Written by LineStar Fantasy Expert @GP_Landry on Twitter

Happy Monday! Baseball is still alive and well and we have a ten-game slate to talk about for this evening. Shout out to the true warriors hanging out in the MLB chat yesterday. I kept jumping back and forth between the two rooms. There was an incredible 1000+ in the NFL chat and only about 50 of us at MLB. I hope you all enjoyed your first NFL Sunday of the season and had a good DFS week (or are having one currently as we still have two games to go). I like tonight’s MLB slate quite a bit. It’s a good amount of games not crazy big but not small either. There are good (might be a little strong) options for pitching in all the pricing tiers tonight. We have a Coors game, which always makes things interesting, but there are two solid pitchers on the hill in that game, which will make you think twice about the bats. As far as weather goes, let’s hope it’s not as crazy for us today as it was yesterday as there were impacts in both the MLB and NFL. As of now, the trouble spots are looking like Philadelphia (which is unfortunate because I really like them today) and New York. The Mets game in particular is looking really daunting early on but a lot could change between now and first pitch, so you’ll want to keep an eye on that. It’s going to be a two TV screen kind of night with baseball on one and football on the other (probably three screens for me so my daughter can watch Peppa Pig). Sounds like heaven to me. Let’s get to it.  

High Priced Pitching

Jacob deGrom, NYM (vs. MIA) (DK: $13.5K, FD: $11.8K)

I’m shocked at the price difference between the two sites. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be the most expensive pitcher on FanDuel tonight. Regardless, we have to work with what the market is giving us. I really shouldn’t have to tell you much here for you to know that deGrom is an option today. He had his start pushed back from yesterday but it was weather related. The Mets didn’t want to risk him possibly getting hurt pitching under less than ideal conditions. That does mean, however, there’s a chance it could happen again today as the weather outlook in this game isn’t ideal. If you’re rostering deGrom, have a backup lineup in place in case he’s a late scratch again. He’s been about as good as you can get in the second half of the season, with a 1.67 ERA and 2.62 xFIP in nine starts. He has 81 strikeouts to just 12 walks during the span while allowing a total of 12 earned runs in 64.2 innings of work. That’s 11.27 K/9 and 1.67 BB/9. Not too shabby. His full season numbers are just as ridiculous. He has a 2.90 SIERA with 31.3% strikeouts and 15.1% swinging strikes alongside a 0.96 WHIP. As if that wasn’t enough, he gets a great matchup today against a weak Miami team. The Marlins continue to hang around the bottom of the league against right-handed pitching. They have a 22.5% strikeout rate with a .122 ISO and .293 wOBA this season. On FanDuel, since he’s not even the most expensive pitcher, he's your no brainer cash game arm tonight as well as an elite tournament option. On DraftKings, he’s $2.4K more expensive than the next closest pitcher, which definitely gives me pause. Since that pitcher is Corey Kluber, who is also in a great spot, I will likely take the savings in cash games as they are so significant, even if I like deGrom more. My feeling is that others will react the same way, which makes deGrom likely to be lower owned than he should be in this spot for tournaments. Again, keep an eye on the weather. 

Corey Kluber, CLE (@TB) (DK: $11.1K, FD: $12.3K)

The aforementioned Kluber is the other pitcher on this slate that’s difficult to ignore. We all know the story with Kluber this season. He went through a weird span, prior to the All-Star break, where he was pitching pretty poorly and we were convinced he was hurt. But he’s bounced back in the second half with a strong 2.72 ERA and 3.35 xFIP. He’s had 58 strikeouts to just 11 walks in 59.2 innings of work while giving up 18 earned runs. That’s an 8.75 K/9 (lower than deGrom) and a 1.66 BB/9 (nearly identical to deGrom). The good news is, the strikeout upside has started to come back recently with eight and 10 strikeouts in his last two outings. Today, he’ll get the Tampa Bay Rays. I have nothing but respect and even admiration for what the Rays have been able to achieve this season. I think they made some great moves at the deadline as well, to further improve their status moving forward. But they are far from a threat on offense for the time being and certainly not a team we should be concerned about attacking with a pitcher. On the season, they have a 22.1% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching with a .144 ISO and .319 wOBA. They also happen to play in one of the most negative run environments in all of baseball, Tropicana Field, which is 23rd in runs scored and 24th in home runs allowed. This only further boosts Kluber’s outlook tonight. On FanDuel, given that he’s shockingly the most expensive pitcher today, there’s simply no way I’ll play him over the National League lock for the Cy Young Award, at least in cash games. On DraftKings, where the difference in price is a pretty large margin, I’d rather take the savings in cash games and have more to invest in my lineup. I think the floors on these guys today are pretty similar given their numbers and the matchups. deGrom, however, has the better ceiling with the additional strikeout upside he’ll bring to the table.  

