Tastefully curated M-F by LineStar fantasy expert @GLandry

I got some questions last night and this morning regarding Jake Arrieta. There is nothing in his numbers or in the matchup from what I saw that would have made me change my mind. If anything, I increased my exposure later in the day when I found out the one left-handed power bat, Justin Bour, was not in the lineup. The Marlins rolled eight right-handed bats out there last night who Arietta typically dominates against and they still crushed him. If you rostered him last night and you got beat up don't get discouraged. It wasn't anything you did wrong you were just on the wrong side of variance. It happens. I'm taking the loss here and moving on. Tonight's slate will be fun. If you haven't looked at the pitching options take a minute and do that now. I'll wait. Crazy right? Prioritizing those guys will be super important so we'll tackle that first. Then we'll jump into the offense. There's some good hitting weather out there once again. I'm excited about this one so let's get to work!

Quick note: Since it's so early in the season I'll be using splits from the last two full seasons for data purposes. As we get further into this season we'll slowly reduce the 2016 data and start to add more 2018 data.

Power Pitching Targets ⚾️

This slate is LOADED with high priced aces on the hill tonight. You could make a case for any of these guys. Sometimes, when I'm having trouble narrowing down who I want to go with, I do an exercise where I just look at the data and take the name and price completely out of the equation to help remove any bias in my decision making. I thought we'd run through something like this today when taking a look at the power pitching targets. Take a look at the chart below and break it down.

Right off the bat, I'm comfortable eliminating #4. He has the highest SIERA/ERA of the group, the lowest strikeout and swinging strike rate, the highest walk rate, the lowest groundball rate and the highest hard contact rate. None of these numbers are bad but just compared to the rest of the group he stood out right away.

Okay, so with #4 out of the way who is next? Pitcher #3 has the highest SIERA of the group along with the lowest strikeout and swinging strike rate. He has a lower walk rate and a solid groundball rate which makes him appealing but we are looking for upside here and it's really hard to ignore the strikeouts with the other options. I'm going to take out #3.

Here's what we are left with. What hasn't come into consideration yet at this point is the opponent they are facing which is obviously important. To help us decide between the last three I've added in some data for the offense the pitcher is facing. This data is against the handedness of that pitcher. I love pitcher #5 for the high ground ball rate and low walk rate but he does have the lowest strikeout upside of the remaining pitchers. He's also facing the toughest of the remaining offenses. His opponent has a .761 OPS, .163 ISO, and a .330 wOBA. Pitcher #1 is facing the team who strikes out the least at only 19.4%, but he has a 35% strikeout rate and a 16% swinging strike rate so I'm less concerned about the opponent in this case. Any pitcher with that kind of skill set can strikeout any player at any time. I'm going to remove #5. The winners? Max Scherzer (#1) and Chris Sale (#2). Unsurprisingly, these guys are also the most expensive options on the slate. Pitcher #3 was Clayton Kershaw, pitcher #4 was Justin Verlander, and pitcher #5 was Noah Syndergaard. Now, with all the above said, I'll reiterate that none of these guys are bad options. Honestly, in tournaments, my strategy is going to be to keep an eye on Twitter all day and see which one seems to be getting the least attention and roll with that person in tournaments. Kershaw has struggled a bit recently but his numbers still indicate a pitcher with plenty of upside. I'm not ready to let recency bias cloud my judgment. Verlander has a difficult matchup against the Yankees but they are cold right now and we saw what Charlie Morton did to them last night. All these guys are viable options for tournaments. For cash games, however, your safest bet (is there such a thing in MLB DFS?) is either Sale or Scherzer.

Value Pitchers

Nick Tropeano, LAA [vs. BAL] (DK: $6.4K, FD: $6.3K)

We originally had Sean Newcomb slated in this value pitcher slot, but he's been scratched tonight. So instead we'll be going with Nick Tropeano who is no doubt a much riskier pick, good for tournaments only and those not faint of heart, but at this salary he has a very high ceiling. Baltimore has just the 27th most runs scored on the season as their offense has been struggling to find any rhythm yet this season. They also have the 5th highest kRate on the slate, with Tropeano having the 9th highest kRate of any pitcher going on this slate. Which doesn't sound impressive, but there are some serious studs going tonight that no pitchers will look good in comparison. It's certainly a risky pick, but you can save a lot of salary here and if he throws a gem, would be able to provide close to what one of these studs will likely put up tonight.

