Welcome everyone to our Lineup Optimizer strategy article for 5/5/22. 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
We have another small slate on tap tonight, so I’m going to wait for the massive Friday slate to do a run for 3 max contests. Tonight we will focus again on what stack we want to use for small-field single entry GPP.
Top Stacks
Like usual, I have a tight pitching pool and I went ahead and just locked in both Shane McClanahan and Aaron Nola. It’s difficult to spend-up for both pitchers in GPPs sometimes, but given the field size we are competing in we don’t need to build like we would for a contest with 10,000+ people in it.
Baltimore is popping here because they are a cheap stack, but I’m more interested in the Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros behind them. The sims LOVE the Rays clearly, which is perfect because early ownership projections have Robbie Ray as the second-highest owned pitcher on this slate. That’s exactly what I like to target on a smaller slate, clearly the Rays are in a good spot per the simulations and we get auto-leverage on the 30% of the field playing Ray in their pitcher spot. Ray has really struggled this season compared to what he was doing in Toronto last year, and is striking out just 20% of batters faced in 2022. He is much worse against righties than lefties, however, so the right-handed batters are who I want to focus on here. Pretty much all the righties in the projected lineup hit the ball hard vs left-handed pitching, and someone like Mike Zunino is in a very good spot here for a cheap catcher — and we love including catchers in our stacks. Ray is throwing a ton of fast balls this season, and the best fastball hitters in this lineup are…Zunino, Arozarena, Franco and Brandon Lowe. Those are probably the four I’m going to focus on and then you can add one of Yandy Diaz or Harold Ramirez if you want the full five-man. That leaves plenty of salary remaining even with the pitchers we selected to fill in potentially with another two or three man stack as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I’m going for a four or five man Rays stack tonight focused on the power righties / good fastball hitters.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
