Good morning and welcome back to the Saturday edition Covering ALL the Bases, which should be your first stop when researching any weekend MLB DFS slate. I go by “Thunder Dan” around here and you can find me @ThunderDanDFS on twitter. I’m ready to break down 14 baseball games today for you. Whether you are playing on Fanduel and Draftkings, I’ve got some stats and thoughts to get your lineup-building process started.
Today both sites have a 3-game slate that locks at 4:05 and an 11-game main slate that locks at 7:05. I’ll do a quick breakdown of the early slate and then focus mostly on the main slate.
Early Slate (3 games) 4:05 Lock
This small slate is super interesting today. If you’re playing cash games (not always suggested on such small slates) just lock in Jacob Degrom at pitcher and find some value with your bats. Degrom has been on an absolute tear over the last month and should be able to keep it rolling today against the strikeout-prone Phillies. You simply cannot fade him in cash as he will be heavily owned and should be the top raw scorer on the slate.
Now in GPPs, the game theory move would be to fade Degrom and move down to someone like Dallas Keuchal or Jake Arrieta at pitcher. I prefer Keuchal (even on FD where he’s considerably more expensive) because he is in better form and has a much better park factor. Both guys are groundball pitchers, but the Mets lineup has been HOT the last week and balls fly out of Citizens Bank Park pretty regularly in this hot, humid PA weather (I’m sweating while typing this in Central Pennsylvania).
The Indians will be the most popular offense that DFS players target against Baltimore starter Alex Cobb, but they let everyone down last night and many probably don’t realize Cobb has now gone six straight starts allowing three earned runs or less. I actually like targeting some Orioles bats today against Cleveland starter Adam Plutko who was just called up from AAA. Plutko has been really bad in his handful of MLB starts over this year and last, and has an extreme fly ball tendency which should mean some balls leave the yard today at Progressive Field.
One other way to leverage the DeGrom chalk might be by using Justin Bour if he starts for the Phillies today. As a member of the Marlins, Bour hit .381 with 2 homers off Degrom and could be a cheap source of power at first base. Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo are two Mets that I would consider using against Arrieta as well, as left-handers are his biggest weakness.
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Main Slate (11 games) 7:05 Lock
Pitching
A Saturday night slate with a lot of pitching options, this doesn’t seem to happen very often, but it’s what we are looking at tonight. We have some funky price discrepancies between sites today so if you play both sites you may want to consider that tonight when building your rosters.
Zach Godley carries our best DFSA grade today on the main slate and is cheaper than David Price on both sites at only 9800 on FD and 8700 on DK. He’s pitching well right now and has the best matchup of the higher priced guys against the Padres on the road, I see no reason not to use him confidently in cash games tonight. As far as Price goes, he’s also been excellent of late and has absolutely dominated the Rays over his career so I expect him to be chalky in his own right. With Price costing only 9800 on DK, I think you could comfortably use a Price-Godley pitching combo and still have enough salary to get some decent bats tonight.
Mike Foltynewicz is the pivot (if you like pivots, I write a GPP pivots column several times a week called Dr. StrangeChalk – check it out!) but is oddly priced at 11,100 on DK (what does their algorithm know that we don’t!!??). I am a sucker for Folty, he throws some serious gas and always carries a lot of strikeout upside, but I’ll probably reserve my shares for FD where he’s only 9600.
Madison Bumgarner and Rich Hill are both under 9k on FD and worthy of consideration. I’m not in love with the spot for either of them, but both these guys are capable of going out and shutting down a good team any given night. I don’t see a ton of strikeout upside for either though, so I may fade.
The last guy for GPP’s I’ll mention is another lefty, Andrew Heaney, who faces the Texas Rangers on the road tonight. This is not a play for those who are faint of heart, as Heaney has some poor PvB against the Rangers hitters (although it’s a small sample size) and has to pitch in one of the best hitting environments in all of MLB. Heaney is a boom/bust pitcher who can give up some long balls or go out and toss a 10-strikeout gem, so just be warned.
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Hitters
Even though there are a decent amount of good pitchers going tonight, there are also a number of mediocre or bad pitchers we can target with hitters. Here’s a quick list of some stacks I’ll be looking at closer to lock once lineups come out.
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Wade Miley (right-handers, plus Matt Carpenter)
Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Tyler Chatwood (left-handers Dickerson, Polanco, Bell)
They’re ice-cold now but could break out tonight against Chatwood who has been really bad this year.
LA Dodgers vs. Erasmo Ramirez (left-handers mainly, but the whole lineup is stacked)
They finally broke out last night! Time to jump on!
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Clayton Richard (right-handers Goldschmidt, Pollock, Escobar, Souza, Ahmed)
San Francisco Giants vs. Matt Harvey (left-handers Belt, Crawford are primary targets)
Anytime Matt Harvey is pitching at home, I have interest in lefties against him.
That’s all I got today. Thanks for reading and good luck in your contests. VIP members can check in with our coaches throughout the day in our premium slack chat. If you’re not a VIP yet, what are you waiting for???
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