Michael Wacha, STL [vs. CWS] (DK: $8K, FD: $7K)

Wacha is the other less expensive pitcher today who seems to be in the best spot. The White Sox strikeout 23.2% of the time to right-handed pitching and they don't have any major power bats from the left side of the plate. They are much better equipped to punish left-handed pitchers. Wacha has a 21.6% strikeout rate to right-handed batters to go with a 47.5% groundball rate. His ERA against right-handed bats is concerning at 5.39 but his 3.74 xFIP paints the picture of a pitcher who's just been a little unlucky to start the season. Wacha is a heavy favorite at -230. The downside here is the wind which we are going to talk about more when we get to offenses. The forecast is calling for winds of 14-16 mph blowing out to left-center. If that holds true I'll be less confident in this matchup.

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Stacks on Stacks 🥞

Similar to last night there are a lot of good places for offens today. The difference, of course, was last night we had a lot of value at pitcher and today we need to find the value bats in order to pay up at pitcher. I'll include a couple of cheaper stack options below to help with this.

• St. Louis Cardinals (vs. James Shields): The Cardinals have the highest implied total on the board tonight with good reason. They are facing Shields with his low strikeouts and high hard contact rate. He allows a .354 wOBA to right-handed batters and a .374 wOBA to left-handed batters. He’s also allowing nearly two home runs per nine innings to both sides of the plate. On top of that, we have 80-degree weather with the winds blowing out to left-center. You can stack this lineup in a bunch of different ways.

• LA Angels (vs. Alex Cobb): Cobb is off to a rough start this season with fantasy point performances of -10, 7 and -1. In two of his three starts, he had zero strikeouts. He takes on an Angels team tonight that doesn’t strikeout. There should be a TON of balls in play tonight. In addition to not being able to avoid contact, Cobb gets hit hard allowing 36.8% hard contact to right-handed bats and 35.5% to left-handed bats. If you’re willing to leave out Trout, you can potentially stack this lineup very cheap which would leave room to fit in one of the available aces today.

• Milwaukee Brewers (vs. Homer Bailey): This one is pretty obvious but it’s also hard to ignore. First, the weather will be near 80 degrees in one of the smallest parks in baseball. Second, Homer Bailey is pitching. He allows a .361 wOBA to left-handed batters and a .359 wOBA to right-handed batters. His strikeout rate is under 20% to both sides of the plate (only 14.2% to left-handed bats). He also has a SIERA of 5.16 which is pretty in line with his ERA and he allows 34% hard contact. The Brewers have a ton of bats in this lineup that can do some damage and just about all of them are in play.

• Boston Red Sox (vs. Jakob Junis): Could the Red Sox be sneaky tonight? With gas cans like Shields and Bailey on this slate, we could find ourselves with some low owned Red Sox this evening. The issue of course is they are expensive and using them means we won’t be able to fit in any of the aces. Boston has the second highest implied total on the board right now (still waiting on Wrigley). Junis has a 4.42 SIERA which is slightly above his current ERA with below average strikeouts (19.1%) and a 35.8% hard contact rate. He’s particularly vulnerable to the long ball where he allows 1.86 HR/9 to right-handed bats and 1.29 HR/9 to left-handed bats.

• Miami Marlins (vs. Zach Eflin): This is the sneaky stack of the night. One of the major reasons I like them is because of how cheap they are. It would allow you to easily fit in one of the aces on this slate. Eflin will make is 2018 debut today but it appears he’s not ready yet. He was roughed up in AAA going 2-2 with a 4.05 ERA and just a 17.7% strikeout rate. His major league sample size is small (about 66 innings) but he’s allowed a .385 wOBA to left-handed bats (please play tonight Justin Bour) with a 40.6% fly ball rate and 35.8% hard contact rate. It’s a little better against right-handed bats but nothing to shy away from and the strikeout rate is extremely low. If Miami can make Jake Arrieta look bad they can definitely do the same to Eflin tonight.

Stack to Fade

• Chicago Cubs & Colorado Rockies: I’m fading Wrigley tonight. This could 100% burn me but as we saw last night the wind blowing out doesn’t always mean success. We have the same situation tonight but we have two excellent pitchers on the hill with Kyle Hendricks and Jon Gray. They are both high groundball pitchers with above average strikeout rates and low hard contact rates.

That's it! Prioritize your aces first and foremost. Then figure out how to build around them. If you want to be really different in tournaments tonight then load up on the expensive bats and pay down at pitcher with someone like Sean Newcomb. As always, feel free to tag me in the LineStar chat rooms @glandry or you can find me on twitter @GP_Landry. If you're playing NBA at all still I'll be posting updates on the second round breakdown throughout the week. Thanks for reading!

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