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In this age of technology, sometimes its good to look back on a forgotten pastime.  There was a time when we all believed in the unknown.  A time when we believed in that which was unbelievable.  A time when some well dressed yet ominous looking man would grab an impeccably dressed lady from the audience and tell you there was nothing up his sleeve while he sawed said beauty in half.  All the while, the audience gasped only to have their fears assuaged as he puts her back together with the house band playing a resounding ‘tada!’ via horns and drums.  Maybe you never got a chance to believe in those things so for that reason, I’m here today to bring that little sense of illusion and wonder into your life.  Please be seated.  Are you ready?  Please examine my right hand.  Notice there’s nothing in it?  Ok, please examine Patrick Corbin‘s left hand.  Notice a baseball in it?  I’m going to show you how with that left hand and a baseball, Corbin is going to make the Cards disappear.  Now normally a magician doesn’t reveal how his magic is done but since I like all three of you that read this, I’m gonna let you in on the secret: the Cardinals are terrible against lefties this year and it was a problem last year as well.  Look, the sample size for 2016 has been small to say the least – they only have the 19th most PAs against them so far this year – but when Jon Niese K’s seven of you while only walking one, you have a southpaw problem in my book.  After finishing basically second in K% in 2015 at 23.6% vs the wrong hand and now sitting at 27% for this season so far, I’m gonna have plenty of Corbin exposure for tourneys and enjoy the likely low ownership.  And with that, my magic show is done.  Oh wait, you want an encore?  Well I’ve been working on this ping pong ball trick I learned from Winona Ryder…well actually, that’s part of another old pastime called the burlesque show and I’m sorry, kiddos, that ain’t free.  But you know what is?  The rest of my picks.  So with that, we’re off.  Here’s my pyrotechnic extravaganza magic show hot taeks for this Wednesday DK slate…

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 teamer of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It’s how we know you care! If you still feel helpless and lonely, be sure to subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays.

Gio Gonzalez, SP: $9,600 – If you don’t know Jake Arrieta is a good play, you is the stoopidz so I’m gonna act like you ain’t.  Matt Harvey in cash?  Hell no, but in tourneys?  Gimme a few shares.  I think we’ve covered our high pricers so let’s move on.  Sticking with the can’t hang with lefties theme, the Phillies have been the worst for K rates vs lefties on this brief year.  Gio will probably be a popular cash game option today and if you wanna know my data savvy response to that, here you go.

Hisashi Iwakuma, SP: $9,200 – It never fails that a good K matchup could get overlooked because of arms above and here’s one of them.  The ‘sashi could bring a bit of wasabi to an otherwise bland situation.  Iwakuma going 6 and K’ing 7 or 8 wouldn’t surprise me.  A tourney only play for me, but definitely one to tease out from other writers over the course of the day.

Chris Tillman, SP: $7,600 – Another tourney-only call for me here.  The Rays are doing a very un-Rays like thing by K’ing 25.9% of the time right now and with that, I aim to take advantage.  Given most of the bad work by Tampa Bay has been done against righties – they lead the league at 28.3% K rate there – it’s hard not to chase here.  If you’re a BvP believer, you can take your Evan Longoria and his 17/51 with 7 HRs and enjoy yourself with one caveat: we all get to Nelson from the Simpsons ‘haha’ at you when he goes 0/3 with a walk, m’kay?

Jose Berrios, SP: $6,900 – Highly touted prospect at a relatively low price equals most likely cash game SP2 on the night.  As much as I want to tout Berrios – and I do, I think he’s great as I almost made him the lead today – there’ll be enough touting him for me to not waste my time.

Martin Perez, SP: $5,900 – If you’re looking for a near punt play at SP to get in some Coors exposure, Martin is your man.  We’ve got a struggling Yankees lineup that is mostly made up of lefties.  You’re aiming for 14 to 18 points here and building a monstrous batting lineup, so let’s stop talking about Perez and talk about some lumber, shall we?

Bryan Holaday, C: $2,000 – Sure, you could pay up here if you want to, but knowing there’s a lefty named CC on the mound, I think I’ll take a cheap Holaday in Texas.  As always, look for the inexpensive play here or check the lineups for someone who’s in a better than normal spot in the LU.

David Ortiz, 1B: $4,600 – I rarely find myself rostering Big Papi but after two days off and getting to come back to work against Bud Norris, I think I’ve found a reason.  Unlike what I expect from myself, Ortiz should get right back to work and thrive after a little time off.

Edwin Encarnacion, 1B: $3,700 – After doing the parrot trot last night against Chris Sale, you’d think the DK algo would’ve learned something pricing him at 3.3K.  Well, I guess they sorta did since he’s now $400 more.  Whatevs, EE ain’t over $4K, so I’m gonna have a hard time fading him in any facet against a lefty at home.

Chris Coghlan, 2B/3B: $3,400 – Very much a boom or bust play here and I should know; he went bust on me last night.  Nevertheless, Coghlan has power at a position that isn’t known for it and is priced cheap enough to talk about him so here we are, talking about him.  If you wanna keep with the theme of picking on your Bud from Atlanta, Dustin Pedroia could be a good pay up play tonight.

