This content will be dedicated to providing you with an easy-to-follow breakdown of the elite cash plays, GPP plays, and leverage stacks.

Vegas Overview – Below is an excerpt from our sister site, Bet Karma, which has daily player props, live trends (below), and much more! Access ALL odds, trends, and line movement for all sports here > BetKarma Live MLB Trends

 

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Pitching

Carlos Rodon

We draw a bit of a watered down pitching slate for it being Friday night, with Rodon sticking out as the clear ace against the Seattle Mariners. Rodon has been elite for the White Sox this season, finally healthy, pitching to a 3.34 xFIP with a massive 37% strikeout rate. The Mariners continue to be one of the worst offenses in baseball, ranking 22nd in wRC+ (89) and the third-highest strikeout rate as a team (26%). I expect him to feature heavy ownership, but he is a near lock for me in cash game formats or optimal builds. You can always get weird in GPPs and fade the high priced arms, but there is a lack of upside in the mid-tier tonight and limited pivot options as well.

Chris Paddack

I don’t think I’ve rostered Paddack once all season, but tonight might be the night to hop on against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Paddack started off 2021 very slow, but has rebounded with a 2.79 SIERA and 31% strikeout rate over the last 30 days. While I’m comfortable attacking this team regardless, he will see a watered down lineup tonight missing all of Carson Kelly, Eduardo Escobar and Ketel Marte. We are getting the current version of him discounted below $9K on DK, and he is my favorite mid-tier pitcher on tonight’s slate.

Pablo Lopez

I have Rodon and Paddack firmly one and two on this slate, so the third option is coming down to Pablo Lopez vs Mike Minor. Lopez is someone I’m a big fan of, and I’m comfortable selecting him in tournaments in tough match-ups. One of the reasons I like Lopez is his ability to combine solid strikeouts (25%) with a high ground ball rate (49%). Getting almost 50% ground balls enables him to navigate trouble when guys are on base and allows him an out to get out of any jams quickly. He gets a boost throwing in pitcher-friendly Miami tonight, and it appears Vegas respects him as the Nats are implied for just 3.4 runs. Lopez is a great pivot in single entry tourneys on Friday evening.

Other GPP Targets: Framber Valdez, Mike Minor

MLB Top Batters

Batters

C

Catcher has little standout options to me tonight, and will be a position I use to fill-in my stacks. Among the top projections, I have Tyler Stephenson and Sean Murphy ranked ahead of the field. I love how William Contreras matches up (as well as the Braves in general) and he will be my top overall option if he cracks the lineup tonight.

1B

Freddie Freeman

Freeman and his Braves teammates are my top graded spot for offense tonight, over the Blue Jays and Astros. We have a small sample size of Vladimir Gutierrez this season, but the results have not been great. On the surface, he appears okay, but if you dig further you’ll see he’s allowing over 40% hard hits and fly balls to left-handed batters. He’s also survived due to a low .210 BABIP. Freeman is neck-and-neck with Ronald Acuna for best hitter on this team vs right-handed pitching, and he is my top spend up here tonight.

Bobby Dalbec

Michael Chavis is popping as a cheap play, and projected to lead off for the Red Sox tonight. While I think he is a good value option, I actually prefer his teammate in Dalbec at lower ownership. He has better batted ball numbers vs right-handed pitchers than Chavis this season, and has been locked in at the plate. Over the last 14 days, Dalbec is making hard contact at a 58% rate — ranking first in baseball among qualifiers.

2B

Ozzie Albies

As I noted with Freeman, I love the Braves tonight and I view Albies as way too cheap on DraftKings. The surface numbers don’t look great against right-handed pitching, but I don’t believe that tells the full story. If you isolate his numbers to just batted ball data. we see a 50% fly ball rate and 41% hard hit rate. These are extremely respectable numbers, and show that some positive regression could be headed his way. Gutierrez throws his fastball almost 50% of the time to lefties, a pitch that Albies owns a .303 ISO against over the last three seasons.

Max Muncy

I typically write up at least once cheaper play at each position, but I can’t ignore Muncy against Jake Arrieta. Los Angeles checks in with a healthy 5.5 team total tonight, and Arrieta has really struggled with opposite-hand batters. Since April, he’s allowing a .367 wOBA and .221 ISO to lefties. We know that Arrieta is a heavy sinker baller – a pitch that Muncy has crushed (.411 ISO). Muncy is my HR call for tonight’s slate.

