Pitchers
Patrick Corbin- I feel like Corbin pitches against the Mets in every outing, but here he is seeing them for his fourth time already this season, averaging just over seven strikeouts per outing against them, which is held down by an outlier four K performance in his first outing of the season. He isn’t overly expensive, and the Mets have continued to struggle with southpaws striking out 29.0% of the time against them, good for 3rd most in the MLB. I don’t want to overthink the spot tonight, and while he will be highly-owned, Corbin checks in as my top overall play in all formats.
Chris Paddack- Since I am clearly locking in Corbin on both FanDuel and DraftKings, the only decision we need to make is who to roster as our SP2 alongside him on multi-pitcher sites. I think there are three really strong tournament only plays tonight, who are listed below, but when it comes to cash games it’s a two man race between Chris Paddack and Luke Weaver, squaring off against each other. Paddack was someone I was all over leading up to the season, so seeing his early success has been really satisfying. However, being a young pitcher, he has yet to figure out both sides of the plate and has been extremely splits dependent…with around 35.0% strikeouts to right-handed batters and that number plummeting to 23.0% against lefties. The Diamondbacks will be able to send four or five solid left-handed batters to the plate tonight, so while I think he has higher upside than my next selection, the risk is larger with him as well.
Luke Weaver- Weaver is having quite the come back season, after bursting onto the scene with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2017, he has horrible last year putting up a 4.53 SIERA with under 20.0% strikeouts. This season, he’s trimmed the SIERA to a more than respectable 3.63 mark, while bumping the strikeouts to 26.1%, backed by an increased usage with his cutter. The strikeouts hold up at over 25.0% against righties, and while the hard hits are still a bit of a concern there, he is likely to see six or seven right-handed batters tonight and the $1,000 in savings off of Paddack can do a lot for your batters.
Tournament Pool: Mike Soroka, Yu Darvish, Brad Peacock
Building Blocks
Kendrys Morales- We kick off my building blocks section with Kendrys Morales in his new home in New York, priced at just $2,200 on FanDuel and $3,400 on DraftKings. Morales homered on Friday night for the Yankees, and he still owns a near 42.0% hard-contact rate against right-handed pitching this season. The Yankees have one of the top matchups on the board against Andrew Cashner, and getting some cheap exposure to them makes a ton of sense to me in an optimal build.
Aaron Hicks- Following up Morales, we have a mid-priced Aaron Hicks who will be batting second for the Bronx Bombers tonight as another easy way to get exposure to their lineup without spending too much money. Hicks is quietly one of the most underrated hitters in the American League, and his price has not adjusted given that he started the year on the IL. He posted a .205 ISO against right-handed pitching last season, and I will be looking to ride his price while he is this cheap.
Tim Beckham- I play Beckham more than anyone in the industry, but today might be the day he finally sees double-digit ownership with this game owning a huge 11 O/U in Vegas. He has floated arounf mid-$3,000 on DraftKings all season despite sporting an ISO of .200+ against both sides of the plate. I will be looking to get in Corbin + one of Paddack and Weaver in my DraftKings lineup tonight, and plugging in Beckham alongside the two Yankees above goes a long way in doing so, while not sacrificing too much offensive firepower.
Stacks
1. Astros- With the focus set to solely be on the Rangers/Mariners game for cash game/ single entry builds, I am going to focus my main GPP on spending up for the Houston Astros against the White Sox bullpen. They’re going to see both righties and lefties tonight, and I expect them to go under-owned relative to the matchup given the prices on guys like Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Michael Brantley.
2. Cubs- I actually like both sides of this game, but the Cubs are really interesting to me because in terms of advanced metrics, they have one of the best matchups on the slate and yet I don’t expect them to gain much DFS attention at all with only a 4.4 implied run total. Jake Arrieta has become solely a ground ball pitcher, with pretty much 0 strikeout ability and some pretty heavy splits between lefties and righties. He still can get ground balls against left-handed batters, but his ISO allowed is at almost .200 this season which makes this an amazing spot for Kyle Schwarber, Anthony Rizzo and Jayson Heyward. Given how Kris Bryant has been hitting, you can include him in your stack as well and fill out with a cheap Victor Caratini batting clean up.
Chalk Stacks: Rangers, Mariners, Yankees
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
