Welcome everyone to our Lineup Optimizer strategy article for 5/2/22. This is a new article I will be doing daily that discusses the stacks and players the optimizer is popping for today’s slate. We are very blessed to have out optimizer powered by SaberSim — and you can get access by clicking HERE. Let’s get into it…
Overview
Today we have a smaller six game slate on tap. I typically play the smaller-field, single entry tournaments on DraftKings and that’s the contest I’m going to be building for tonight. I typically don’t worry about salary left-over in tourney builds, so I like to make the min salary number a bit lower than the pre-set amount of $49,000.
Top Stacks
I typically play a pretty tight pitcher pool, and I have Pablo Lopez and Zac Gallen ranked above the field today. I went ahead and locked them on the optimizer, and built 250 lineups. I received all 5-3 stacks, with the Minnesota Twins, Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees dominating the exposures. Let’s take a deeper look at those spots.
Minnesota has a great match-up against Tyler Wells and the Orioles bullpen. Baltimore has been decent pitching wise this season, but I’m skeptical if they can continue that success as we progress through the season. Wells has actually posted solid metrics, but he does allow power and that is something we like to target in DFS. He’s been more reverse-splits in his career, so the right-handed hitters like Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa take precedent for me — with Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco and Ryan Jeffers just behind. Jeffers popped as the second-highest owned Catcher among the builds and I think he is a top value play at his position. He owns a .224 ISO vs right-handed pitching since the start of last season.
Tampa Bay is in an even better spot in my opinion against Daulton Jefferies. Jefferies has one of the the highest SIERA marks on the slate since the start of last season, and ha struck out under 15% of batters faced. He relies heavily on ground balls, so we want the target the fly-ball hitters here even in a more pitcher-friendly ballpark. Wander Franco missed yesterday’s game so I would want confirmation he is playing today before I sign up for a full-stack of this team. Brandon Lowe does profile as the best option here and he can be used as a one-off in all formats.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the sims really like Minnesota and Tampa Bay today, with New York and Toronto a distant third and fourth. There is only one team total approaching five runs today and that’s the Houston Astros — so it is 100% fine to attack lower team totals on this slate. I think I would lean towards Minnesota as the top-overall option, but I would also want more exposure to the Astros here so I will go in and manually add some higher numbers to their power hitters. Good luck tonight everyone!
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
