Hello Everyone and welcome back to Covering tALL he Bases, which should be your first read when researching any weekend MLB DFS slate for Fanduel or Draftkings. I go by “Thunder Dan” around here and you can find me @ThunderDanDFS on twitter. I’m a history teacher by day, and DFS analyst and consultant by night. Or in today’s case on the weekend. It’s a beautiful Memorial Day weekend! My daughter has her lemonade stand set up at the yard sale and it’s time to start building some MLB DFS lineups.
This morning I am going to give you a good idea of where to start building your lineups for today’s, slate including both pitching and hitting AND I will be covering both the 4:00 slate and the 7:00 main slate. This article will be styled in much the same way as Chop’s Chin Music is during the week. It is intended to point you in the right direction and start your process. It is by no means a comprehensive list of who play or not to play today.
Be sure to check back throughout the day for more premium content from the rest of our staff at DFS army and our coaches are constantly dropping notes on each slate in our premium slack chat as each slate unfolds. If you’re not a VIP member yet, what are you waiting for?
MLB DFS Pitching (Both Slates)
The first thing I always do is head over to the Research Station to get a look at the pitching on any given slate.
The first thing I noticed today is that with the slates being broken up the way that they are, that there not a lot of strong options for either. That may work to your favor, however, if you’re able to lock in on the best 1-2 pitchers on each slate today.
EARLY
For cash games, it’s really only Aaron Nola or Tanner Roark discussion today I think. Nola is a better pitcher with perhaps a tougher match-up against Toronto. Roark has been really consistent lately, but those damn Marlins are awfully pesky (ask Mad Max last night). Since neither of them are terribly expensive, I’d expect Nola to be more popular and certainly has more strikeout upside today.
For tournaments, I am really intrigued by Jack Flaherty against Pittsburgh. He’s coming off his best professional start and he is a hard-throwing young kid with some dynamic stuff. I’ll have more on him for our premium members in slack notes later today.
MAIN
Once again, I think it’s best to limit the number of pitchers you use tonight based on the lack quality arms going. We see a rematch of Carlos Carrasco against Lance McCullers tonight. Both of them pitched pretty well the last time they squared off, with McCullers throwing a gem against the Tribe. I think both are fine options, but obviously, both teams have really good offenses so neither is totally safe tonight.
If you’re looking for safe, and boring, then Alex Wood is certainly an option against the Padres tonight. He has good numbers against them over his career, but he hasn’t shown us much strikeout upside this year, so his ceiling isn’t anywhere near the top two studs. Outside of Wood, I could maybe get behind a hot Jake Odorizzi but I can’t really endorse any cheap pitching options tonight.
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MLB DFS Hitting (Both Slates)
One way to look at what offenses you want to target is to see which pitchers are ranked at the bottom of our DFSA rankings.
Early
The afternoon slate is loaded with potential offense. The Rangers and Royals game has a Coors-esque ten run game total, so I’d start there first. However, there are other gas cans to pick on besides Colon and Kennedy. I personally love attacking the mediocre lefty-handed pitching trifecta of Wei Yin Chen, Jason Vargas, and Hector Santiago with right-handed power bats. So stack up the Tigers, Brewers, and Nationals this afternoon. I mean Andrew Cashner stinks against lefties, but Tampa doesn’t have anyone I want to use against him with Denard Span gone. Jaime Garcia is nothing special but I’ve had little success picking on Cashner over the years and the Phillies bats have been pretty cold the last few weeks. There’s certainly a lot of ways to go with bats on the day slate.
Main
Coors bats are obviously in play tonight, but Mahle and Anderson are not bad pitchers, so you don’t have to stack Coors. I’m definitely interested in the Cubs bats against Chris Stratton in Wrigley. The second highest Vegas total tonight is in Yankee stadium, with a struggling Sonny Gray and an unproven rookie Jaime Barria pitching against two good offenses, so I think some Yankees and Angels shares are in order. If you think you can’t play Gleyber Torres just because he’s now over 4k and still hitting ninth, go ahead and fade him, but I’ll keep playing him every night until he cools off.
Final Thoughts
My general rule of thumb is don’t overthink the good plays in cash. Chalky plays are usually good plays, you don’t need to worry about ownership when playing cash games. For tournaments, never hesitate to go against the grain, swim against the current, and if you want more advice on how to be contrarian check out my VIP only feature Dr. Strangechalk during the week which dives deeper into GPP strategy and pivots for each slate.
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