Written by Ryan Humphries | @N1TRO on LineStar | @NitroDFS on Twitter

🔊 5/22 "On Deck" Podcast feat. Joe Pisapia & Chris Meaney

⚾️ 2019 MLB Preview & Strategy Guide

Let’s all take a quick moment to recognize the history that was made yesterday as the Orioles became the fastest team in history to allow 100 home runs, doing so just 48 games into the season! They beat the previous record holder (2000 Royals) to the century mark by nine games. Incredible. On this split-slate Wednesday, ten games will land on this evening’s main card -- though, FanDuel also includes the second game of a double-header between the Royals and Cardinals. For the purposes of this newsletter, I will only focus on the ten mutually shared games. Across the landscape of these ten games, we have a likely pitcher’s duel up in New York, the Orioles looking to toss up some more meatballs to the Yankee sluggers, and no Coors Field or Globe Life Park games to worry about. I believe we should see enough cheap hitter value open up to where you can grab yourself one of the day’s aces, along with a few big bats as well, and feel good about your lineups. There is plenty of action to hit on so let’s slide right into the thick of things!

Today’s match-ups with game totals and moneylines:

Weather Report ⛅

COL @ PIT: There’s a risk of some sort of delay with scattered storms moving into the area late in this game. They should get the game played in time, however, so postponement does not seem likely. Definitely worth keeping an eye on, but for now, I’m not avoiding this one.

PHI @ CHC: Winds blowing out to left field near 15 mph. Worth giving a slight boost to hitters, particularly right-handed power bats.

Stay up to date on all weather conditions and confirmed lineups as soon as they are released over on the Daily Dashboard!

Pitchers to Consider

Gerrit Cole (DK: $12k, FD: $11.7k) | RHP | HOU vs. CWS

Yesterday I wasn’t too invested in spending up for Verlander against the White Sox and I personally focused more on the mid-range guys. While Marquez worked out great, some others did not and a near no-no bid from Verlander with 12 K’s at 40-60% ownership was a borderline lineup killer. If you didn’t have him, you would have found it a struggle to cash unless you lined up some stellar bats or landed on someone like Sonny Gray or Lance Lynn. I’ll opt to not make a similar mistake as Gerrit Cole should easily have similar upside as JV did yesterday. In terms of strikeout upside, Cole is on another level from everyone else on this slate -- even when compared to someone like Max Scherzer. Cole has a 38.3% kRate on the season and in the last month he has raised that figure to an absurd 40.8% along with a 2.01 ERA, 2.25 SIERA, .186 AVG, and 0.89 WHIP. He’s done that largely against three of the top six offenses in baseball: the Rangers, Twins, and Red Sox. In the last 30 days, the White Sox have struggled mightily against RHPs: .295 wOBA, .142 ISO, 84 wRC+ with a 27.1% kRate. You’ll need to land on two or three cheap bats to fit him in, but rostering Cole is likely the safest investment of the day. The Astros are very heavy -330 favorites with a 3.4 implied run total being held by the White Sox.

Max Fried (DK: $8.5k, FD: $9k) | LHP | ATL @ SFG

Fried has been excellent since joining the Braves starting rotation and aside from one poor outing against the Dodgers in LA (which is a tough spot for ANY pitcher), he has strung together eight other strong starts. The match-up with the Giants is about as good of a spot a pitcher could hope for, especially at Oracle Park where their offensive production ranks 29th -- scoring just 3.13 runs/game. San Francisco has been particularly bad against lefties this season: .220 AVG, .265 wOBA, .111 ISO, and 66 wRC+. Those figures rank 29th in the league in every category and they strikeout a healthy 24.6% of the time. Fried isn’t overly reliant on punch outs (22.4% kRate) but he excels at limiting free bases with just under two walks per nine innings and an overall 1.13 WHIP while producing a 54.5% Ground Ball Rate. His skill-set translates well against this San Fran team with just a .281 OBP. The Braves are -158 road favorites this evening while the Giants have a lowly 3.4 implied run total.