Value Pitching

Sean Newcomb, ATL (@SFG) (DK: $7.3K, FD: $6.9K)

Ugh, please don’t make me do this. Has there been a more frustrating pitcher this season than Newcomb? I debated for a while on where to go here and, ultimately, this is where I’m ending up. I considered Junis, he’s been pitching out of his mind recently, but the price tag is a bit much at this point. I also considered Mike Minor, who’s been solid himself, and is facing an Angels team that is really bad against lefties, but Minor also just faced them his last time out and that always adds risk. Instead, I’m going to go with the incredibly volatile Newcomb. Coming off of two really bad starts, we get a discount on him today in a prime bounce back spot. If you want proof that this is a great game for him to get back on track, go back and read my write up on Saturday about Gio Gonzalez, who has been horrible all season, and fired an outstanding performance against this Giants team. The Giants are terrible. There’s no other way to put it. They have injuries, they let guys go, they are being held together by scotch tape (I know people usually say duct tape but I honestly think that’s too strong for this example) and riding out the last three weeks of this season to forget. On the season, they have a 22.6% strikeout rate against lefties, with a .132 ISO and .292 wOBA. In the past 30 days, the strikeout rate is up to 27.1% with a .106 ISO and .253 wOBA. In the past two weeks, a 31.5% strikeout rate with a .135 ISO and a .250 wOBA. One more time to make sure it sticks. A 31.5% strikeout rate, as a team, in the last two weeks. If the Braves decided they wanted to rest their starters for a night and put a positional player out there on the mound today, I would have interest. Fortunately for us, that’s not the case, and there are a few reasons to be optimistic about Newcomb. For starters, he has an above average 22.1% strikeout rate this season, which will get an obvious boost tonight. He’s also a reverse splits pitcher where he allows only a .131 xISO and .310 xwOBA to righties but a .210 xISO and .327 wOBA to lefties. The concern about lefties is reduced, however, with this game being played in the worst park in baseball for left-handed power. As long as Newcomb can avoid beating himself with walks, he should be able to get the job done in this spot tonight. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I honestly think you can consider him in cash games as your SP2. He’s been the exact opposite of a cash game pitcher this season with how inconsistent he is, but this matchup is so perfect that I find myself preferring him over pretty much everyone in the mid and value tiers today. He’s a fantastic tournament option. Be ready for a roller coaster.  

Lucas Giolito, CWS (@KC) (DK: $4.7K, FD: $8K)

I’ve managed to stay away from the Giolito train over the last month. A couple of times it’s burned me and a couple of times it’s won me some money. He got smashed in his last time out and he was a pretty popular option that day against the Tigers, if I remember correctly. He went just 1.1 innings, allowing four hits, four earned runs, with two walks and just three strikeouts. This is a good thing for us, however, as his price has dropped off a cliff now. On 8/25 he was $7.2K, his last time out he was $6.3K, and now he’s all the way down to $4.7K on DraftKings (for the record he’s still way too expensive on FanDuel, so I will be avoiding him there). If we are willing to overlook the last start and focus on the month of August, Giolito went 3-1 in six starts with a 3.86 ERA, 3.46 xFIP and 40 strikeouts in 37.1 innings. He had a start against the Red Sox, Yankees, and then two starts against the Tigers during that span before Detroit came back in crushed him in his most recent outing. I’m going to go ahead and throw out the last start. He had faced the Tigers three times in two weeks, they were bound to get to him at some point. He dominated them the first two times. I also think, since he burned so many people the last time, this is when everyone else will jump off, so I’d like to jump on here, especially since we are buying so low today. The season long numbers are horrible, so don’t even bother looking or it will scare you away. I’m strictly focusing on the last 30 days, where it seems like he’s legitimately figured things out with that 27% strikeout rate, 1.13 WHIP, and 51.4% groundball rate. The other risk here is, believe it or not, the matchup. That’s right, the Royals present a legitimate threat these days. The team that, at one point, was arguably the worst offense in baseball, and has only a .152 ISO and .306 wOBA against right-handed pitching this season, has been on fire in recent weeks. In the past 30 days, they have a .186 ISO, .327 wOBA, and 40% hard-hit rate. In the past two weeks, those numbers have increased even further to a .222 ISO, .356 wOBA, and 44.4% hard-hit rate. Incredible. What does all this mean? It means there’s still plenty of risk with Giolito, despite how inexpensive he is and how strong he was in August. We are still working with small samples sizes, so I can’t recommend him as anything more than a tournament option today. But he’s shown the upside lately that made him a first round pick, and he’s so cheap, it’s hard to pass that up. Just don’t go crazy. He’s an underdog today and the Royals opened with a high 4.8 implied run total but that has since been bet down to 4.5 runs and it wouldn’t surprise me if it dropped more. An encouraging sign for Giolito’s outlook.  

