Announcing TrackWiz! What LineStar did for the DFS world, TrackWiz will do for the horse racing world! Whether you're a horse racing novice or a pro, check out TrackWiz.com for premium horse racing data in the palm of your hand! Direct Downloads: iOS, Android  

Written by LineStar Fantasy Expert @GP_Landry on Twitter

Good morning everyone! Hope your Saturday treated you well. We’ve got an early main slate today starting at 1:05 PM EST. It’s an eleven game slate on DraftKings that includes that game at Coors Field. FanDuel has a ten game slate and left that one off. There are a lot of question marks with the top tier pitchers on this slate. Kluber, in my opinion, is being bothered more by that knee than what the team is leading us to believe. He’s been absolutely awful recently. In the month of July he’s 1-2 with a 4.72 xFIP and only 19 strikeouts in 24.1 innings pitched. I’m tempted to play him against a Detroit team that he’s dominated recently and can’t hit right-handed pitching, but it’s a huge risk at his price tag today. I’m planning to avoid this situation completely. I need to see something from Kluber before I can invest in him again. Berrios has a tough matchup against Boston, you could give it a shot in tournaments if you wanted at virtually no ownership, but I don’t think you need to go there today. McCullers Jr is coming off of two straight starts that finished with negative DraftKings points. He’s the most likely of the five-figure pitchers today that I’d use but I don’t think you need him necessarily either. As usual, we have plenty of bad pitchers on the mound today and plenty of teams with high totals. I’m not seeing any threats of rain and it’s hot around the league. Of all the games being played outdoors today only one has a temperature below 80 degrees.

High Priced Pitchers

JA Happ, NYY (vs. KC) (DK: $9.2K, FD: $8.3K)

Happ will make his debut today in pinstripes and I for one, as a Red Sox fan, am not happy about it. You have to give credit where it’s due though. The Yankees road through October will undoubtedly go through the Red Sox and they struggle a lot with left-handed pitching. Adding Happ made a ton of sense. He’ll get to ease into his Yankees career today with a soft matchup against the Kansas City Royals who traded away their best player, Mike Moustakas, late Saturday night. He faced them once earlier this season and went six innings, allowing five hits and four earned runs with eight strikeouts. Obviously, the run prevention could have been better but the strikeouts were excellent. I’d expect similar strikeouts today, as Kansas City continues to fill in its lineup with inexperienced players, and I think he can improve on the runs allowed as well. On the season he has a 3.52 SIERA with 27.4% strikeouts. He’s outstanding against lefties with a 2.68 xFIP, 28% strikeouts and 0.96 WHIP. He forces a massive 59.3% groundballs and only allows 27.9% hard contact. He’s a little worse against righties but not by much. He still has a solid strikeout rate at 27.2% and a respectable 3.88 xFIP. The groundball rate drops dramatically to just 41% and, obviously, the fly ball rate increases to 43.4%. Right-handed hitters have an uncomfortable .200 xISO against him. But, despite that power, there’s not much in this lineup that should scare us. His recent statcast numbers are a bit daunting as he’s allowing an average exit velocity of nearly 90 mph and an average distance of 231.2 feet over the last month. But, I’m overlooking that because of the matchup today. The Royals have one of the lowest implied totals on the board today at just 3.4 runs and the Yankees are massive -320 favorites. This is where I see myself landing in cash games today.

