Quick Note: For those of you who play NFL DFS the first episode of the new podcast, “ The LineStar Presnap” with LineStar NFL Analyst Michael Rathburn (@FantasyRath) is now available. Give it a listen it’s a great way to start getting yourself into the NFL mindset. There will be a new podcast weekly for each slate that will come out on Friday so be on the lookout for that later this week to help you get prepped for kickoff on Sunday. In addition, LineStar Fantasy Expert Ryan Humphries (@NitroDFS) will be handling the weekly NFL newsletter which will come out each week prior to the Thursday Night football game. That will be emailed to you and posted on the NFL projections page similar to the daily MLB newsletters. Are you ready for some football!?  

Written by LineStar Fantasy Expert @GP_Landry on Twitter

For the rest of us, or those of us who will be playing both sports, there’s still plenty of baseball left and we’ll continue to cover every slate until the end of the season. We start with today which features a seven game early slate and a five game main slate on both sites. Since the slates are split fairly evenly and I assume the early slate will get more attention today with many people having the day off I’m going to talk about both. I’ll be giving you one high and low priced pitcher that I like on each slate, two home runs calls, two value calls, and two stacks from each slate. Since they are both relatively small that should give us enough to work with and keep this from turning into a 10,000 word newsletter that nobody wants to read.  

No freeroll today! We'll get them back up again starting tomorrow!

Early Slate

Max Scherzer, WAS (vs. STL) (DK: $12.2K, FD: $11.5K)

Yea, yea, I know, I know. Thank you captain obvious for recommending Max Scherzer. We are so proud of you. I get it, this is a boring recommendation, but it’s one that needs to be made none the less. He’s the top arm on the board today and it needs to be known that he’s a priority, particularly in cash games. He’s coming off a rough start, where he lasted just five innings, allowing four hits, three earned runs, with only five strikeouts. It’s possible people overreact to that and find a way to avoid him so I’m here to make sure the LineStar faithful does not. He’s Max Freaking Scherzer. Don’t put stock into when he has an occasional off night. This was the first time since April 4th that he went less than six innings in a game. Prior to the last outing, he hadn’t given up more than two earned runs in any of his starts since the All-Star break. He had also collected double-digit strikeouts in four of six starts. He had an off night. That’s it. Nothing to see here. On the season, he has a 2.75 SIERA with 34.3% strikeouts, and a ridiculous 15.9% swinging strike rate. Against left-handed hitters, he has a 3.52 xFIP with 31.3% strikeouts and a 0.97 WHIP. Against right-handed hitters, he has a 2.63 xFIP, 37.6% strikeouts, and a 0.79 WHIP. Nearly 40% strikeouts to right-handed hitters. Let that sink in for a minute. He’s a -172 favorite and the Cardinals have an implied total of just 3.3 runs.  

Vince Velasquez, PHI (@MIA) (DK: $7.4K, FD: $6.6K)

Honestly, it hasn’t been a pretty second half of the season for Velasquez. Prior to the All-Star break, he had a 3.84 xFIP with an impressive 110 strikeouts in just 94.1 innings of work. Since the break, he has a 4.65 xFIP with 32 strikeouts in 34.2 innings of work. Ironically, he went just 5-8 in the first half when he was pitching better and has somehow gone 4-1 in seven starts since the break despite pitching worse. That’s baseball for you. Still, even with some of the recent struggles I’m still viewing him as the best option in this price range today. I can’t pull the trigger on Trevor Williams. His SIERA is significantly higher than his ERA and he has a very low 16.7% strikeout rate. Between the potential regression and the complete lack of upside it makes no sense to use him. Reynaldo Lopez is in a similar boat with his lack of upside but the difference is his ERA is just as high as his SIERA. He’s not going to see any regression because he’s already terrible to begin with. Michael Fulmer also crossed my radar, against the White Sox and if I had confidence in his health I think he would be under serious consideration. But, he too, lacks strikeout upside, and since coming off the disabled list he’s gone just 4.2 innings and then 3.2 innings in his first two starts. I need to see something more than that before I can invest anything in him. The rest of the guys in this tier just have poor matchups in my opinion. That leaves Velasquez who has a great matchup today against the Marlins who have a .121 ISO, .294 wOBA, and just an 84 wRC+. If you recall from yesterday, Nola had his start moved up in order to properly line the Phillies rotation for the playoff push they are starting. Velasquez was another benefactor of that move as he’ll now be pitching on an extra days rest instead. Perhaps that will help him find some of his early season form. Even with the struggles, he’s still been able to maintain a 26.2% strikeout rate and 11.4% swinging strike rate. He’s also faced Miami twice this season, going 2-0 while allowing just one earned run total and picking up seven strikeouts in the first game and six in the second. Both of those games were in hitter friendly Philadelphia. Today’s game is in pitcher friendly Miami. That should only provide Velasquez with an additional boost. There’s little safety here but he has the most upside. He’s a comfortable -142 favorite and the Marlins have an implied total of only 3.7 runs.  

