This content will be dedicated to providing you with an easy-to-follow breakdown of the elite cash plays, GPP plays, and leverage stacks.
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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
Vegas Tables coming shortly!
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Pitching
Yu Darvish: Darvish gets an elite matchup with the AAA Mets tonight. The Mets lineup has gotten healthier over the past week with the return of Pillar and Alonso. This is still a weak lineup that we want to attack with strikeout arms like Darvish. I expect this to be a low-scoring game in general. Darvish will be popular, but he will likely find his way into my lineup tonight.
Lance Lynn: Lynn has surprised me this season for the White Sox, he has been a workhorse and they’ve continued to let him work deep into games. Lynn has one of the safer floors on this slate because of the high pitch count that the White Sox will allow him to rack up. He gets a plus matchup vs the Tigers. We know about their team strikeout rate hovering around 30%. This is the exact matchup we want for Lynn. I think Darvish and Lynn will be the popular combination today, but for good reason.
Basically, every other pitcher you go with today will be contrarian. I have listed a few of my other favorites below.
Other GPP Targets: Tyler Anderson, Griffin Canning, Anthony DeSclafani
MLB Top Batters
Batters
C
Ryan Jeffers-Jeffers smashed as chalk last night and he is still 2k in a plus matchup tonight as well. I wouldn’t expect 20+ from him, but many will see his game log and be all over him. Anytime a player is going to be high-owned like Jeffers, there is merit to get off of him in GPPs.
Salvador Perez- Perez always seems to come through for me when I roster him. Happ has been a pitcher that I have been actively picking on all season and it has paid off. Today is no different. I will be going right back to the well and playing Perez in my tournament lineups.
1B
Dan Vogelbach- Vogelbach is way too cheap and should have an incredible lineup spot for the team with the highest TT on the slate. I expect him to be very popular on this slate. He carries pinch hit risk that we need to bake into our process when weighing his potential outcomes.
Christian Walker- Walker is underpriced and should be in the heart of the DBacks lineup today. At only 3.3k he is the second-best value behind Vogelbach on today’s slate.
2B
Kolten Wong- I am usually not the biggest fan of rostering Wong, but he gets an incredible matchup today and will hit a top the Brewers order. You can get off of him in tournaments and I most likely would not one-off him.
Tommy Edman- Edman never really is as owned as he should be. He has protection behind him in the Cardinals order and he has some stole base upside to go along with the multi-hit potential.
3B
Anthony Rendon- I am still waiting for the Rendon explosion game and I think it has arrived. I am planting my flag on an Anthony Rendon homerun tonight! I will be locking him into cash games and tournament lineups.
Josh Donaldson- The chalkiest third baseman in all of DFS gets another left-handed pitcher on the mound to try and take advantage of today. As Ben Hossler noted on our podcast yesterday, he doesn’t love what he’s seeing at the plate from Josh and neither do I. This is strictly a projection and price play. But he is still in an elite spot to produce. That is undeniable.
SS
J.P. Crawford- There is a good chance that Crawford leads off for the Mariners today after his recent success in the role. He is still under 3k and I want to be invested in the cheap lead-off hitters.
Tim Anderson- Anderson gets Mize on the mound for Detroit today and this is a brutal matchup for Mize. The White Sox are an extremely patient team at the plate and Mize has struggled with his control this season. Mize is also a pitcher that you can swipe bags on, so if Anderson gets on we can suspect that he will be on the move.
OF
Christian Yelich- Yelich is back for the Brew Crew and I love him as a priority spend up today. He will be rather popular due to the Brewers’ high total, but I think this is a spot I am willing to eat the chalk…even in tournaments.
Angels OF- Justin Upton has been leading off for the Angels and producing. He mid 3s price tag is still very appealing and I want to be involved while he has this elite lineup spot and matchup vs an average lefty. Ohtani has a L/L matchup so people may shy away, I still think he is firmly in play.
Ketel Marte- Marte has picked up right where he left off last year after his return from the IL. One of the most underrated hitters in baseball gets a great matchup vs a soft-tossing left-handed pitcher.
MIN OF- The Minnesota OF is always in play vs a lefty. We have the history of Nelson Cruz vs lefties as well as the cheap price tag of Kyle Garlick whenever a lefty is on the hill. With no Garve, Garlick is nearly a lock to leadoff.
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
Coming soon…..
DraftKings 3-Man Stack Ideas
Coming soon……
