Welcome everyone to our Lineup Optimizer strategy article for 5/29/22. 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
What’s up everyone! I will be traveling home from my out of town trip this evening, but I’m still ready to crush this Sunday MLB slate. We have a decent sized slate today with no weather issues at all across the board. I will be entering my usual single entry contests, and that’s what I’m going to set the optimizer for on today’s run of lineups.
Top Stacks
With no weather issues to worry about, there’s a few ways we can attack this slate in single entry tournaments. We have a stellar top-tier at pitcher, but looking at early OWN% projections it appears that most users will be selecting one ace and pairing him with Triston McKenzie in the mid-tier. It’s a great match-up for him against the Detroit Tigers, and he does get the boost of Bill Miller umping today as well. That being said, anyone that reads my content knows I love to spend up for two pitchers, so before I play around with McKenzie as my SP2, I ran 500 lineups with Dylan Cease and Shane McClanahan locked in. Both these guys are expensive, so there needs to be a cheap stack available to fit them both in.
In the image above, you’ll see the stack results with two expensive pitchers locked in. Cleveland dominates the sims, and it’s honestly a good spot for them. There’s a very real chance that Elvin Rodriguez is the worst starting pitcher in baseball, and Detroit is pretty much forced to use him today. We have a very small sample size of him this season, resulting in a near 15% walk rate. That alone makes him a great target to stack against, but tough for a mini-stack considering your few choices could be the ones that walk. There should be guys on base here, and I do think you can fit in a four or five man Cleveland stack while double-spending at pitcher. Their run total is just over 4 runs, not nearly the highest mark on the slate so there’s a chance the full-stack is low-owned outside of Jose Ramirez.
I will note that I’ve been a big Sonny Gray backer, and he’s projected for only 15% ownership compared to the 30% for McKenzie. Gray is a better pitcher, with more strikeouts and still in a positive match-up. If I end up dropping off one of my pitchers, I’m going to side with Gray over McKenzie in all formats on Sunday.
Conclusion
As of now, I love the full Cleveland stack with Cease and McClanahan at pitcher. Pretty much all the Cleveland bats are cheap outside of Ramirez so it will be easy to fit him in + three or four others around him.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
