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

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With only a couple more days left in the MLB regular season, we’ll be wrapping up the Daily Ledger newsletters with this final Friday main slate! It’s been an entertaining season and the playoffs should not disappoint either! Congratulations once again to all of the LineStar members who snagged some GPP takedowns and other big wins. Ya love to see it! Let’s slide right into the action for tonight!

Match-ups with implied totals and moneylines:

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

Weather

MIN @ KC: Rain moving in through the later innings may cause this game to get called early. Minnesota is locked into their playoff position and Kansas City obviously hasn’t been playing for anything significant for a while. Keep an eye on this one closer to lock.

MIL @ COL: Small chance of a delay due to a pop-up storm. Winds blowing in at 10+ mph but that isn’t as big of a deal at Coors Field, obviously.

NYY @ TEX: No surprise here but it’s still hot (90+ degrees) and pretty humid out in Texas. Great hitting environment as always.

CHC @ STL: Very warm temperatures throughout this game (80-85 degrees) with some decent humidity. Also,winds will be blowing out to left field at 10-15 mph. All of this makes for some good hitting weather.

Pitchers to Consider

James Paxton | DK: $11.2k, FD: $9.8k | LHP | @ TEX

The obvious risk with Paxton today is the simple fact that he’ll be pitching at Globe Life Park in 90 degree heat. Other than that, this feels like a perfectly fine spot to pay up for him. The Yankees still have some motivation to play tough in this one considering they still, technically, have a chance to make up their two game regular season deficit to the Astros to ensure home field advantage down the road in the playoffs. With Houston owning the regular season tiebreaker over the Yankees, I believe the Astros would have to lose their remaining three games to fall behind New York (and NYY to win out) but, hey, anything is possible! Paxton has been pitching excellent and has allowed just three earned runs over the last month, resulting in a 0.91 ERA, while striking out 29.5% of batters and allowing a .121 batting average. The Rangers had the second lowest batting average against LHPs this season (.242) and struck out the third most with a 25.5% kRate. Paxton had perhaps his best game of the year against the Rangers on September 3rd when he pitched seven shutout innings while allowing one hit and struck out twelve batters. There’s a decent chance he can post a pretty similar performance today.

Jose Urquidy | DK: $7.5k, FD: $7k | RHP | @ LAA

Urquidy makes for a great GPP target as he looks to receive another traditional start for the ‘stros. His 25.9% kRate is the fourth highest mark among starting pitchers on this slate. He’s facing an Angels offense that is obviously a shell of what it was earlier in the season with guys like Trout, Upton, Ohtani, and La Stella all having been shut down weeks ago. As a byproduct of being without those players, the Angels continue to rank dead last in the MLB in runs scored for the month of September. In that time, they’re batting just .211 against RHPs with a .275 wOBA, .146 ISO, 71 wRC+, and 24.4% kRate. With Wade Miley fading badly towards the end of the season, this could be an audition of sorts for Urquidy to make a case for earning a more significant role in the playoffs.

Nathan Eovaldi | DK: $4.1k, FD: $6.5k | RHP | @ BAL

This is more of a DraftKings GPP SP2 punt play but the FanDuel price isn’t so bad either. Since rejoining the starting rotation on August 18th, Eovaldi has posted a poor 6.35 ERA and 1.66 WHIP. The positives being he is throwing 26.2% strikeouts in that time and his 4.73 xFIP also isn’t horrible. Eovaldi is having trouble pitching deep into games but he is stretched out and even threw 100 pitches in his last start. If he can knock out at least five innings, he could find himself in line for a win, as Boston is a heavy home favorite (-210). Baltimore is a very boom/bust offense and they’ve struck out 25.2% of the time against righties this month. Eovaldi is an intriguing enough play for that $4,100 price tag on DraftKings and rostering him allows you to load up on big bats for the final monster Friday slate of the season.

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.

Coors Field and Globe Life Park Disclaimer: Colorado and Texas are both closing out their seasons with a home series in their hitter friendly ballparks. As usual, all teams playing at Coors and GLP are stackable by default and won’t be mentioned in this section!

Minnesota Twins vs. Eric Skoglund (LHP), KC

Skoglund is one of the lower quality starters on the day. The sample size for this season is small (18 innings) but, so far, he is allowing at least a .375 wOBA and .250 ISO to both sides of the plate. He has only two strikeouts against 83 total batters faced, which equates to a laughable 2.4% kRate. Skoglund likely won’t pitch too deep into this game so the Twins should see some additional innings against a Royals bullpen that has a 5.51 ERA over the last month (second worst) with a 1.59 WHIP (worst). Most of the key players for the Twins got the day off yesterday after clinching their division Wednesday. Assuming they’re all back in the lineup, some preferred targets would be Mitch Garver, Nelson Cruz, and Miguel Sano. Remember to also keep an eye out on the forecast outlook for this game.

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Alec Mills (RHP), CHC

I’m primarily interested in some bats here simply because of those warm and humid hitting conditions with a brisk wind blowing out. That 8.5 run total for this game may just be too low… we shall see. Alec Mills has pitched quite well across 31 innings in eight games, mostly in relief. He holds a 2.90 ERA, 4.18 xFIP, 1.13 WHIP, and 25.4% kRate. So, on paper, the match-up isn’t great for the Cardinals but I’d still be fine with taking some shots on guys like Tommy Edman, Paul Goldschmidt, and Yadier Molina, among others.

Miami Marlins vs. Vince Velasquez (RHP), PHI

One final (likely bad) call on a Miami stack against a potential chalk pitcher? Sure, why not!? It sort of worked against Noah Syndergaard the other day. As I always say whenever I highlight a Marlins stack, you usually don’t want to go all out with four and five man stacks. However, if you can shrink it down to two or three guys, there is typically some great high leverage value to be had by players that end up stuffing the stat sheet (I.e. Jon Berti on Tuesday going 3-for-5 with four stolen bases) against a highly owned pitcher. Vince Velasquez also gives up 2.00 HR/9 this season. In his last two starts against Miami, he has lasted a combined 6.2 innings and gave up 11 scores as well as a pair of home runs. Harold Ramirez, Jon Berti, and Starlin Castro would be some of the better potential options.

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.

OF Aaron Judge (RHB) | DK: $5.3k, FD: $4.5k | vs. Joe Palumbo (LHP), TEX

I believe these Yankees bats, playing in that Texas heat, should warrant a ton of attention today as they look to bounce back after a couple of lackluster losing performances against Tampa Bay. Judge stands out as one of the more appealing pinstriped slugger to consider. He has four home runs in six career games at Globe Life Park. Joe Palumbo isn’t expected to pitch very deep into this game but Judge has been deadly against lefties this year. Versus southpaws he is batting .343 with a .788 wOBA+ISO and a massive 60.6% Hard Contact Rate. I have no issues spending up on AJ in this spot.

2B/OF Garrett Hampson (RHB) | DK: $4.3k, FD: $3.7k | vs. Zach Davies (RHP), MIL

I had to get one Coors Field bat mentioned in here! The Rockies have moved Hampson up atop the order after his wildly productive stretch of games over the last couple weeks. I’d say his DFS salaries are still too low. Since September 12th (12 games), Hampson is batting .407 with an .800 wOBA+ISO, five home runs, eight RBI, 16 runs scored, and seven stolen bases! He is just a stat stuffing machine right now. A match-up with a “ho-hum” low strikeout pitcher like Zach Davies isn’t scaring me off of him.

That'll wrap us up for the season! On behalf of Greg Landry and myself, I'd like to say thanks for all those who have read these throughout the year! Hopefully the information provided was helpful! Enjoy the playoffs, baseball fans!

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