall flat, which they occasionally do. ISO is a great stat to look at with wOBA for hitter-friendly parks. Remember to head over to DFSARMY.com, your one-stop-shop for stats, player recommendations, coaching, winning lineups discussion, and everything DFS related. Use code CHOPto trigger a 10% discount every month as long as you remain a member regardless of any future price increases. You are grandfathered in at your rate permanently!!
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