Welcome to the Sunday edition of the DFS Primer. Weather should not be an issue today as summer has cometh early for most baseball cities. What has also arrived is the 1/5 mark of the MLB season. That represents plenty of in-season data at our fingertips. If you have read my DFS articles during the last few weeks, you will know that I am a big fan of Statcast data. More specifically, I am enamored with barrel rate, xwOBA, xERA, and hard hit %. I will also use more traditional stats such as FB/GB and K/BB ratios. In fact I have taken the liberty of listing those metrics for the starting pitchers on the main slate today. Check out the table below.
The last column represents the sum of the rankings for each column with ascending rank for all of the metrics except for K/BB which is a good thing to be high. You might be wondering what the +/- signs represent under the regression columns. If a pitcher’s true wOBA is higher than his xwOBA, then he is due for positive regression. Vice versa if the the true metric is less than the expected one.
With that said, Tarik Skubal is the pitcher I want in my lineups. He should have no problem dominating the Orioles. As for stacks, I recommend the Astros and Brewers. You will want to attack Patrick Corbin and Elisier Hernandez. You can also attack Jose Quintana and Hunter Greene but I am not sure if I can entirely trust the Pirates or Reds. There is a reason why both teams have been cellar dwellers for the past few years.
Let’s dive deeper with Skubal as well as the Astros and Brewers.
Pitchers
The data doesn’t lie. Skubal does not allow many flyballs and has tremendous control of the strike zone. While he may not have a strong supporting offense, he definitely has a great repertoire of pitches with high whiff rates for his curveball and changeup. The Orioles look like a minor league team right now so Skubal should get us 6 – 7 IP and 8 – 9 Ks. Maybe he doesn’t get the win but on FanDuel, he can earn close to 50 fantasy points, especially with the quality start bonus. That is more than 5x value which is what we need to reach the cash line. His price on DraftKings is laughable at $6K. He is a must start on that platform.
Batters
Don’t get cute here with the bats you roster today. Sure, you could go after the Reds and Pirates but what if we get another low scoring affair as we did last night. Let’s pay up for quality with Houston and Milwaukee. After all, each team is in first place in their divisions. Also, the starting pitchers for their opponents have struggled as the data table above indicates.
So which bats from those teams should we roster from the Astros and Brewers? Focus on lefties for the Brewers and righties for the Astros. Don’t fade Alex Bregman, Jose Pena (assuming he is healthy), Christian Yelich, and Rowdy Tellez. Check out the sample lineups for both DraftKings and FanDuel.
DraftKings
P: T. Skubal
P: C. Carrasco
C: O. Navarez
1B: R. Tellez
2B: J. Altuve
3B: A. Bregman
SS: J. Pena
OF: C. Yelich
OF: C. McCormick
OF: T. Taylor
FanDuel #1
P: T. Skubal
C/1B: R. Tellez
2B: K. Wong
3B: A. Bregman
SS: J. Pena
OF: C. Yelich
OF: H. Renfroe
OF: C. McCormick
UTIL: M. Brantley
FanDuel #1
P: T. Skubal
C/1B: R. Tellez
2B: J. Altuve
3B: A. Bregman
SS: J. Pena
OF: C. Yelich
OF: H. Renfroe
OF: M. Brantley
UTIL: O. Navarez
There you have it! Trust the data by going with Skubal and building some Astros and Brewers stacks. Good luck!
Design by J.R. Caines (@JRCainesDesign on Twitter and @caines_design on Instagram)