Pitching
Cash Games
Justin Verlander- Verlander is the unquestioned ace of this slate, with the highest strikeout rate and the clear best raw pitching ability. The matchup with the Yankees is definitely worrisome for someone that leans more towards fly balls, but we need to remember that this isn’t a full-strength Yankees team and they’re still striking out 23.0% of the time to start the season. On any other slate, Verlander would be better off for tournaments to me, but on this one, he’s a LOCK in cash games on all sites.
Eric Lauer- Lauer is the logical SP2 choice for me on Monday night, but he’s really not discounted at $7,500. Lauer doesn’t have crazy strikeout ability, but he does have an exceptional matchup against the Giants who are going to send a bunch of left-handed batters to the plate, and pretty much zero threatening right-handers. Lauer had success in this same exact matchup on Opening Day, and he just simply matches up perfectly with their lineup. I’m fine with Lauer in all formats, but I might need to dive a bit deeper on Draftkings…
Homer Bailey (DraftKings)- What exactly does this tell you about this slate that both Homer Bailey and Eric Lauer are in my cash game section! This is 100% not about Homer Bailey, and more of the fact that he’s only $5,000 on DraftKings on a slate with tons of offensive spots to choose from. He fits in perfectly alongside Verlander and allows you to still spend-up at multiple positions. Bailey has been a disaster since being plagued by the injury bug, but the once promising pitcher was solid in his first start of 2019 throwing five innings allowing three earned runs and striking out 8! For $5,000, we are really only looking for 15 or so fantasy points here, and I’d take a similar outing tonight all week and twice on Sunday. It’s only one start, so we can’t draw massive conclusions, but he mixed up his pitches a lot more than he did last season resulting in over 16.0% swinging strikes…for reference, he posted a sub-9.0% swing and miss rate for the entirety of last season. I think he has the potential for another decent outing tonight, especially at this price, and I may have to stomach it in cash to jam in some offense.
GPP Pitcher Pool: Hyun-Jin Ryu, Julio Teheran
Note: I expect Madison Bumgarner to be a popular choice tonight, but I am off him and would rather take Ryu in the same pricing range.
Building Blocks
Note: On Coors Field slates, I try to eliminate the obvious by not including Coors bats in this section.
Robbie Grossman- Right now I only have two guys slated as stone locks outside of the Coors game, although there could be a potential add-in if Kole Calhoun cracks the Angels lineup. The A’s are going to be one of the highest owned offenses tonight against Andrew Cashner, and we get some savings in Grossman who will be leading off for them again. On a slate like this, I’ll take cheap lead-off men anytime I get them.
Brian Dozier (FanDuel)- This is more a price play to me, as Dozier comes into tonight at just $2,100 batting second for the Nationals against Vince Velasquez. VV has the potential to be decent, but ti’s his first start and we don’t exactly know what version of him we’re going to get. On FanDuel, we will be locking in Justin Verlander, so getting the savings of Dozier makes sense in all formats.
Stacks
1. Dodgers- Miles Mikolas is a good real-life pitcher, but he has little to no strike out ability, he pitches to contact, and is much worse against lefties than righties. The problem with this matchup tonight is, the Dodgers are full of good left-handed batters! Mikolas struck left-handers out at a sub-17.0% clip in 2018, and he has had no swing and miss ability whatsoever in 2019 (5.6% SwStr%). His hard contact is also up this season, and Dodgers lineup is full of guys that can counteract his ground balls by getting the ball up in the air. I love the lefties tonight and a tournament stack of Joc Pederson, Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager, Max Muncy and then one of AJ Pollock or Alex Verdugo takes the trophy for my top on the night.
2. Brewers- I feel pretty good about the Dodgers and Brewers going a bit under-owned on this slate with all of the options available, which turns this into a pretty fun GPP slate. Trevor Cahill is a legitimate good pitcher in my opinion, and I’m a fan, but the rule I’ve tried to indent in everyone early on this season is to not roster pitchers against the Brew Crew. They have one of the deepest lineups in the league and it puts them in play for me every night, especially on slates where they are potentially going overlooked. I would focus on the lefties to start your stack.
Chalk Stacks: Rockies, A’s, Braves
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