3B

Ke’Bryan Hayes

I like the mid-tier at third base tonight, starting with Hayes. He has been the best hitter in this lineup, especially against left-handed pitching. 62% fly balls and 50% hard hits are exactly what we like to see, and Kim is a pitcher that allows above average fly balls to right-handed batters. Hayes has a ton of power for an affordable price tag on Friday night.

Austin Riley

Riley is typically someone we roster against left-handed pitchers, but his .216 ISO vs RHP is actually third-highest on this Braves team this season. He matches up well with Gutierrez pitch mix — owning over a .450 xwOBA vs fastballs and curve balls — which accounts for over 70% of his pitches thrown to righties. I like the power potential for his price tonight and I view him as playable in all formats.

SS

Wander Franco

Franco will continue to be someone I roster early on in his career, and his ownership will be significantly lower at $4,200 than it was his first two games at min-price. We don’t have enough of a sample size to make any data based analysis here, other than this is one of the best hitting prospects in recent memory. Canning has struggled with left-handed batters, and I like Franco in a mini-Rays stack or as a one-off on Friday.

Dansby Swanson

Swanson has been terrible against right-handed pitchers this season, but his 40% hard hits and 22% line drives inspire come confidence moving forward. He’s been hitting the ball hard recently (50% rate) and as you can tell I’m leaning heavily towards a full-on Braves stack for my main team tonight.

OF

Kyle Tucker

I didn’t choose to write up and high-priced options here, because it’s unclear if Ronald Acuna will be in the lineup tonight. If he is, he is my favorite spend but if he’s sidelined again I’m looking at Nick Castellanos.

Tucker and the Astros are one of the top stacks tonight, but Tucker is the one guy that still appears to be too cheap. Peralta and the Tigers bullpen are no match for this Astros lineup, and Tucker has been seeing the ball extremely well. Since last Monday, Tucker owns a 50% fly ball rate with 38% hard-contact.

Cody Bellinger

I noted in my Muncy blurb my interest in the Dodgers lefties tonight, and that continues to Bellinger who is still in the low-4K tier on DK. Belly has been up-and-down when healthy this season, but he is still tops on this team with a 39% line drive rate vs RHP. He is also another Dodgers player that excels vs sinkers — boasting a .440 wOBA and 50% hard hit rate vs the pitch.

Tyler O’Neill

O’Neill has been a staple of my lineups over the last few weeks and will continue to be so as long as he is priced like this. He has in full breakout mode for the Cardinals this season, and has been locked in at the plate. Over the last two weeks, his hard-contact rate is at 52% with over 47% fly balls. He also has some of the best numbers in baseball this season against sliders. Crowe is throwing his slider just under 38% of the time to right-handed batters.

Stacks

“Team Batting Score” – A metric that quickly highlights overall team batting based on Runs Created (RC+) by team and comparing it to the average and standard deviation of all other MLB Teams

“Opp. Pitcher SP Score” – A weighted metric that evaluates today’s starting pitchers based on xFIP and Games Started (currently using partial end of 2020 data blended with the 2021 season)

“Opp. BP Score” – Similar to SP Score but weights the xFIP for the team’s bullpen

Team Batting vs. Opp. Pitch

DK MLB Stacks

“T2” (and T3/T4/T5) represents the Top 2 projected hitters for the team on the left (not necessarily the top 2 hitters in the batting order)

Stacking is an extremely important element to MLB DFS. In MLB, all of your players are correlated to each other. Outside of solo homeruns, they need each other to succeed. If you look at the top of all of the big GPPs every night you will see stacks dominating the leaderboard.

When using our stacks chart, we want to identify teams that are projecting well but the ownership does not reflect their chance of success.

 

DraftKings 5-Man Stack Ideas

Acuna (if in)-Albies-Freeman-Riley-Contreras

Semien-Bichette-Vlad Jr-Teoascar Hernandez-Biggio

Altuve-Brantley-Correa-Tucker-Alvarez

Winker-Castellanos-Suarez-Stephenson-Aquino

Muncy-Bellinger-Mookie-Lux-Turner

DraftKings 3-Man Stack Ideas

Albies-Freeman-Acuna (if in)

Tucker-Alvarez-Toro

Casty-Suarez-Stephenson

Muncy-Bellinger-Lux

Cruz-Kirilloff-Larnach or Kepler

 

 

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)