Pitchers
Cash Games
Collin McHugh- McHugh became the top arm on the slate for me once it seemed like the Phillies game won’t play, even in a matchup with the Oakland A’s. McHugh was dominant out of the bullpen for the Astros last season sporting a sub-3.00 SIERA along with 33.0% strikeouts, and he looked fantastic in his first start of the season punching out 9 across five innings. He’s even better against righties with over 37.0% strikeouts, and he’s going to see six of them in the A’s lineup tonight. Yes, they have pop, but with his K upside mixed with a righty-heavy lineup and the fact that I don’t think he will be the highest-owned pitcher tonight, he tops my list.
Shane Bieber- Bieber is one of my favorite young pitchers in the MLB, and he makes his first start tonight against a terrible Blue Jays offense. Bieber has good strikeout stuff and elite control, his problem last season was that he’s so good at hitting the zone he ended up throwing too many strikes which led to his high contact rate. He still has over 50% ground balls to righties, and the Blue Jays just don’t have the lineup that’s going to scare you enough not to use Bieber. I expect him to be the highest-owned pitcher tonight and he is viable in all formats.
Trent Thornton- Thornton is the clear SP2 for me tonight given his price on DraftKings, and that is where I would be looked to deploy him, not on FanDuel. Thornton projects to be a mini version of Bieber in some aspects, really string control and some decent strikeout numbers. I have played the likes of Jake Odorizzi and a limited Michael Pineda against the Indians so far this season, so that won’t stop me from taking someone as cheap as Thornton and just hoping for 5-6 innings, a few strikeouts and some decent run prevention while I jam in one of the above two pitchers and the bats that I want.
Note: My favorite pitcher on this slate, Nick Pivetta, looks to be affected by weather tonight and I am eliminating him from my pool barring some crazy change in the weather.
GPP Pitcher Pool: Rick Porcello, Brandon Woodruff
Building Blocks
C: Alex Avila, Francisco Cervelli
1B: Freddie Freeman, Jesus Aguilar
2B: Rougned Odor, Ozzie Albies
3B: Alex Bregman, Jung-Ho Kang
SS: Xander Bogaerts, Javy Baez
OF: Shin-Soo Choo, Lorenzo Cain, Michael Brantley, Nomar Mazara (if in lineup)
Stacks
1. Texas Rangers- The Rangers are the top offense on this slate in my opinion going up against the splits-heavy Felix Pena, but given their lack of love in Vegas, I’m assuming they are going to come in under-owned relative to what they should be. Pena has some pretty extreme splits, allowing over 40.0% hard hits and under 18.0% strikeouts to lefties in 2018. This plays right into the Rangers strengths considering they are a lefty-heavy team, and that makes Shin-Soo Choo, Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara, Rougned Odor and Ronald Guzman/Asdrubal Cabrera jump to the top of the board for my favorite stack in all formats tonight.
2. Milwaukee Brewers- I’ve been a pretty big Jose Quintana hater for some time now, mainly because I acknowledged how fluky his 2017 run was from the gate but now people are starting to come around. He did look good in his firs appearance for the Cubs this season, but the Brewers have one of the best and most dangerous lineups in the league and I look to stack them most nights — especially when they aren’t going to be the chalk stack. Quintana was still great against lefties in 2018 allowing the lowest hard-contact on the slate with over 50.0% ground balls. He is beatable with righties, however, which bodes well for the likes of Lorenzo Cain, Ryan Braun, Yasmani Grandal and Jesus Aguilar. I don’t hate including Yelich just due to his upside, but the four righties are where I would start in a GPP stack.
GPP Only: Blue Jays Power vs Bieber- Teoscar Hernandez, Randal Grichuk, Rowdy Tellez
Chalk Stacks: Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
