Good morning everyone, nillyJay here! Some of you may already know me; I’m a coach/contributor inside the DFS Army and my main focuses are NASCAR and MLB. If you’re not already, you can find and follow me here on Twitter or, for DFS Army members, in our Slack chat (@nillyJay or just swing by my channel #nillys-garage-nas-mlb).
I decided to relieve our buddy ChoppoDong today, so I will be guiding you all through tonight’s 8-game slate. My approach is similar to his, but since I have the floor today, I’ll drop off a few goodies in here showing some of the different routes I take. If you’re familiar with my content, you may already know about my carnage rating system and tiers & classic batter sheets. If not, I encourage you to go check them out!
Bowerman had himself another sweet win this weekend. Congrats!
My take on a consistent process – looking at pitchers
Because I created the carnage rating system, it only makes sense that I would start there when looking at a new slate. Let’s do just that!
Here are three of the highest ranked pitchers for today. Let’s review them and weigh their pros and cons:
- Hyun-Jin Ryu – Ryu has had a great start to the season and faces a team that, outside of Goldy, hasn’t had very much success against him. His numbers look great across the board, and while I don’t have his Vegas numbers (at the time I’m typing this), I can paint a pretty decent picture of how I think this game will unfold. He’s definitely in the mix today for all formats.
- Masahiro Tanaka – Tanaka has looked good, but targeting the Houston offense isn’t something we want to do blindly, especially when we consider that six active Astros already have at least one home run against him (Springer and Correa each have two). There’s certainly some upside potential here based on the matchup history (Springer and Correa each have about a 25% strikeout rate against him), but I would prefer to take that risk in GPP. For cash games, we can do better.
- Felix Hernandez – Another interesting choice, Hernandez looked good in his season opener against the Angels. He comes to town to play my Royals today, a team that has sort of a two-faced lineup. One of those faces is a semi-dangerous group of Merrifield/Mondesi/Gordon/Soler, all of which have had a strong start to the season and can put up some runs in a hurry. The other face is, of course, the rest of the lineup that has been a prime source of strikeouts for opposing pitchers. This game could certainly go either way, so we would want to dig in a bit more before jumping to any conclusions.
Finding pitchers to attack
Just like it can help us find pitchers to use, the carnage rating system is great for helping us to find pitchers to attack. Let’s take a look at some of the worst rankings of the day:
Oof, these guys look pretty rough, but it should be easy to figure out why. The Dodgers have been hammering the ball into oblivion, Oakland has been solid and gets a great hitter’s park, and we know these Washington/Philadelphia games are often full of fireworks. We know right away that we’ll want to grab a batter or two from these lineups for our cash games, and we can consider stacking them for our GPP lineups, too.
Now that we have some teams in mind, we can dig a little deeper to find specific batters to target. I’ll usually start by looking at BvP (batter vs pitcher history) to see if there are any that stand out. After that, I’ll check the classic batter sheet to see if any of those batters show up on there (and if not, I’ll dig a little deeper to find some that have been consistent). Spoiler alert, there are 13 of them on today’s sheet!
Now that we have an idea of what to look for, let’s check out each game on today’s slate and see what we can dig up.
Oakland Athletics at Baltimore Orioles
As we just discussed, Oakland is in a pretty good spot here, so we’ll definitely want a piece of them for our cash games. Baltimore has been about as average as you can get, so while they aren’t quite as hot of a target, we could still look at their lineup for a one-off. For GPP they could make an interesting target since they do have a strong hitter’s park, and Estrada isn’t exactly the scariest pitcher out there.
Oakland 5 star plays – Davis, Morales
Oakland 4 star plays – Semien, Chapman, Piscotty
GPP note – May or may not be chalky since Coors is on the slate, but has a legitmate 10+ run ceiling
Baltimore 5 star plays – none
Baltimore 4 star plays– Mancini, Villar
GPP note – Probably low-owned, but could be a surprise contrarian stack
Washington Nationals at Philadelphia Phillies
Round two of this series kicks off today, this time at the Phillies house. We already saw 27 runs in two games between these teams, and I don’t see them slowing down much today. There are numerous strong batters to target here for both cash and GPP purposes.
Washington 5 star plays – Zimmerman
Washington 4 star plays – Rendon, Soto
GPP note – Potential high-scoring shootout that might get overlooked for Coors
Philadelphia 5 star plays – Harper, Hoskins, McCutchen, Segura
Philadelphia 4 star plays– Pretty much everybody else
GPP note – Potential high-scoring shootout that might get overlooked for Coors
New York Yankees at Houston Astros
Two high-end pitchers face off against two dangerous offenses; this has GPP written all over it. Due to the pitching, I can’t list anybody as a 5-star (or cash) play, but do know that there’s certainly some potential here for a shootout!