Jose Urena (DK: $6.2k, FD: $7.1k) | RHP | MIA @ DET

For the cheap contrarian arm of the night, Urena stands out among the rest and on the surface he doesn’t even seem all too risky -- but still… perhaps best reserved for GPPs. The preferred place to deploy him would be as an SP2 on DraftKings, unless you’re really going wild on batters over on FanDuel. After a rough initial three starts to the season, in six starts since April 14th, Urena has pitched at least six innings in every contest. In that time he has posted surprisingly solid numbers: 39 IP, 2.77 ERA, .254 AVG, .307 wOBA, 1.21 WHIP. He has given up five home runs in that time for a 1.2 HR/9 rating, which isn’t great, along with a lowly 15.3% kRate. But this is all about the opportunity given the match-up. Detroit has been awful all year against righties, but extremely awful as of late. Against RHPs this month, they have just a .194 AVG (last), .247 wOBA (29th), .133 ISO (26th), .247 OBP (last), and a 50 wRC+ (last) along with a 25.6% kRate (27th). You don’t have to be Gerrit Cole or Blake Snell to find success against this Tigers team. A 20 DKFP/40 FDFP performance is reasonably within grasp, especially if Miami can pick up a win in this game, which is essentially a pick ‘em.

Team Stacks to Target

Keep in mind, there’s no rule saying you *have* to roll out four and five man stacks. Sometimes mixing and matching two and three man stacks with some one-off hitters is the better route to take in order to give yourself more exposure to different offenses.

Minnesota Twins (LHBs) vs. Matt Harvey (RHP | LAA)

Expected Ownership: Medium/Low

Of course the clear cut stacks would be teams like the Yankees, Astros, or Red Sox but those are pretty obvious selections that you probably don’t need me to highlight. The Twins against Matt Harvey may be obvious too, and this is the third day in a row where I’ve added them to this section. Still, a lot of the better Twins bats who were in an equally as good of a spot last night were still <10% owned in GPPs. The strong group of lefties and switch hitters at the top of this order stand out once again as well, given the match-up with Harvey, who has allowed a .411 wOBA, .276 ISO, and 1.84 WHIP to LHBs this season. The Twins, as a whole, are one of the most dangerous units against RHPs, owning a .349 wOBA (3rd), .235 ISO (1st), and 117 wRC+ (2nd). The best hitters on this team aren’t priced up quite as much as other offenses in good spots tonight but do carry similar upside. Once again, I’ll look towards Jorge Polanco (.436 wOBA, .289 ISO), Max Kepler (.366 wOBA, .250 ISO), and Eddie Rosario (.328 wOBA, .235 ISO). Marwin Gonzalez is also still carrying depressed salaries and has an extremely hot bat going. Over his last eight games, he has a .389 AVG, .480 wOBA, and .333 ISO with a trio of dingers.

Chicago Cubs vs. Cole Irvin (LHP | PHI)

Expected Ownership: Medium/Low

It’s hard to tell whether or not the Cubs will be all that popular today. I just feel that the high-end chalk will gravitate towards NYY, HOU, and perhaps BOS but the Cubs currently have the second highest implied total of 5.6 runs and the wind will be blowing briskly out to left at Wrigley. It's a great spot for the righty power bats in the heart of the Cubbies order. This will only be Cole Irvin’s third MLB start so we don’t have much to go off of with just 13 professional innings. His minor league numbers and scouting reports indicate that he should be a solid pro prospect though he isn’t a high strikeout guy and allows a decent amount of fly balls. This won’t be the best environment for him by any means. The Cubs are a top 10 offense against LHPs and bring a solid amount of power (.206 team ISO) and many of their fly balls off of lefties go the distance (20% HR/FB Rate ranks 3rd). Your Cub stack cornerstones almost have to start with Javier Baez (.628 wOBA, .643 ISO vs. LHP) and/or Kris Bryant (.393 wOBA, .394 ISO vs. LHP). David Bote (.391 wOBA, .267 ISO vs. LHP) has sat for five of the last six games, but if he is in the lineup for the RvL advantage, then he can be a cheap, but effective, hitter against a southpaw pitcher and will carry virtually zero ownership. Assuming Baez (heel) is reinserted into the starting lineup, he’ll be my home run call of the evening. 💣💥