#HomeRunWatchList 💥

If you’re new to the article, this is the section where I pick an outfielder, corner infielder, and middle infielder or catcher to hit a long ball today. If there's a game at Coors Field, I always exclude them from this list because it's too obvious. So just keep that in mind. Make sure you are utilizing the LineStar Daily Matchup Tool when looking for hitters with a lot of home run potential.

Rhys Hoskins, PHI: OF (DK: $4.3K, FD: $3.4K)

We’ll start in the outfield today where, if you bought low on Hoskins on DraftKings the last couple of days, it’s definitely paid off. He has three straight double-digit fantasy performances, and while the price is starting to rebound, he’s still undervalued for his talent at the moment. He continues to crush right-handed pitching with a .648 wOBA+ISO over his last 150 games and an average exit velocity of 92.9 miles per hour in the past two weeks. Fedde is allowing a 26.7% HR/FB with 38.6% hard contact which has led to a very high 1.96 HR/9 against right-handed batters. Watch the weather today, but he’s one of my favorite bats on the board. 

Kris Bryant, CHC: 3B (DK: $4.3K, FD: $4K)

Great spot for Bryant today, who hasn’t had a home run since July 20th. It certainly has been a down season for him with injuries but wouldn’t it be the perfect time for him to catch fire right before the playoffs? Down season or not, he has a massive .388 ISO and 47.9% hard-hit rate against left-handed pitching this year. Even more encouraging is Miley’s most often thrown pitch to right-handed bats is a cutter, which he uses 41.2% of the time. Bryant has a .597 xISO against that pitch type this season.

Francisco Lindor, CLE: SS (DK: $5.2K, FD: $4.8K)

Middle infield positions are a little harder to come by when choosing home runs today but Lindor is standing out despite the poor ballpark shift for this game. Diego Castillo is taking the mound as the opener, and I haven’t seen anything confirming this yet, but I would assume Jalen Beeks will be the follower. Yarborough pitched on Saturday and Chirinos pitched yesterday while Beeks hasn’t pitched since the 4th, so he is the obvious choice to be the follow guy today. Lindor is a switch hitter with nearly equal power to both sides of the plate. He has a .251 ISO with 40.8% hard-hits against righties (when he faces Castillo) and a .231 ISO with 42.9% hard-hits against lefties (when he faces Beeks). No matter who the Rays put out there today, Lindor will have you covered.  

Value Bats

Similar to the home run watch list, in this section I’ll provide an outfielder, corner infielder, and middle infielder or catcher who are 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.

Jose Briceno, LAA: C (DK: $2.9K, FD: $2K)

Need a punt catcher? We are obviously working with smaller sample sizes here since Briceno has bounced back and forth between Triple-A and the Majors this season. Still, he’s flashed a lot of upside, particularly against left-handed pitching. He has a .231 ISO, .390 wOBA, and 37.9% hard-hit rate against lefties. Minor is allowing a .258 xISO and .351 xwOBA to righties this season. It doesn’t take much to return value when your price is this low.  

Yoan Moncada, CWS: 2B (DK: $3.5, FD: $3.2K)

This is more DraftKings specific with the pricing today. If you had told me at the beginning of the season that I’d be talking about Moncada down in the bargain bin in September, I would have said you were crazy. This kid is still very young and the future is certainly bright, but I’m guessing he’d be the first to tell you this has been a disappointing season. His lineup spot is all over the place, recently going from first, to sixth, and now seventh yesterday. He gets a plus matchup today against Junis, who has certainly been better recently, but it still allowing a .190 xISO and .342 xwOBA to left-handed hitters. Moncada has a respectable .190 ISO and .320 wOBA against right-handed pitching this season. It’s hard to overlook this price, especially if he’s pushed back up in the order again.

Nick Williams, PHI: OF (DK: $3.7K, FD: $2.3K)

He’s criminally underpriced on FanDuel today for his talent and this matchup. He had a .196 ISO and .339 wOBA this season against right-handed pitching. He’ll face Erick Fedde today, who has a rough time with lefties, including a very low 14.3% strikeout rate and a 1.57 WHIP. He does force above average groundballs but still allows a .190 xISO and .408 xwOBA to left-handed hitting this season. Williams should bat near the middle of the order in a Philadelphia lineup I like to put up some runs today.

Stacks on Stacks

The only obvious stack standing out to me is the Rockies at home so I will exclude them. They are always in play when playing in Coors and they have the highest implied total today by far.