New York 5 star plays – none
New York 4 star plays – Judge, Voit, Sanchez, Torres
GPP note – Another potential high-scorer that will likely go overlooked due to the pitching and Coors
Houston 5 star plays – none
Houston 4 star plays– Springer, Correa, Altuve, Bregman, Brantley
GPP note – Another potential high-scorer that will likely go overlooked due to the pitching and Coors
Los Angeles Dodgers at St Louis Cardinals
The Dodgers have been an absolute buzzsaw this season, so you’ll definitely want some pieces of this lineup for your cash games. The Cardinals haven’t looked very good, so I would only look at them for GPP purposes.
Los Angeles 5 star plays – Bellinger, Turner, Pollock
Los Angeles 4 star plays – Literally everybody else on this team. Roster the waterboy if you can
GPP note – Always a potential slate-breaker until further notice
St Louis 5 star plays – none
St Louis 4 star plays– Goldschmidt
GPP note – meh
One of our NASCAR wins from yesterday. Yeah, buddy!
Seattle Mariners at Kansas City Royals
Seattle has been off to a hot start as well and gets to face Homer Bailey. He looked pretty good last week, but I’m not convinced that he’s suddenly an un-targetable pitcher, especially not when he has to face a hot team like Seattle. As a Royals fan, I’m not looking forward to this one, but for DFS purposes, this could be a goldmine on both sides.
Seattle 5 star plays – Encarnacion, Bruce
Seattle 4 star plays – Pretty much everybody else
GPP note – Also a potential slake-breaker that may go overlooked due to Coors
Kansas City 5 star plays – none
Kansas City 4 star plays– Merrifield, Gordon, Mondesi, Soler
GPP note – Not as strong as Seattle, but still some upside potential here. Mini-stacks here to fill in your gaps would probably be your best option
Atlanta Braves at Colorado Rockies
Ah, Coors field. Sure to be popular, but I’ll reserve my thoughts on this game due to it being one of our strengths in the DFS Army. Perks of being a member!
Atlanta 5 star plays – Albies, Swanson, Markakis
Atlanta 4 star plays – Acuna
GPP note – It’s Coors!
Colorado 5 star plays – Blackmon
Colorado 4 star plays– Dahl
GPP note – It’s Coors!
San Diego Padres at San Fransico Giants
There is some questionable looking weather as of right now, so be sure to keep an eye on this game closer to lock. For DFS Army members, that means to keep an eye on #dfs-weather in Slack and the Weather Station on the website. As for the game itself, there’s nothing that stands above the other ones, but there are still a few decent targets to consider.
San Diego 5 star plays – Machado, Renfroe
San Diego 4 star plays – Myers
GPP note – Decent upside if Bumgarner is off his game
San Francisco 5 star plays – none
San Francisco 4 star plays– Posey, Belt, Duggar
GPP note – Low-scoring team, but they don’t strike out a ton. Could randomly put up 10+ runs to spoil the slate
Milwaukee Brewers at Los Angeles Angels
Our late-night hammer game features a dangerous Milwaukee team that can put up a big score in a hurry and one Mike Trout who is trying to hit a home run on every day that ends with a Y. This is yet another game that could put up double-digit scoring, so we’ll want to look here for both cash and GPP purposes.
Milwaukee 5 star plays – Yelich
Milwaukee 4 star plays – Cain, Shaw, Braun
GPP note – Yet another powerhouse that deserves your attention tonight
Los Angeles 5 star plays – Trout
Los Angeles 4 star plays– Calhoun
GPP note – Similar to KC; mini-stacks might be the best way to approach this team
Tiers are fun!
Like I mentioned earlier, I provide a tiers breakdown for our members every day. I figured since I was running the show today that I wold slide in a freebie. Let’s take a look at Tier 1:
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that Trout and Yelich are excellent choices tonight, but you can see how convenient a sheet like this is. The beauty of this sheet comes into play in the lower tiers where there are a lot of different options to choose from. It’s nice to
Closing thoughts
Thank you for joining me here today! I hope you found this article helpful with your research for tonight’s slate, even if it was a little different than the usual version. Who knows, maybe I’ll come back next week!
As always, if you like what you see here and want to experience everything we have to offer, I’d encourage you to consider joining up with us. If you want to try before you buy, be sure to check out our free trial offer, so you can see exactly what it’s like to be part of our community. We don’t just cover MLB and NASCAR, we cover just about everything, including NFL, NBA, MMA, PGA, NHL, WNBA, and even less popular sports like tennis and soccer. Just remember to use promo code NILLY to save 20% off for the lifetime of your active membership, for the best deal in daily fantasy sports. Until then, I hope you all have a great day, and good luck tonight!