Carlos Rodon, CWS (DK: $9.6K, FD: $8.1K)

I was really excited about this one until I saw his price on DraftKings. I always do my research before looking at the pricing so I don’t wind up making decisions purely based on cost. Instead I want to understand how someone is performing, separate from their price, and then factor in the cost after the fact to determine if they are valued correctly or not. Rodon is coming off of two straight 30+ fantasy point performances on DraftKings (two 50+ performances on FanDuel) but was only $7.3K in his last start. I was hoping he’d be a steal today but instead his price jumped all the way to $9.6K (touche DraftKings) which is giving me a lot of pause. You can still play him, I think the cost lowers his ownership, but I definitely don’t like it as much as I thought I would. On FanDuel, however, where he’s only $8K it’s a different story. This is a great spot to use him. The Blue Jays have had two strong offensive performances in a row and they have a higher implied total than I expected which could push ownership their way. This is a perfect place to jump off the Toronto train and attack them with the pitcher instead. I talked about in my last two newsletters how I love using Toronto against right-handed pitching. Well, I hate using them against left-handed pitching. Their entire lineup changes in an instant. They lose Granderson to the bench. Both Morales and Smoak have to switch to the right side where they are significantly worse. Grichuk has reverse splits and doesn’t hit lefties as well. The only person who improves in this situation is Teoscar Hernandez who will slide up in the order but that’s just one player. After not making his first start until June 9th this season it seems like Rodon has shaken off that rust and is starting to put it together. In the past month, he’s forcing 53% groundballs with just 24.2% hard contact and 25.8% soft contact while allowing an average distance of only 192.1 feet. Toronto’s implied run total opened at 4.7 runs but has fallen to 4.4 runs already this morning. I’ll continue to keep an eye on that and adjust my exposure to Rodon accordingly.

Value Pitching

Joe Musgrove, PIT (vs. NYM) (DK: $7.3K, FD: $7.2K)

Trevor Williams proved last night that using pitchers against the Mets should be a profitable strategy more often than not the rest of the way. He did exactly what I said he was going to do. He ate up some innings, limited the runs, and got five strikeouts. Without Cespedes, Cabrera, and at least for a little longer, Todd Frazier, there is very little outside of Nimmo that we need to be worried about in this lineup. Today, we have Joe Musgrove who, like Williams, has issues with left-handed hitters, but is still a better pitcher overall and brings more upside to the table. Plus, he’s actually $100 less on DraftKings today than Williams was yesterday. Basically, at least from my perspective, if I liked and rostered Williams yesterday than I pretty much have to play Musgrove today. He has a good, not great, 4.18 xFIP with 20% strikeouts and 10.3% swinging strikes. As I mentioned, he struggles with lefties, with a low 16.9% strikeout rate and a high 1.48 WHIP but he does have a little positive regression coming. His 4.38 xFIP is lower than his 4.88 ERA and the BABIP against him is above average at .333. Even with the bad luck, lefties only have a .160 xISO and .315 xwOBA against him. Nothing really to worry about there. Against righties the numbers are better. He has a 4.15 xFIP with 22.8% strikeouts and only a 1.18 WHIP. Right-handed hitters have just a .135 xISO and .286 xwOBA against him. Out of the last 51 batted balls that he’s allowed, Musgrove is forcing 23.5% soft contact with an average exit velocity of only 87.4 mph and an average distance of only 191.1 feet. This is an incredibly weak Mets lineup right now and they have an implied total right around four runs at the moment. The Pirates are a comfortable -130 favorite and I like Musgrove to have a similar performance as Williams last night with hopefully a couple of extra strikeouts. He’s on the short list for SP2 in cash games (if I end up paying down) and he’s firmly in consideration for tournaments.

Dylan Bundy, BAL (vs. TB) (DK: $6.7K, FD: $7K)

