Good morning MLB DFS players and welcome back to the Tuesday edition of Dr. StrangeChalk. We have a massive 15-game main slate which means there are going to be a lot of good options at every position. As always, I’ll be trying to assess where we think the chalk will fall and what we want to do with it. Every slate is different, remember what is considered “chalky” is relative to the size of the slate. With many DFS players shifting their focus to NFL this week (present company included), let’s see if we can get an edge on the competition who might rely on the chalk instead of doing their homework.
For our purposes in DFS, the “bomb” refers the “chalk bomb” which is a player we often force into our lineups because they seem like “the can’t miss play” of the night, only to watch them come up short. The goal of this column is to give you some pivots from these popular plays.
In this series, I have been focusing on identifying the “chalk” and figuring out ways to leverage against it. This may include fading “bad chalk”, stacking an offense against a chalky pitcher, “flipping” your roster construction for the slate, or simply looking for similarly priced pivots who could outperform the chalkier plays any given night.
About Last Night…
Yesterday I didn’t write my pivots column, but I did try to give some contrarian advice in the slack chat. I knew that I wanted to attack Zach Godley, who would be a popular pitcher used, which would leave the Padres low owned. I also wanted to target a relatively hot Tampa team against Marcus Stroman. I ended up being able to fit both of those stacks with Jacob Degrom. Weird stuff happened and sure enough, Tampa and San Diego were the highest scoring teams, and a 1.5% Franmil Reyes double-donged and broke the slate. Almost took down this small GPP on Fanduel, until a late RBI by Paul Goldschmidt knocked me down to second place. Just goes to show that ANYTHING can happen in September MLB!
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Tonight’s Pitchers
Justin Verlander and JA Happ are just too overpriced for me tonight. Verlander’s innings per start is down, which has really lowered his ceiling. And Happ is priced over 10k on both sites, which is wild because while he is a good pitcher, he’s not an elite pitcher and with 29 other guys pitching tonight there’s really no reason to pay up for him against a pesky Oakland team.
The next tier is pretty solid with Rich Hill, Mike Clevinger, and German Marquez all in good spots tonight. Clevinger is way overpriced on DK at 11k, and only slightly overpriced on FD at 9.9k. His strikeouts have been up in his last three outings, and he whiffed eight Royals only two starts ago so I see a path to 50+ FD points if he can keep the walks down. Rich Hill, on the other hand, is going to be a hard pass from me. While the matchup with the Mets is great, his upside is severely capped by the fact that he isn’t likely to pitch more than 5-6 innings. We saw this play out with Alex Wood last night when Dave Roberts pulled him after 5 innings even though he had only thrown 87 pitches. The Dodgers are clearly trying to keep their starters fresh for the playoffs and are comfortable going to their pen early and often.
Marquez is going to be chalky, but I don’t care. At 9500 on FD and 9300 on DK, he is my favorite pitcher on the slate. He is in excellent form, pitching his best ball of the year right now and gets to face a weak hitting Giants team. Perhaps his ownership will be held in check by the plethora of other options on the slate, or by those who never start in a pitcher in Coors (nonsense) or some who are scared off by his poor home splits. I have no problem making Marquez my highest owned pitcher tonight. He has been dominant in August, putting up a 2.14 ERA, .176 average against, and 53 strikeouts with only 9 walks in 42 innings. You could argue he’s been the best pitcher in the National League during that time period and he’s still not priced appropriately on either site. I’ll be well overweight on him tonight and I would even consider using him in cash.
The Other Guys
Here are the four arms I’m looking at in the middle or lower tier of pricing today. Please note the pricing disparity on a few of these guys which make them FD or DK only plays.
Lucas Giolito (7900 FD, 6300 DK)
It’s hard to ignore what Giolito has done recently, as he has topped 37 FD points in 5 of his last 6 starts including 44 in his last outing against a good Boston team. Tonight he faces a bad Detroit team and has pitched well against them twice in the last month. Giolito is a talented prospect who might be finally figuring out how to use his stuff. His FD price is a little steep considering he could still easily get blown up, but I really like him as a solid SP2 option on DK.
Mike Minor (7600 FD, 7700 DK)
I’m a sucker for Mike Minor AND I like using lefties against the Angels. So I pretty much HAVE to recommend Minor tonight as he gets the Angels at home. Like Giolito, Minor has been pitching really well lately, allowing two runs or less in 5 of his last 6 starts. He’s done it against some good offenses, too, shutting down the Dodgers, Athletics, and Astros during that stretch. I’ve been picking on the Angels with lefties all year, with Mike Trout being the only really dangerous bat in the order against Southpaws. I like Minor to pitch well tonight and I doubt he cracks 5% ownership.
Trevor Richards (6600 FD, 7300 DK)
Richards fits the same mold as Giolito in that he is a “talented young pitcher who is possibly figuring it out.” His price on FD is really appealing and he had some nice success against the Phillies this year already, putting up 33 and 40 FD points in his last two starts against them. He gets the benefit of pitching at home tonight as well. I like him to put up 7-9 strikeouts against Philly
Wade LeBlanc (6500 FD, 8400 DK)
When you see the pricing this far off from DK to FD, you have to wonder why. The answer is DK priced in the “facing the Orioles” upcharge and FD didn’t. LeBlanc has been a steady arm for the Mariners all season. He doesn’t have great strikeout stuff, hitting double-digit K’s just once all year. However, we know how inept the Orioles offense can be. LeBlanc doesn’t have to strike out any more than 5-6 tonight to make good on his FD salary as long as he continues his excellent run prevention. I’ll happily roster him on FD and be happy with 30-40 FD points from him tonight.
Tonight’s Hitters
It’s hard to know exactly where the chalk is going to fall on offense tonight. We do have the Rockies in Coors, which usually means they’ll have some ownership. I’m not crazy about using them to pick on talented Giants rookie Dereck Rodriguez, so I’ll probably fade Coors altogether. Here are a few of my favorite options on tonight’s slate.
The Cleveland Indians haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire lately (averaging 3 runs a game over their last 5 games), but don’t be fooled. This is one of the best offenses in MLB and tonight they get to take out their frustrations on Danny Duffy and the Royals. The Tribe has some good numbers against Duffy in a pretty large sample size. I really like the right-handers (Ramirez, Encarnacion, Guyer, Gomes) to put up a crooked number and send a few into the seats tonight.
The St. Louis Cardinals get a date with Nats youngster Eric Fedde who’s fresh off the DL. Fedde was not pitching well before getting hurt, allowing a .414 wOBA to lefties and a .392 wOBA to righties. The Cardinals lineup has been clicking, so stack them up any number of ways tonight. To be contrarian you could even leave Matt Carpenter out of a few Cards stacks (risky, but you’ll be different.)
I like Tampa Bay again today for the same reasons I was on them yesterday. They are cheap across the industry and they continue to produce. They face Toronto’s Sam Gaviglio today, who’s nothing special, and then should feast on the poor Blue Jays bullpen after that.
Last but not least, I really like the Arizona D-Backs tonight. They have tortured San Diego rookie Joey Luchessi in both of his starts against them this season. Arizona’s right-handed stack is perfect for attacking the San Diego southpaw. Paul Goldschmidt and Nick Ahmed both have two home runs off him in only 9 at-bats this season.
That’s all I got for you tonight. Good luck with your contests and let’s keep seeing those Army helmets taking down GPPs!