Atlanta Braves vs. Jeff Samardzija ( RHP | SFG)

Expected Ownership: Low

People will seldom look to stack many offenses in a pitcher-friendly environment like Oracle Park but it might be a good idea to take some Braves against Samardzija who just hasn’t been good. He has just an 18% kRate on the season alongside a near-slate-worst 5.19 SIERA. He’s actually getting pretty fortunate this season as well. Samardzija’s .237 BABIP allowed this year is far lower than his career .293 BABIP should be due to regress back to the norm. Freddie Freeman (.412 wOBA, .230 ISO) and Nick Markakis (.404 wOBA, .190 ISO) could be a nice LHB pairing. Meanwhile, Josh Donaldson (.396 wOBA, .244 ISO vs. RHP) has shown reverse splits and he has been much better against RHPs with all seven of his home runs coming against them this season.

One-Off Hitters

Here I’ll highlight players at [roughly] different price points (high, mid, low) that could be used as a ‘one-off’ piece in lineups -- or perhaps part of a two man mini-stack.

Josh Bell (DK: $5.5k, FD: $4.4k) | 1B | vs. Jon Gray (RHP | COL)

On a night where there are so many elite sluggers in great spots, I expect a guy like Bell to go by the wayside in terms of ownership. His ceiling is as high as anyone in the league, with six games this season scoring between 25 and 39 DK fantasy points. He’ll be attacking the righty Gray from the left side of the plate where he has easily had the most success this season (.350 AVG, .468 wOBA, .393 ISO, 52.6% Hard Contact). Of his 14 homers on the year, 10 have come at the expense of righties, resulting in a 28.6% HR/FB Rate and against RHPs over the last two weeks, he has a frightening exit velocity of 99.9 mph. Even away from Coors Field, Jon Gray hasn’t been all that great, with a 5.09 road ERA. He has also allowed a 29% HR/FB Rate against righties on the road. If Javy Baez doesn’t play tonight, Bell is my back-up home run call and may even be a safer bet! 💣💥

Max Muncy (DK: $4.4k, FD: $3.1k) | 1B/2B | vs. TB

No Rays pitcher specified considering they deploy an opener and then there’s no telling how long their long reliever remains in the game. Muncy has been effective against both righties and lefties this season so he seems like a solid option regardless of who is on the mound. He’s had a strong month of hitting -- since May 1st (17 games) he has a .288 AVG, .381 wOBA, .220 ISO, and four home runs. He should check in at second in the order, where he has been for his last eight games, and should be a nice one-off option to grab in this Dodgers offense which may go overlooked on the night.

Luis Arraez (DK: $3.3k, FD: $2.7k) | 2B | vs. Matt Harvey (RHP | LAA)

Apologies for going heavy on the infielders! I typically won’t throw in a one-off hitter from a team that I have listed in the stack section, but I didn’t mention Arraez above and he should definitely get some recognition as another LHB getting the juicy Harvey match-up. Also, if you’re stacking the other elite teams, Arraez is a very cheap one-off Twins bat to use. Second base is usually a good position to pay down for as well. This will only be Arraez’s fifth Major League game, but in 12 at-bats, he already has seven hits including a double and a home run! In the minor leagues he had well above a .300 batting average at every single level (.344 AVG in 160 minor league ABs this year) and, while he isn't typically known for his power and home runs shouldn't be routinely expected, he appears to be a great prospect that will find himself on base a lot in the middle of this ultra-prolific offense.

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Best of luck today! Don't forget to give the "On Deck" Podcast a listen! You can find it linked at the top of this newsletter.

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