Welcome to the Sunday edition of the DFS Primer. Yesterday was awful. Ouch! I did not think that Cristian Javier would be nearly perfect through 7 innings. If not for a first-inning walk to Josh Donaldson and working up a very high pitch count, Javier could have had himself a perfect game. Kudos to his bullpen for keeping the no-hitter intact. Also, I did not think that the Oakland A’s would be one of the most productive offenses yesterday. They scored 9 runs on 14 hits, but in the previous 7 games, they scored just 9 runs total and went 1-6 during that stretch. You gotta love the variance that comes with MLB DFS!
Well, we just dust ourselves off and try again. I am confident that today will be better. Here is a table displaying my pitcher analysis for the main slate today on both DraftKings and FanDuel (9 games with the first game starting at 10:35 AM PT).
It’s clear that Shane McClanahan has to be in our lineups today. If the season were to end today, he would win the AL Cy Young award and it would not be close. Meanwhile, the Pirates have been one of the worst offenses in baseball all season. They have not been much better over the last 30 days striking out 268 times during a 27-game stretch. That is 2nd worst out of all MLB teams and an average of 10 Ks per game. Someone like McClanahan, who can easily go 7-8 innings, should have no problem putting up a monster fantasy total today.
You could save a bit of money by going with Dylan Cease, but the Baltimore Orioles offense can surprise you from time to time. I would much rather pay down for Brady Singer. He ranks high in my analysis and the Oakland offense is trash. Yes, they woke up yesterday, but I think that is an anomaly. The A’s offense has had the worst OPS over the last 30 days, and Singer has been solid so far this season with 44 Ks and 9 BBs over 45.2 IP. He is also due for positive regression with his ERA.
As for the bats, I was thinking I would go back to the Yankees and Brewers. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So let’s get a bit contrarian here! I like the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers for two reasons. One, they both play near the end of the slate and typically the teams who play later in the slate tend to have lower ownership. Two, the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals have two of the worst pitching staffs. Over the last 30 days, both of them rank 30th and 29th, respectively, in ERA. They have also given up more HRs than any other team and other metrics such as WHIP and K/BB ratio are awful. Let’s attack those two teams today!
Here are some sample lineups.
DraftKings
P: S. McClanahan
P: B. Singer
C: M. Garver
1B: N. Lowe
2B: B. Donovan
3B: N. Arenado
SS: C. Seager
OF: K. Calhoun
OF: J. Smith
OF: J. Yepez
FanDuel #1
P: S. McClanahan
C/1B: N. Lowe
2B: B. Donovan
3B: N. Arenado
SS: C. Seager
OF: K. Calhoun
OF: J. Yepez
OF: H. Bader
UTIL: M. Garver
FanDuel #2
P: B. Singer
C/1B: P. Goldschmidt
2B: N. Gorman
3B: N. Arenado
SS: C. Seager
OF: K. Calhoun
OF: A. Garcia
OF: J. Yepez
UTIL: N. Lowe
There you have it! Lots of lefties for Texas and some of the big names for St. Louis! Good luck!
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