I’m buying low on Bundy today in tournaments. He’s had an extremely rough stretch recently with four straight outings of three DraftKings points or less (yes, you read that right). But, those games were against some pretty difficult opponents including the Yankees and Red Sox. When this four game stretch began, he was $9.3K on DraftKings and $9.6K on FanDuel. Today, he’s just $6.7K on DraftKings and $7K on FanDuel so we are getting a significant discount. Tampa Bay isn’t a cake walk by any means, they have some young talent with Bauers, CJ Cron is a powerful bat, and I’m a big fan of their trading away Brad Miller and acquiring Ji-Man Choi, but even with those guys in the lineup this is still no Boston or New York. Bundy has faced the Rays twice this season. The first meeting, way back on April 26th, he got shelled allowing eleven hits, eight runs (seven earned), and only four strikeouts in just 4.2 innings of work (at least the K/9 was solid. He faced them again, just a couple of weeks later, on May 13th, and threw a gem going seven innings and allowing just two hits, with zero earned runs, and seven strikeouts. So, which Bundy is going to show up today? That’s obviously very difficult to answer. The point is, he’s flashed us a 30+ DraftKings point ceiling and a 50+ FanDuel points ceiling already in this exact same spot. I don’t care about the floor if I’m trying to win a tournament so I’m tossing that first game completely out the window. I already know the floor is low with Bundy. But, he’s proven he has the upside to win you a slate if you catch him on the right night and nobody will play him today with the brutal run of games he’s had recently. Even with those games though, he still has a surprisingly good 3.90 SIERA with 25.1% strikeouts and 13.1% swinging strikes. His swinging strike rate is higher than Kluber, Happ, Berrios, Stripling, and tied with McCullers who are all also pitching today and all significantly more expensive. Proceed with caution here but Bundy is my wildcard today and will be my highest owned pitcher in tournaments on this slate.

#HomeRunWatchList 💥

If you're new to the article this is the section where I pick an outfielder, corner infielder, and middle infielder to hit a long ball today. Make sure you are utilizing the LineStar Daily Matchup Tool when looking for hitters with a lot of home run potential. I'm excluding any players from Coors Field from this list but they are all on the watch list today.

Alex Bregman, HOU: 3B (DK: $5.5K, FD: $4.2K)

The Braves have got to be kicking themselves at this point for taking Dansby Swanson over Bregman back in the 2015 draft. He is a man on fire right now. Against left-handed pitching, he has a .316 ISO, .433 wOBA, and 42.2% hard-hit rate. Even more impressive is he’s only striking out 9.6% of the time. He’ll be up against Mike Minor today who allows 46.9% flyballs, 13% HR/FB, and 42.2% hard contact. Opposing righties have a .295 xISO against him this year. Minor throws a fastball, changeup, and slider which all happen to be pitches that Bregman is excellent against. He’s got a .393 xISO against fastballs, a .191 xISO against changeups, and a .388 xISO against sliders.

Cody Bellinger, LAD: OF (DK: $4.1K, FD: $3.2K)

A rare lefty versus lefty home run call today. Be sure that Bellinger actually makes the lineup there’s always the chance they could sit him against a left-handed pitcher. They shouldn’t, however, because Newcomb has reverse splits and would prefer to pitch to right-handed hitters. He really struggles with lefties allowing a .255 xISO and 85.4 mph average exit velocity. He has a brutal 25% HR/FB rate on 37.7% fly balls with 39.6% hard contact which has resulted in a 2.21 HR/9. Bellinger hits lefties surprisingly well with a .208 ISO and 42% hard-hit rate. He also crushes fastballs, he has a .268 xISO against that pitch type, and Newcomb throws his fastball nearly 70% of the time to lefties.

Gleyber Torres, NYY: 2B (DK: $4.4K, FD: $3.6K)

Torres is just 1 for 8 since returning from the disabled list but I’m sure he’s just shaking off a little rust after missing nearly a month. His season long numbers tell a completely different story. He has a very impressive .231 ISO and 38.3% hard-hit rate against right-handed pitching. His opposing pitcher today is Burch Smith who gives up nearly 50% fly balls (47.1%) and hard contact (47.8%). Right-handed hitters have a .238 xISO against him this season. Torres profiles very well against Smith who throws his fastball almost 65% of the time, a curveball 21% of the time and a changeup 14% of the time. Torres has a .297 xISO against fastballs, a .371 xISO against changeups, and a .198 xISO against curveballs.

