Pitchers
Luis Castillo- Castillo has built off his strong end to 2018, and is sporting a 3.92 SIERA with 29% strikeouts and 14% swinging strikes through 75 innings in 2019. He matches up with one of my favorite teams to attack right now, the Cleveland Indians, who come into tonight outside the top-20 in wRC+ against right-handed pitching while striking out over 23% of the time. I’ve cited multiple times this season that Castillo’s money pitch is his changeup, of which only Carlos Santana and Tyler Naquin have excelled against this season. I think this lineup will be over-matched with someone as nasty as Castillo, and after much deliberation I have settled on as my top overall play on this slate.
Mike Foltynewicz- Folty is my preferred mid-tier tournament play on Tuesday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates, yes the same team that gave Kevin Gausman some issues last night. Gausman got pretty unlucky once again, but the strikeouts weren’t an issue and I don’t think they will be for Folty tonight either. Since his velocity came back up to where it should be, roughly three/four starts ago, his swinging strike rate has climbed to over 14%, and the walks have dropped significantly. I expect the final pitcher on this list is going to end up pretty chalky on all sites (rightfully so), and I’m very interested in Folty as a pivot off him — I will be overweight.
Jake Junis- Junis is not someone I typically roster in DFS, but a matchup with the Detroit Tigers and their 26% strikeout against righties will defintely get me interested, especially at his punt price tag on both FanDuel and DraftKings. He also has pitched to a .321 opposing BABIP, which means some positive regression is due to come his way. The only thing we generally worry about with Junis is hard-hits, but with the Tigers striking out so much and ranking bottom-three in ISO against righties this season, I’m not as worried as normal. He is 100% cash game playable at his price, and a good way to jam in bats tonight.
Tournament Pool: Luis Castillo, Chris Paddack, Mike Foltynewicz, Elieser Hernandez
Building Blocks
Brian Dozier/Derek Dietrich (FanDuel)- I’m starting today’s building blocks with a FD play, where we find both Brian Dozier and Derek Dietrich at just $2,700. Both have positive splits matchups with Manny Banuelos and Trevor Bauer respectively, and both own over a .350 ISO in the split this season. We are going to be looking to jam in some expensive bats tonight — see below — so finding a cheap pairing for our 2B / UTIL spots at under $3K makes a ton of sense in cash games.
Yordan (Air Yordan) Alvarez- For those of you that don’t know, I was all in on Alvarez on Sunday making his debut, and I’m excited to go back to the well tonight against (Fastball) Freddy Peralta. As of now you’ve probably heard, but Alvarez was absolutely smashing at Triple A before being called up by the Astros. He was slashing .343/.443/.742 with 23 homeruns before clobbering one out of the park in his ML debut on Sunday afternoon, and given Peralta’s insistence on only throwing one pitch, he should be able to key in on that fastball tonight and is my dong call for this slate.
Rhys Hoskins- I pointed out Hoskins great numbers vs right-handed pitching in this article last night, he responded with 24 DraftKings points…and is now $100 cheaper than he was yesterday! I’m a fan of Jon Duplainter, he has strikeout upside and has been good in the minors for a few years, but that’s not going to stop me from rostering Hoskins at his price. If you can’t afford Anthony Rizzo, he’s my top play in all formats when factoring in price.
Note Regarding Coors: On a night like this, I’m pretty in tune with the Rockies/Cubs Coors game and the Yankees as good chalk. For that reason, I did not include players from those teams in the building blocks section, as it should be known we are building around those players in cash games…especially with us getting some decent savings at pitcher. I would start with Trevor Story, Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo as my three favorite but I will be looking at getting as much of those three teams as possible in my cash game/single entry build tonight.
For today’s stacks, check my Final Thoughts cheat sheet!
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