New York Yankees (vs. Kyle Gibson)

We’ll get a more obvious one out of the way first. I don’t think this will be chalk but it should get at least some attention. Kyle Gibson certainly flashes some nice games from time to time but he’s far from someone that we need to be worried about. Even better, he’s on a bit of a downward trajectory right now making this is a good spot to attack. On the season, he has a 4.24 SIERA with a respectable 22% strikeout rate and 11.5% swinging strikes. In the last 30 days, he has a slightly higher 4.40 SIERA with just 17.2% strikeouts and a 9.4% swinging strike rate. The WHIP is up to 1.52 during that span. We talked about the Yankees in Saturday’s article but they are beginning to get healthy again. Didi Gregorius is back from the disabled list, and while Aaron Judge seems to still be far from 100%, he did take some batting practice this weekend, which is encouraging to say the least. For now, we’ll look at this roster without him. If we look at Gibson’s splits between right and left-handed bats, we’ll see he’s significantly weaker against lefties, so that’s where I want to start. Gregorius is near the top of my list with his .230 ISO and .347 wOBA. Hicks is up there as well with a .195 ISO and .366 wOBA. You could take a shot on Bird or Gardner but there are better options on this team. Luke Voit (.373 ISO, .451 wOBA) continues to rake and teammates Miguel Andujar (.224 ISO, .369 wOBA) and Gleyber Torres (.180 ISO, .347 wOBA) are battling each other for AL Rookie of the Year honors. McCutchen and Stanton are both obviously in play, though I prefer them against lefties. Of course, I said that on Saturday also and then Cutch hit a bomb. All of these guys are on the radar, it will just depend on how your roster construction shapes up. The Yankees opened with an implied total of five runs, second on the slate behind the Rockies at 5.4 runs. It has since dropped slightly to 4.8 runs but remains the second highest on the main slate today.

Philadelphia Phillies (vs. Erick Fedde)

The implied total for the Phillies seems a bit low to me at 4.4 runs. It’s not a terrible number but I was expecting them to be above 4.5 (Update: I wrote that sentence at 5:30 am EST and now I’m proofreading the article at 11:30 am EST and the total is up to 4.6 runs). Fedde has some rough numbers with a 4.22 SIERA and a low 18.3% strikeout rate with a high 1.58 WHIP. He’s allowing a .190 xISO and .408 xwOBA to lefties and a .295 xISO and .397 xwOBA to righties this season. The Phillies have a lot of potential in this lineup on both sides of the plate and it should make things very difficult for Fedde to navigate. I talked about Hoskins already, who I love today. He’s smashing right-handed pitching this season and I see no reason for that to stop in this matchup. Roman Quinn (.367 wOBA), Wilson Ramos (.176 ISO, .360 wOBA), Asdrubal Cabrera (.242 ISO, .357 wOBA), Justin Bour (.227 ISO, .350 wOBA), Maikel Franco (currently day-to-day but a .221 ISO, .346 wOBA), Carlos Santana (.188 ISO, .336 wOBA), and you probably get the point by now. I didn’t even get to Nick Williams, though I did talk about him in the value bat section today, as well as Odubel Herrera and Cesar Hernandez, who are both on the radar as well. There is a lot of talent in this Phillies lineup. They are also much better at home with a 43-26 record in their very hitter friendly environment. Keep an eye on the weather in this game but there’s a lot of upside here. 

Pittsburgh Pirates (vs. Adam Wainwright)

This is my off the board, wildcard, whatever you want to call it, low owned stack tonight for large field tournaments. The Pirates have a low total today of just 3.8 runs, but that seems to be awfully conservative considering they will face 37 year old Adam Wainwright. He will return to the mound today after dealing with elbow and hamstring issues that put him on the sixty day disabled list. This will be his first start in the Majors since May 13th. He is coming off a string of 17 consecutive scoreless innings during his rehab assignment but I’m not putting a lot of stock into those numbers considering they were spread out from Single-A up to Triple-A. He’s well past the prime of his career, and even when I look at last season, he’s definitely not somebody we need to be afraid of. He had a 4.70 SIERA with 17.6% strikeouts and a 1.50 WHIP in 123.1 innings last season. While many might take a “wait and see” approach with him, my plan is to attack before we give him a chance to shake off some of the rust. The Pirates aren’t an overpowering team but they can definitely get the job done when you need them. Polanco (.265 ISO, .360 wOBA) and Marte (.170 ISO, .339 wOBA) provide their biggest threats. Josh Bell, who has been very quiet this season, has a home run in two straight games, so I definitely wouldn’t argue with trying to catch lightning in a bottle with him. Adam Frazier quietly has some power against righties with a .192 ISO and a .362 wOBA. Francisco Cervelli is one of the better hitting catchers in baseball with his .186 ISO and .369 wOBA. Corey Dickerson (.187 ISO, .335 wOBA) and Colin Moran (.328 wOBA) also make the list though they are less of a priority for me.  

The Bullpen Report

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