Value Bats

Similar to the home run watch list in this section I'll provide an outfielder, corner infielder, and middle infielder that is priced in the value tier. If I can find someone under priced on both sites I'll highlight them but in some cases it could be site specific.

Colin Moran, 3B (DK: $3.5K, FD: $2.1K)

He’s too cheap on both sites for a guy who’s going to bat in the middle of the order against a right-handed pitcher. Wheeler allows a .178 xISO, .349 xwOBA, and 34.5% hard contact to lefties. Those numbers are definitely not something we need to shy away from. Moran’s numbers won’t blow you away, the power is low with his .146 ISO, but his .333 wOBA and 33% hard-hit rate are solid. Wheeler uses his fastball almost 50% of the time to lefties and Moran smashes fastballs with a .343 xISO and .461 xwOBA against them. He’s very undervalued for a guy with these numbers and likely batting cleanup.

Nick Martini, OF (DK: $3.4K, FD: $3.3K)

He’s under priced on both sites for a player who should lead off, with a platoon splits advantage, in Coors Field but he especially stands out on DraftKings at just $3.4K. With Dustin Fowler doing very little recently, Matt Joyce still on the disabled list, and Mark Canha unable to hit right-handed pitching, we are looking a Martini getting a majority of the starts whenever a righty is on the hill. Small sample size so far but in 26 at-bats in the majors this season he has a .192 ISO, .427 wOBA, and 52.4% hard-hit rate against right-handed pitching. In Triple-A, which will provide us a more realistic sample size, he had a lower .128 ISO but an excellent .386 wOBA in 266 at-bats. If he was batting ninth today I’d still tell you he was under valued, but this price, in the lead off spot, in Coors Field, on a team that currently has a 5.69 implied run total, he’s a lock in cash today.

Jeff McNeil, 2B/3B (DK: $3.2K, FD: $2.2K)

This is the third day in a row I’m recommending him and I’m sorry to keep repeating myself but he stands out every day since he got called up as an excellent value in the middle infield positions. In case you’ve missed the past few newsletters his minor league numbers look like this: Double-A (57 games, 1.029 OPS, .299 ISO, .447 wOBA, 181 wRC+) and Triple-A (31 games, 1.027 OPS, .232 ISO, .438 wOBA, and 164 wRC+). He’s made three starts since being recalled and he’s 2 for 8 with 1 run and 3 walks. The walks in particular are encouraging as he’s showing a lot of discipline at the plate for a young prospect. It doesn’t take much for him to hit value at this price point so we’ll take the walks as much as the hits.

Stacks on Stacks 🥞

I'm excluding Coors Field and the Yankees today. All of those teams are good options for stacks but they will be chalk. Let's see what else we can find:

Los Angeles Dodgers (vs. Sean Newcomb)

It’s been a rough month for Newcomb. In July he’s 1-3 in four starts with a 6.32 xFIP and 14 earned runs allowed in only 18 innings of work. He has just 12 strikeouts in that same span which equals a very low 6.00 K/9. He also has 16 walks in that time frame which equals a very high 8 BB/9. He hasn’t been unlucky either as his BABIP allowed is actually very low at .216. Nothing is going right for him at this stage in the season after such a promising start. This will be a tough challenge for him against a stacked Dodgers lineup that hits well from both sides of the plate. Newcomb faced them once already this season, back on June 10th, and gave up seven hits and five earned runs (including two home runs) in only 5.1 innings of work. Pay attention to the lineup that the Dodgers roll out today and don’t be afraid to use the lefties. Newcomb actually has reverse splits. He’s allowing a .254 xISO and .366 xwOBA to lefties versus a .117 xISO and .294 xwOBA to righties. I’ll be prioritizing lefties based on those numbers, but don’t be afraid to use the right-handed hitters either as he still has a 4.36 xFIP and 11.9% walk rate against them. Muncy (.299 ISO and .440 wOBA) and Bellinger (.205 ISO, .324 wOBA) are my two favorites here because of their strong numbers against lefties despite being one themselves. Kemp (.318 ISO, .412 wOBA), Taylor (.212 ISO, .336 wOBA), and Hernandez (.197 ISO) are all on the stacking radar as well. If Joc Pederson makes the lineup he’s interesting. His numbers against lefties are brutal with the exception of a 35.1% hard-hit rate and given Newcomb’s reverse splits I think you can include him as well. He definitely won’t be a primary focus but if there was ever a spot for him to have a good night in a lefty/lefty matchup, this would be it. He has to make the lineup first though so just keep an eye on that. The Dodgers opened with a healthy 4.8 implied run total which has already started to climb to 4.9 runs.

