Good morning and welcome back to the Saturday edition of “Covering All the Bases,” which should be your first stop when researching any weekend MLB DFS slate. I’m ready to break down tonight’s 13-game main slate, an unusually large Saturday evening slate (College Football is back!) Whether you are playing on Fanduel and Draftkings, I’ve got some thoughts to get your lineup-building process started.
There are two early games on today at 4:05. Our VIPs should check slack for notes from our coaches, but for this article, I am going to stick to the main slate only.
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Tonight’s Pitchers
For cash games, the conventional wisdom is usually to pay up at pitcher, and while Clayton Kershaw and Patrick Corbin are both solid options from the Arizona-L.A. game, it’s probably not necessary to pay 10-11k for them tonight. Jon Gray is vastly underpriced (again, shocker!) in a road matchup with the Padres and at 9200 on FD and 8800 on DK he should be chalky, but a safe bet for cash.
My favorite GPP option is probably Blake Snell, who is priced at 9800 at FD and 10.7k on DK, right below the other aces and just above Gray. He has been seriously impressive in his last two starts, and just really good all season. He finally has no pitch count limitations and he gets a chance to shut down the powerful, but struggling Indians offense.
You’re DK SP2 special is once again my boy Robbie Erlin (4900) who gets the Rockies at home. He pitched very effectively against them in Coors in his last start against them, and today has them at home. He has an excellent groundball rate and is likely to be able to get through 5-6 innings and get you the 10-15 DK points you’re looking for from a punt pitcher.
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Tonight’s Hitters
How ’bout them Royals? I wasn’t too high on them yesterday morning but eventually ended up with some guys like Ryan O’Hearn and Hunter Dozier last night, who both homered and led the Royals to a 9-2 win over Baltimore. This offense should provide some tremendous value again tonight against Dylan Bundy, who’s getting absolutely lit up just about every time he takes the mound these days. Never thought I’d lead in a section on bats with the Royals, but hey, it’s Septemeber baseball!
Seattle’s bats woke up last night, smacking three homers off Mike Fiers and finally scored some runs. Daniel Mengden takes the hill for Oakland, and while he pretended to be a solid pitcher for a short stretch earlier this season, he quickly regressed and was getting hit hard before going on the DL for two months. He’s a high contact pitcher who lacks any strikeout stuff, which is exactly who I want to target with power bats like Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, and Mitch Haniger. The Mariners could be sneaky tonight.
And don’t sleep on the Miami Marlins tonight either (I know, you’re thinking did he just recommend KC, Seattle, and Miami in the same article?) The Marlins face off against Marco “I like to give up home runs” Estrada who is a reverse splits pitcher who gives up a .380 wOBA to right-handed hitters and has a really strong fly-ball tendency. Those fly balls turn into homers, and I think a Castro, Realmuto, Anderson stack against him should be sneaky, affordable, and could really pay off tonight.
Good luck today in your contests! Thanks as always for reading! It’s early, so things might change throughout the day. Our VIPs can check in with me and our other MLB coaches in Slack. Everyone else, hit me up on twitter @ThunderDanDFS
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