What’s up guys! We have a really light five game slate tonight, so I’m just going to lay out my general thoughts on the slate as a whole.
Pitchers
Luis Castillo- He’s been by far the best pitcher on this slate this season posting a 3.48 SIERA, 30.0% strikeouts and nasty swing and miss stuff backed by maybe the best changeup in the league. The Cubs are a lot better against that pitch than the Giants are, but we don’t have much to work with on this slate and he’s clearly the top arm in all formats. I will 100% be locking him in as SP1 on DraftKings, but I think he could be a bit “under-owned” on FanDuel with people attempting to jam in bats and dropping down to the mid tier for their pitcher.
Eric Lauer- It’s pretty scary that he’s my second favorite option tonight, but that’s what we are forced to resort to on this slate. He has minimal upside at all with only 20.0% strikeouts, but the does get a fantastic matchup against the Pirates who come into tonight with the 3rd worst wRC+ and fifth-most strikeouts against southpaws. I prefer him to Trevor Williams, and he will be my SP2 on DK tonight.
Julio Teheran- I will be fading Marcus Stroman, who I anticipate to be pretty decently owned, so my leverage low-owned GPP pitcher today will be Julio Teheran. I don’t like the matchup at all against the Cardinals, but they are right-handed heavy and righties has been Teheran’s strong suit throughout his career. He’s been much better this year than in season’s past, especially with swings and misses, so I’m willing to take a GPP shot on him today. If you roll him out, 100% be sure to have a Cardinals stack coming back the other way.
Fades: Marcus Stroman, Trevor Williams
Stack
1. Twins- I love this spot for the Twins tonight, they match up with a young fly ball pitcher in Erik Swanson, and have too much power to be contained by him multiple times through the order in my opinion. The Twins are first overall in ISO against right-handed pitchers this season, and I would start my stacks with Nelson Cruz, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Polanco.
GPP: Reds- Jose Quintana is not easily attackable given his strong ground balls, but the trio of Nick Senzel, Eugenio Suarez and Yasiel Puig will find their way into a lot of my tournament builds tonight.
Underweight: Blue Jays- They do have the best matchup on the board against Dylan Covey, but their offense is not good and I don’t think I can really justify them being chalk. If you are playing cash games I would 100% want exposure here, but I will be really underweight in tournaments and hope that their true offensive colors show and they end up with 1 or 2 runs.
GPP: White Sox- This is mainly just a leverage play as I expect Marcus Stroman to be over-owned, so I’m willing to run it back with a White Sox stack. I normally don’t attack someone like Stroman, who boasts a 57.0% ground ball rate, but he has been prone to some blowups this season and he does allow almost 42.0% hard hits. The White Sox have a few players that can get the ball up in the air against him, and I would be focusing on Yoan Moncada, Jose Abreu and Yonder Alonso to start.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
