Pitchers
Justin Verlander- Verlander has been his normal self in 2019 boasting another sub-3.50 SIERA along with 31.1% strikeouts and dominant swing and miss stuff. He gets a fantastic matchup with the White Sox tonight who strike out the fourth-most in the MLB against RHP this season. He has grown more and more towards fly balls in his latter years, so it’s always in the cards that he will allow a ball or two to leave the yard. With him, against this offense, the chances that it’s a solo shot are pretty good, and he is the safest option for me on this slate even at his elevated price tag.
Caleb Smith- Smith has been even better than Verlander this season with a 2.98 SIERA and 35.2% strikeouts backed by an insane 16.5% swinging strike rate. He has a boom/bust matchup tonight with the Detroit Tigers, who strike out a ton against southpaws (26,8% of the time), but also rank 11th and 12th in wRC+ and ISO as a team respectively. He will see eight righties at the plate tonight, which isn’t a huge concern seeing as his strikeouts sit at 37.0% against them this season, but when factoring in 49% fly balls and 40% hard hits…and the Tigers 10th best walk rate, you can see why I’m labeling it as boom or bust. For that reason, I think Verlander is a good bit safer than Smith tonight which is why I’m leaning towards anchoring with him in cash games. If that holds true, I will simply be overweight to Smith in tournaments and I do think he will come in under-owned relative to his upside once again.
German Marquez (FanDuel especially)- Marquez has built off his dominant 2018 second-half, owning a 3.40 SIERA with 24.5% strikeouts thus far in 2019. His weakness has been left-handed batters again this season, with his strikeouts falling to 19.4% against them compared to 29.0% against righties, but it’s not the end of the world with his xFIP still holding at 3.93. The Pirates offense is much worse against southpaws than right-handed pitchers, but when you dig into the numbers, Josh Bell is really the only lefty that sports above-average numbers against Marquez’s neutralizer to lefties…his curveball. Marquez price is too low for the upside he presents tonight, and while I like him in GPPs on DraftKings, he’s firmly on my cash game radar at only $8,200 on FanDuel.
Spencer Turnbull- Welcome all to Spencer Turnbull night! Turnbull is a guy I’ve been on since his first start of the season, as I think he has some potential to be a pretty decent MLB starter down the road for the Tigers. He’s another young pitcher that hasn’t figured out both sides of the plate, but he has been near dominant against right-handed batters this season with almost 30.0% strikeouts and 49.0% ground balls. He should see six or seven righties in the Marlins lineup tonight, and they come into Tuesday carrying the second-highest strikeout rate in the MLB against RHP — 26.6%, along with the lowest wRC+ (64). On DratKings, he’s my lock and load SP2 at under $8,000.
Tournament Pool: Clayton Kershaw, Eduardo Rodriguez
Building Blocks
Max Kepler- Kepler kicks off my building blocks under-priced on all sites once again, up against Trevor Cahill who has allowed 14 homeruns already this season. You’ll read more about Cahill’s splits below, but just know that Kepler comes into tonight with 40.0+% hard hits and fly balls againsrt righties, along with a .250 ISO.
Tim Beckham- My boy came through for us last night with a huge grand slam later in the game, and it’s only right we go back to him tonight, for cheap again, on a slate where I’m more than comfortable saving at shortstop. I told you last night, Beckham has more pop to both sides of the plate than you would think, and he gets you cheap exposure to one of the top stacks of the night, at low ownership.
Note: Matt Beaty is only $3,100 on DK leading off the Los Angeles Dodgers, providing savings in both cash games and tournaments.
Stacks
1. Twins- Cahill comes into Tuesday night sporting a 4.89 SIERA, backed by some pretty heavy splits to left-handed batters. This season, he has allowed 50.7% hard hits with 12.4% strikeouts to lefties compared to 39.5% hard hits and over 20.0% strikeouts to right-handed batters. He sits at an awful 2.86 HR/9 allowed, and will see his fair share of quality right-handed and left-handed bats for the Twins tonight. I would start with Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Marwin Gonzalez, but filling in with the likes of CJ Cron and Jorge Polanco makes sense in tournaments (or even Miguel Sano).
2. Astros- I do expect the Astros to garner some attention tonight against Dylan Covey, but maybe not as much as they should given their prices and with a lot of the attention on the TEX/SEA game. Covey has posted under 10.0% strikeouts to both sides of the plate this season, and I would not limit my stack to one side of the plate either. George Springer could be back in action tonight, but even if he isn’t we can focus on Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Michael Brantley, Yuli Gurriel and Josh Reddick.
Chalk Stacks: Rangers/Mariners, Yankees, Astros
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