Jedd Gyorko, 2B/SS: $3,200 – Maybe you don’t like my Corbin call and if so, you could call the Gyork store and see if they’re all out of you.  I’m sorry, that was mean but you started it!  Jedd will probably hit high in the LU with a lefty on the mound.  If he goes 1/4 with a  solo shot, he’s paid you back and less likely to have angered me and my Patrick lineups.  Win win!

Josh Donaldson, 3B: $4,800 – I’m merely pointing out that everyone is going to talk about him today, even with Coors on the slate.  If you’re up here in nosebleed territory, I’m more than likely just gonna look to Nolan Arenado in tourneys but the Dongaldson is probably a cash game lock for many.

Travis Shaw, 3B: $3,400 – If you can’t tell, I don’t intend to leave our Bud from Atlanta alone today.  I’d call the Red Sox a sneaky stack but on a day where Coors is in play, everyone is a sneaky stack.  Straight up ghost town ownership.

Zack Cozart, SS: $2,500 – On a night where the most expensive SS is hitting .247 on the year, you best believe I’m looking to pay down.  Cozart is getting priced like Harvey has been The Dark Knight this season when in reality he’s been Aquaman.  I fully don’t care how cool he looked in Batman Vs Superman, he still talks to sea creatures.  He’s one step away from being The Little Mermaid, you guys…but nevermind all that, I’ll take the discounted leadoff guy and hope for a couple of hits and runs.  Not the car kind, the baseball kind.

Danny Santana, SS: $2,200 – He almost scored 18 last night but lost a steal on a great tag by Kipnis.  The Twinkies have been batting him lead off and against Josh Tomlin, Danny should be able to outscore his price for the day.

Curtis Granderson, OF: $4,500 – Back on those stacks, I’m a fan of what should go down in Flushing today.  I don’t expect a dominant start from Matt Harvey, but I do expect the Reds to give up runs and plenty of them.  Jon Moscot is a guy just waiting for real Reds starters to have their DL stints end so he can go back to AAA but until then, we get to bask in the glory of putting guys like Lucas Duda and Michael Conforto on our teams.  I expect the over here and strongly encourage you get yourself some Mets exposure today.

Ryan Raburn, OF: $4,000 – Obligatory Coors bat mention.  Yes, they’re ‘in a good spot’ today.  #Analysis

Yasiel Puig, OF: $3,800 – The DFSBot loves it some Puig today as he’s the 4th highest upside bat on the slate when removing Coors games.  Speaking of, you should do that on nights like this just to see what value is out there.  Just go to the open box below ‘Team’ and type an exclamation mark, then the Rockies (COL) and a vertical line (|) then the away team which in this case are the Pirates (PIT) so you have ‘!COL|PIT’.  Not sure why it isn’t != but hey, it works so don’t worry about it.  You’ll quickly see what other values can be had on the night. And thus ends our learning session on how to play with the ‘Bot and get it to do what you want without sacrificing your toaster’s virginity to it.

Josh Reddick, OF: $3,500 – As per usual, there’s a lot of good value in OF tonight.  Reddick makes for a solid cash play since he can do a little bit of everything and rarely does a whole lot of nothing.  On the flipside of the $3.5K coin, we have J.D. Martinez who has double bomb potential any night and will go low owned until his bat wakes up.  I’ll keep having exposure to him in tourneys for that reason.

I’m Only Happy When It Rains

You’re gonna need to be on high alert tonight for weather watching as two of the more popular pitching plays in Arrieta and Gio might have some precipitation issues.  CHCvsMIL sits near 50% chance of rain and the rain looks to be steady all day.  It’ll be more a question of if the rain is gonna pass around the stadium than if it’s gonna rain, it looks like and WASvsPHI is in a similar situation.  If you had read MattTrussDFS guide to Twitter, you’d know to keep up with weather via Kevin Roth.  Speaking of MattTruss, he’s criminally low in follower count on that there Twitter.  Go fix that, dude knows his stuff.

Doing Lines In Vegas

Lots of heavy favorites tonight with the big one being Arrieta and the Cubbies sitting at -360.  If you’ve got some cash to burn, stacking against Jake makes sense given the low exposure to the bats and heavy Arrieta ownership likely to ensue.  Of course, that had best be lineup number 200 for the day.  We’ve also got a couple of guys sitting in the 200s with Gio at -200 on the dot and Harvey sitting at -230.  You know my opinion on Batman today.  Go Mets…bats!  Vegas also likes the Dodgers and Red Sox today, giving them -180 and -185, respectively.  Some line movements of note would be TEXvsNYY which went from -110 for the Yanks to -130 for the Rangers with a half a run added to the total to push it to 9.5 while MINvsCLE experienced a similar swing, going from -120 for Cleveland to -115 for the Twinkies.  And what talk of line movement would be complete without mentioning ARZvsSTL going from -115 for the Cards to -125 for the Dbacks.  Granted, the run total crept to 9 with that shift, but hey, who’s looking at that, right?  Speaking of Oh’s and slashes and Yoo’s, the highest on the night is obviously COLvsPIT sitting at 10.5.  I think Monday could happen just as easily as Tuesday so I’m of the mindset to fade if I like other set ups for the night and I do so there.  If you’re looking to get away from all these freaking runs that shall be scored, the TBvsBAL tilt has moved from 7.5 to 7 for the night, which is further solidifying my confidence in rolling with Tillman on a scary pitching night if Gio and Jake do indeed get rained out.