Good morning and welcome back to the Sunday edition of Covering ALL the 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. For those who might be new to the column, I am a high school teacher from Pennsylvania and lifelong sports fan. Writing for the DFS Army has been a dream come true, and getting to know so many of you readers has been a lot of fun.
During the week I specialize in pivots for GPP contests in my series called Dr. StrangeChalk: How I learned to dodge the Bomb. Become a VIP member and gain access to my weekday article and dozens of other articles, plus our Research Station and Domination Station optimizer!
On the weekends I write this full slate breakdown in which I try to cover as much as I can about pitching, hitting and roster construction. This article is intended to point you in the right direction and help start your research process. It is by no means a comprehensive list of who play or not to play in today’s contests. Always make sure to check the weather, lineups (especially on Sunday) and our VIP members should try to jump into our premium slack chat to see if our experts have moved on or off certain players.
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Pitching
Today is not a great day for pitching, let me just start there. Our top two options for cash games look like Dallas Keuchal against the ChiSox and Rick Porcello against the Royals. Ugh…
Dallas Keuchal as the top-priced pitcher on the slate makes me immediately want to fade him and stack against him, but I’m a contrarian at heart. He’s a massive -310 favorite against a team that whiffs a lot, but I honestly think that spread has more to do with Houston’s scorching hot offense that it does with Keuchal’s pitching ability. I’ve been talking about Keuchal’s decline as an elite starter all season, and while he’s certainly still a good pitcher, he’s not one that I’m likely to pay up for on a slate loaded with bats.
I like Rick Porcello (-220 favorite) a lot more today. Mainly, because he’s been more consistent all season and also because I fear the Royals bats a lot less than the White Sox. Fire him up in your FD cash games (more on DK strategy in a minute) with some level of confidence today.
GPP FD Targets
Jake Odorizzi and Nathan Eovaldi are my prime targets today. At 7000 and 6800 they are going to give you a ton of salary cap to cram in your favorite high priced stacks. Odorizzi is in a slightly more boom/bust spot against the Orioles, who can strike out with the best of them, but also have power throughout the lineup. Eovaldi has been really good in his last two starts, allowing only two earned runs in 12 innings while racking up 14 k’s. He’s in a great spot today against the Mets and I like his chances of giving us the 30+ we are looking for on FD at his price point.
There’s no pitcher I view today as “safe” so you’re going to have to roll with some questionable pitchers regardless of if you are playing cash or GPP on Fanduel or Draftkings.
DK Strategy
I was asked the other day by one of our members to go into a little more detail on Draftkings picks, specifically SP2 choices. The optimal strategy over there is usually to lock in one higher priced arm and then find a sub 8k arm who will get you 15 DK points. Today’s sub 8k DK specials are…
Nathan Eovaldi – 8k vs. the Mets
Jake Odorizzi – 7.3k vs. the Orioles
Ryan Borucki – 6.3k vs. the Yankees
I did some digging into Borucki’s profile and he’s a pretty solid young arm with a good groundball tendency. He won’t go out and dominate the Yankees, but he could surprise everyone and throw 6 solid innings against them at low ownership.
Austin Bibens-Dirkx- 4.6k vs. the Tigers
I would never recommend this play on FD, but as the lowest priced pitcher on the slate ABD interests me against the right-handed heavy Tigers. All he needs is 12-13 DK points to give you 3x on his salary and I could see him doing it today with a very boring 5-6 innings.
I’m actually okay fading all the higher priced pitchers on DK and rolling say Eovaldi and Odorizzi and just loading up on bats. There are going to be a lot of runs scored today, and you’re going to need every hitter to do something in those lineups to contend.
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Hitters
We see the same teams at the top of the Vegas totals again today – Houston, Cleveland, Boston, Washington and the Yankees. All of those teams except the Indians met or exceeded their projected run totals yesterday and Washington exploded for 18 runs (thank god I had a lot of Mark Reynolds). You’re going to want some exposure to these teams today, especially in cash games.
I think Cleveland is in a great spot to bounce back against soft-tossing has been Brett Anderson, they absolutely crush left-handed pitching. I would put the Astros second on my list, they should smack Lucas Giolito around (value alert – rookie Kyle Tucker is 2k and projected to start). I would have to put Boston third only because the Royals Jake Junis was at one point this season a competent pitcher before he completely fell apart in June.
The two teams I’ll be underweight on are the Nats and Yanks. Washington faces Trevor Richards who is a decent hard-throwing young arm and they should be mega-chalky with people chasing their 18 run explosion. The Yankees also face a pretty good young pitcher in Ryan Borucki (more on him in a minute) and they are always popular because, well, they are the YANKEES.
A few sneaky spots to attack today could be…
The Pirates-Phillies game (both sides) – both teams are throwing rookies out there today. The Pirates starter Nick Kingham is coming off his worst game in the majors and his confidence has to be shot. The Phillies are starting Drew Anderson, who’s only made two relief appearances at the major league level. He’s got some serious fly-ball tendencies and nothing in his minor league stats suggests he’s anything more than a middle-of-the-rotation arm at best.
Oakland lefties – to keep the theme of picking on rookies going, Shane Bieber may have had all of us fooled. But, Baby, we may have been wrong at about him. While he is an excellent control pitcher, he has given up an alarming 37 hits in only his first five MLB starts. A WOBA of over 380 to lefties and a high hard contact rate makes me want to load up on Dustin Fowler and Matt Olsen today.
Texas Rangers lefties vs. Michael Fulmer – Texas has let me down a few times, but I really like picking on Fulmer with lefties and Texas has some good ones in Gallo, Choo, Mazara, and even Profar (switch hitter).
Tampa Bay against Mets Bullpen – Chris Flexen is the nominal starter today but I can’t imagine he goes more than a few innings. The Mets bullpen is bad, and Tampa is a team that should come with little ownership with so many good offenses on the slate. Super sneaky GPP only play here.
Toronto vs. Domingo German – Oh Domingo! For a couple game stretch he was a strikeout machine, but lately, he has been getting smacked around by everyone. His reverse splits suggest that we could stack Randall Grichuk, Kevin Pillar, and Toescar Hernandez from the right side and hope they can keep swinging some hot bats today.
I hope this helps you build some winning lineups today! If you like reading my column all I ask if you share it with friends on social media! Thanks for reading and good luck!
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