Donuts to Dollars
The modus operandi of the majority of my Daily Fantasy MLB articles, videos, and podcasts is to deliver compelling evidence through analytics, trends, and useful data as to why a player or team is an ideal target to invest in on FanDuel or DraftKings. This article will identify my personal favorite pitchers using the #DonutsToDollars model as well as point out my top teams I am targeting and a few specific stacks. My hope is to give you a playbook that you can loosely follow and hopefully win some loot!
Today, I wrote the Full 15 game slate breakdown for the DFS Army as well. Go ahead and give that a quick read for a broad strokes overview of all 30 teams…But just make sure you come back!
MLB Pitching Pool for MME
Eduardo Rodriguez has a massive -215 Vegas win odds set for him and the Tigers are in trouble today. I think E-Rod is a safe bet for the win but outside of that, he’s volatile and hard to predict. In his last two starts he has limited opposing hitters to just a 25% hard hit rate and a 192 foot batted ball distance.
Justin Verlander has the highest floor and ceiling combination on the slate and he has given up just 5 hits in the last 2 games while striking out 19 hitters. He’s absolutely locked into the zone right now and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him score in the 50’s on FanDuel and 30’s on DraftKings for a third straight start.
Verlander is an elite option on DraftKings, too, due to his mid 10k price tag being just 1k more than Hamels and Buehler. What a steal.
Vince Velasquez has shown exactly who he is over his three starts this season. In the first, he went 5 IP and struck out just 2 hitters and scored 8.85 DraftKings points. His ceiling stinks! In his next two, he struck out 12 hitters over 11.2 innings and scored 16.50 and 19.95 DraftKings points. His ceiling is strong!
Okay, clearly Vince is volatile, hard to predict, hard to project, and perfect for GPP’s. I also love his price tag on FanDuel and think he can easily go 6 IP and get the quality start and win even if he doesn’t rack up a ton of K’s. I can envision him going 6 IP, 4 K’s, 2 ERs, QS + W and netting a total of 34 FanDuel points at just mid-7k price tag. He’s only in play on FanDuel.
Cole Hamels and Walker Buehler are two of my favorite pitchers on the entire slate simply due to their opponents. The Dodgers have a bunch of left-handed hitters than can absolutely RAKE opposing right-handed pitchers. Cole Hamels is a good LHP that has scored 37, 49, and 55 FanDuel points in in last three starts. In fact, Cole has not walked a batter since March 31st, throwing 314 pitches over 21 innings without walking anybody. Wild stat.
Buehler is just dripping with potential and talent but often gets yanked before he goes deep into games. However, he has gone from 66 to 79 (twice), to 85 and the 92 pitches in his last start. He clearly is being ramped up and went 6.1 innings last game for a smooth 53 FanDuel points, including the quality start and win bonus. He’s 3-0 on the season and I think he is an elite Single Entry GPP option.
CC Sabathia and Felix Pena are both in interesting spots in the same game. Sabathia has looked decent this season as his career winds down. Pena is just a warm body to toss some innings for the Angels but the Yankees offense is riddled with injuries. I will be using both in my player pool but capping their maximum exposure at 5% max cap. I don’t want too much of either and won’t put minimums on them either. If they show up in my CSV file, great. If not, I won’t even be looking for their names.
Jordan Lyles and Merrill Kelly are both in play but I am putting a 5% maximum exposure cap on them both. I won’t be targeting either offense but I do like both arms due to the low IRT’s and Vegas line. I don’t see either side having much of an advantage and this is simply a couple of salary saving options that should be extremely low owned for large field GPP’s where we’d enter 150 entries.
Single Entry GPP Pitchers
While his innings are volatile, Walker Buehler is my pick to follow up my previous two – Jack Flaherty and Jose Quintana, as a single entry GPP target that can win you the slate. At the very least, I don’t think Buehler will lose you the slate – the higher probability is that the hitters sink your ship before Walker does.
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Specific Daily Fantasy MLB Stacks and Teams to Target for Stacking
When I select my stacks I like to run through the trending tab, batter matchups tab, top-10 lists for a bunch of different stats, and the top rated players within the Research Station. As I scour through all the data I take notes on who stands out in multiple categories and those guys normally get some type of minimum percentage put on them within the optimizer. This not only gets them selected more when my stacks are used but it uses them as one-offs for my 4-3-1 stacks.
After I have read through the Research Station, I like to give the full-slate MLB breakdown a quick read to see if there is anything that stands out or that I have missed at this point. Then I create my stack ranges for the randomized stack structure so that my personal bias doesn’t ruin all my hard work!
Tier 1 Stacks
These are the teams I want to stack with my highest exposure. Whether you decide to use the controlled stacks (example below) or the randomized stack exposure (as I do, the example provided), I’ll have my highest percentage on the Tier 1 teams).