Philadelphia Phillies (vs. Luis Castillo)

I’m hoping that Asdrubal Cabrera makes his Philadelphia debut today. The first thing I noticed after I found out about that trade was how strong this lineup is going to be now against right-handed pitching. Hernandez, Herrera, Santana, Williams, and Cabrera are all left-handed hitters, all with at least a .330 wOBA against right-handed pitching (I’m assuming Cabrera and Hernandez will cover both middle infield spots and Kingery will wind up on the bench but I’m speculating until we see the lineup with these guys for the first time.) With the exception of Hernandez, all of those guys also have over a .180 ISO. Castillo is really bad against lefties allowing 38.8% fly balls, an 18.6% HR/FB and 44.5% hard contact. This has resulted in an extremely high 2.02 HR/9 and a .255 xISO allowed. He’s going to have a difficult time getting through this order. Plus, I haven’t even mentioned Rhys Hoskins, who’s the best hitter in this lineup, with his .274 ISO, .382 wOBA, and 36.3% hard-hit rate. Maikel Franco is also in the mix. He has a .223 ISO and .354 wOBA against right-handed pitching. That’s seven batters in this lineup with at least a .330 wOBA and six with at least a .180 ISO (five with over a .200 ISO) against right-handed pitching. Castillo is better against righties but still allows a .204 xISO and 34.3% hard contact. This is a fantastic ballpark for left-handed power, Philadelphia opened with a solid 4.5 implied run total that has increased to 4.7 runs as of this writing. They are my favorite stack of the day considering how low owned I think they will be.

Chicago White Sox (vs. Ryan Borucki)

It seems like Borucki is getting some love today given how cheap he is and he’s been a little unlucky so far in his career. I actually like how this spot shapes up for the White Sox lineup. Their biggest downfall is the high 26.1% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching but that should be less of a problem today against Borucki who has only 18% strikeouts. He’s yet to give up a home run against right-handed hitters, but he’s got a high 4.47 xFIP, low 17.9% strikeouts, a high 1.62 WHIP. He’s allowing a .219 xISO, .372 xwOBA, and 34.8% hard contact rate. I’m confident he gives up that first home run to a righty today. I really like how the Chicago lineup sets up when they face a lefty. They basically go completely right-handed. Tim Anderson jumps to the top of the lineup, with his .194 ISO, and Matt Davidson gets put into the middle, with his ridiculous .277 ISO, .369 wOBA, and 53.7% hard-hit rate. In addition to those two adjustments, you also have some of the regulars including Avisail Garcia (.231 ISO, .379 wOBA, and 53.6% hard-hit rate), Jose Abreu (.231 ISO, .364 wOBA), and Leury Garcia (.386 wOBA). For those of you who play on FanDuel, one of the best parts about this stack today is how cheap it is. Jose Abreu is the most expensive player on that site at $3.6K. Anderson, both Garcias, and Davidson are all $3K or less. You could pair these guys with a high end pitcher or with some Coors bats pretty easily.

The Bullpen Report

Good luck today! Tag me in the LineStar Chat @glandry if you have any questions or feedback on the daily newsletters and hit me up on Twitter (@GP_Landry)