Good day, Razzball DFS’ers!
Josh Jung (3B: $4,800) travels to Anaheim tonight and looks to crush the dreams of the Angels and their starter, Patrick Sandoval. Since he came into our lives, Jung has been a dream against left-handed pitching, with a gorgeous .311 ISO and .441 wOBA.
Let’s see what else there is to love on tonight’s cute little three-game DraftKings slate, which begins at 9:38 pm ET.
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Super-short DFS slates are a completely different animal, so my breakdown will follow suit.
The Pitching:
Blake Snell, $9,600, 22.1
Justin Verlander, $8,500, 20.6
Luis Castillo, $9,300, 19.2
Jon Gray, $6,400, 18.9
Logan Webb, $7,900, 18.4
These are tonight’s top five starting pitchers, their salaries, and their DFSBot projections. What should strike you is that in terms of pure projection, they’re all within four DK points.
The field is going to gravitate towards Snell, as he builds his case for a Cy Young, and Castillo, who has been in much better form than Verlander. Likewise, they’ll shy away from Gray, who has been in terrible form lately. I agree with all of these assessments.
In DFS tournament play, the smaller the slate gets the less I’ll focus on what I think will happen, and the more I’ll focus on what I think the field will think will happen. I think ownership will concentrate heavily on Snell and Castillo, and by differentiating at least one of my pitchers I can be on a much lesser-owned pairing. I might be slightly less likely to hit the nuts on pitching, but if I do the payoff should be much greater.
I’m comfortable playing Verlander over Castillo. I’m okay fading Snell completely. I like the idea of pairing Snell with Webb, as the field likes to avoid pitching matchups from the same game. I’ll even have a touch of Gray, who is capable of dominating the Triple-A lineup the Angels are trotting out, and enables an extra big bat.
The Hitting:
I understand why some DFS pundits recommend not stacking on small slates. The smaller the slate, the less likely we are to have teams scoring enough runs to make a full stack optimal. However, I still recommend full, five-man stacks on DraftKings for slates as small as three games. My logic is that if a team does score a pile of runs, they’re likely to be the only team that does. Correlated scoring becomes stronger when there’s less scoring overall.
Let’s see what our Stackonator has for the top hitting teams today:
Rangers: Not surprisingly, the top stacks are Rangers by a Texas mile. Patrick Sandoval has been okay, but the Rangers have a slew of bats that are tough against left-handed pitching. The kicker is the Angels’ bullpen, which has been the second-worst in MLB in the second half of the season.
They’ll be the chalk, so if you’re stacking Rangers find a way to be unique. At the bottom of the order, Leody Taveras (OF: $3,500) has been hot. The Angels don’t currently have a lefty in the bullpen, so feel free to jam in multiple lefties, including Corey Seager (SS: $6,500), Nate Lowe (1B: $4,500) and/or, if he makes the lineup, Evan Carter (OF: $4,000).
Webb has been terrific this season, with his 3.35 ERA (backed by a 2.99 xFIP) and tidy 1.08 WHIP. His opponent, the Padres, haven’t been at their best, but have the power to explode any matchup. Even in a poor season by his standards, Juan Soto ($5,400) is crushing right-handed pitching with his .264 ISO, .411 wOBA and tiny 16% K rate. I also appreciate a hot catcher at a reasonable price, and Luis Campusano ($3,500) fits the bill.
I don’t love the Angels tonight, as I think they’ll be too highly owned for their likelihood of being the top stack. But our Hittertron likes Brandon Drury (1B/2B: $4,400), and of course we have the resurgent Logan O’Hoppe (C: $3,700) and Jo Adell (OF: $3,500). This stack is priced low enough to allow some high-priced, lower-owned one-offs (see below).
One-off hitters:
Almost nobody on a three-game slate will be super low-owned, but here are some hitters with upside who could be difference makers at relatively low ownership:
C: Cal Raleigh $4,200
1B: Wilmer Flores $3,900 (also 3B), Ty France $3,300
2B: Jose Altuve $6,000
SS: JP Crawford $4,100, Xander Bogaerts $4,600
3B: Manny Machado $5,100 (also SS), JD Davis $3,400
OF: Julio Rodriguez, $6,300, Yordan Alvarez $5,800, Kyle Tucker $5,500, Austin Slater $2,600
I’m Only Happy When It Rains
No rain. Decent hitting weather in Los Angeles. A bit cool in San Fran.
Doing Lines In Vegas
I don’t like any of the lines today, but I feel like the SD/SF contest is anyone’s game, so if you can get the Giants at home as an underdog …sure.