Houston Astros (60-80%)
The Astros are starting to absolutely smash the ball. The entire lineup is in play and I think the randomized stack function is clutch for a team like this. Their IRT is closing in on 5.7 for the day and multiple hitters are rocking hard hit rates over 40% over the last 14 days (thank you Research Station). However, if you need specific hitters I would roll with George Springer, Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, Josh Reddick, Michael Brantley, Alex Bregman, and any lefties that get put in the lineup like Tony Kemp.
Boston Red Sox (60-80%)
This is one of those slates where we have a couple teams as stand out options that I plan on being way overweight compared to the field so that I can gain the edge. I love the Red Sox and their 5.8 IRT which I wouldn’t be shocked to see close in on 6.0 by lock.
I would target all the left-handed hitters that Boston puts in the lineup (Benintendi, Bradley, Moreland, and Rafael Devers) and of course, Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, and Xander Bogaerts.
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Tier 2 Stacks
These are the teams I am generally using to hedge my pitcher investment and/or don’t have a clear read on what might happen but understand extreme outcomes are possible.
New York Yankees (20-30%)
I know they are missing a ton of explosive hitters but their backups and platoon starters are actually playing well. On top of that, the pricing for the Yankees makes them incredibly cheap and easy to stack. Lastly, they face Felix Pena who really isn’t good.
I am all over Michael Ford, Mike Tuachman, Tyler Wade, Gleyber Torres, and DJ LeMahieu. Of course, I prefer the randomized stack function which will give you some extra exposure to the rest of the Yanks like Clint Frazier, Luke Voit, Brett Gardner, and potentially the return of Gary Sanchez.
Los Angeles Angels (5-10%)
I like Sabathia more tonight than I do the Angels, however, I know my way around MLB volatility and understand that when you target volatile arms it’s completely acceptable to match that exposure with hedge exposure to the opposition. Mike Trout, David Fletcher, Andrelton Simmons, and Albert Pujols are stand out right-handed hitting options.
Chicago White Sox (20-30%) and Baltimore Orioles (20-30%)
I love the game stack here and think that John Means and Ervin Santana are both in trouble. While targeting the RHH of the Chi-Sox (Abreu, Anderson, Garcia, Moncada, and Cordell) is the way to go, I prefer the randomized stack function. For the Orioles, I like the lefties, Dwight Smith Jr., Jonathan Villar, Rio Ruiz, and Chris Davis. Try to game stack at least 80% of your Chi-Sox and Orioles exposure, leaving the other 20% to be tossed into the exposure pool. I.E. If you run out 10 out of 150 stacks with Chi-Sox in them, then 8 of those 10 should be full 4-4 stacks with the Orioles.
I eluded to a favorite GPP stack in the Full Count article and I wanted to give it to you all here: Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Dwight Smith Jr., Chris Davis. It’s a 2-2 mini-stack that can be paired with the heavy hitting bats from Houston or Boston. In fact, I messed around a bit and liked quite a few 2-2 stacks using Boston + Houston paired with the 4 man stack I just gave above. Enjoy and good luck!!!!!!!!!!
Any remaining exposure percentage that is leftover I am going to allow the optimizer to fill in at random. Baseball is incredibly volatile and hard to predict. While we can project outcomes, predicting them is inherently a losing battle. Allowing the DS to plug in stacks embraces the random factor that MLB DFS has to offer.
Or if you want to have controlled stacks and select the specific players you want to be used and in what type of stacks then you can used the controlled hitter stack setting. This is just an example and I randomly clicked through quickly and was able to pump out 50 lineups in a flash. I would also make sure the stack percentage was at 100% on each side for a real optimized CSV file.
Domination Station DFS Optimizer for GPP’s and Mass-Multi Entering (MME)
This is how I personally use the DFS Army Domination Station optimizer.
- Cut all pitchers out of my player pool
- Add in the pitchers I want to target one by one
- Identify all teams I want to stack
- If using controlled stacks then create my player pool of hitters
- If using the randomized stacks (which I do) then I begin to create percentages for all my favorite teams to target adding up to 180-200%
- Prepare my 150 entry settings
- 3 uniques
- optimal mode
- DFS Army points
- Make sure allow opposing pitchers is unchecked
- Maximum exposure cap of 60-80% if not feeling confident and 80-100% when clear value or targets
What’s Next?
Are you looking to outsource your time and efforts to nearly 40-staff members to research data and trends, choose targets, and then provide you with their personal player pool? Do you have the time and energy to use an all in one research tool and optimizer while diving deep into data and discussing each slate with other members and coaches?
No matter what camp you are in, we know you’ll enjoy the DFS Army VIP membership so that you can hang out with our community, share information, and chat one on one with our DFS Pro’s (specific staff coaches that play full-time) in our member chat service. If you’re a frequent DFS player, then it’s well worth the investment and trial.
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Closing
I really hope this helps you get your feet under you at the beginning of this MLB season for Daily Fantasy. Please subscribe to me on the following platforms and I would love to hear from you on Twitter or in our member service in my #Donut-Shop coaching channel!
Fortune favors the bold, go make your own luck!
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