Main Slate

Jacob deGrom, NYM (@LAD) (DK: $13.4K, FD: $11.8K)

Yea, yea, I know, I know. Thank you captain obvious for recommending Jacob deGrom. Déjà vu anyone? Yet another boring recommendation but to be honest with you the only pitcher in baseball that I would consider playing over Max Scherzer is this man. It’s a crying shame he’s on the Mets and the fact that he has an 8-8 record in 27 starts with his numbers is nothing short of a joke. He’s given up more than three runs just once the entire season. He’s 3-4 in eight starts since the All-Star break with a 2.51 xFIP and 75 strikeouts in just 58.2 innings of work. He’s gone seven innings or more in five of eight starts and allowed two earned runs or fewer in all but one. He has five double-digit strikeout games during this span, two more with nine strikeouts, and then a random five strikeout game that I would just throw out. The downside here is he could very well be looking at another loss. It’s a tough matchup and the Dodgers have a pretty talented arm in Alex Wood going on the other side which may hold the Mets offense in check. This doesn’t mean I don’t like deGrom (not even close) but just figured it was worth nothing. In fact, deGrom is laughably an underdog in this matchup. Obviously, in a perfect world, we’d like to target pitchers who are going to be able to get the win bonus as well but this is the one case where I’d be willing to make an exception. In the last month, he’s allowed 41 batted balls of which just 14.6% have been hard contact and 43.9% have been soft contact. He’s allowed an average exit velocity of only 80.8 mph which is one of, if not the lowest, I’ve seen all season. He’s a priority today, especially in cash games.  

Yonny Chirinos, TB (@TOR) (DK: $5.6K, FD: $5.9K)

Value pitching on the main slate is really, really bad. My plan is to target whichever guy will be the "follow" pitcher for the Rays. Even this late into the season now that everyone knows about this strategy that Tampa Bay uses, their follow pitchers are still incredibly low owned. I don't think it will be as sneaky today considering it's a five game slate but most people are still hesitant to roster a pitcher that has the "not starting" symbol next to their name. I have not been able to confirm yet who this person is going to be. From what I can tell, just looking at recent starts, we should have Ryne Stanek as the "starter" and then Yonny Chirinos coming in after him. It would be the correct amount of rest for Chirinos. Without seeing anything concrete yet though I'm going to leave this open for now and see if any news comes out later in the day. I'll try to post an update if I can once things are confirmed but for now this is the direction I'm planning on going in.

#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.

Early Slate

Anthony Rizzo, CHC: 1B (DK: $5.3K, FD: $4.4K)

Coming off a monster game in a difficult matchup I have no reason to believe Rizzo can’t keep it going in a much easier situation against Zach Davies. He’ll make his first start since May 29th after going on the disabled list with a shoulder injury. Prior to being hurt, he was allowing a .203 xISO to left-handed hitters. Rizzo has a .596 wOBA+ISO in his last 150 games and a .231 ISO, 35.7% hard-hit rate this season against right-handed pitching. He’s had 45% hard contact and a massive 94.4 mph average exit velocity over his past two weeks. 

Gregory Polanco, PIT: OF (DK: $5K, FD: $3.7K)

Here’s a name that I don’t call very often. Polanco is quietly going about his business this season and continuing to smash right-handed pitching. He has a .264 ISO and 35.9% hard-hit rate this season and a .583 wOBA+ISO over his last 150 games. Of his 23 home runs this season, 18 of them have come against a righty. It’s no secret at this stage of his career that Harvey has a rough time with left-handed hitters. He’s allowing a .250 xISO along with a 42.4% fly ball rate, 15.1% HR/FB and 42.2% hard contact.  Polanco also matches up well with Harvey’s pitch types. He’s got a .273 xISO against fastballs, a .322 xISO against two-seam fastballs, a .181 xISO against sliders, and a .353 xISO against changeups.    

Main Slate

Nelson Cruz, SEA: OF (DK: $4.7K, FD: $4.1K)

Nelson Cruz against a lefty. That’s really all you need to know. He has a career .259 ISO and 38.6% hard-hit rate and he hasn’t slowed down this season with a .301 ISO and 45.5% hard-hit rate. Generally speaking, we would expect a player’s season numbers to regress to their career averages in many cases so for Cruz to have an ISO and hard-hit rate significantly higher than his already solid career numbers, this late in the season, shows us how well he’s hitting the baseball right now. We only have a one game major league sample size for Josh Rogers which doesn’t help us much but I’ll point out that his minor league numbers this year are awful with an xFIP over four and a strikeout rate below 18%. Mariners are looking good today, especially Cruz.

Rougned Odor, TEX: 2B (DK: $4.6K, FD: $4K)

Pretty tough ask for Matt Shoemaker to return from the disabled list and pitch in Globe Life Park in his first game back. He hasn’t pitched in over five months after forearm issues and I expect there to be some rust. Since he’s only thrown 45 pitches this season we’ll use last year’s numbers instead. He allowed a .220 xISO and 85 mph average exist velocity to left-handed hitters. In addition to Odor having a solid .559 wOBA+ISO against right-handed pitching over the past 150 games he’s also jumping off my pitch type profile data today. Shoemaker essentially throws three types of fastballs. A standard fastball, a split-fingered fastball, and a two-seam fastball. Guess who loves hitting fastballs? Odor has a .261 xISO against fastballs, .266 xISO against two-seam fastballs, and an insane .770 xISO against split-fingered fastballs.

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.

Early Slate

Jacoby Jones, DET: OF (DK: $3.4K, FD: $2K)

Jones has been swinging the bat very well since his return from the disabled list. He has a .292 AVG, .364 wOBA, and .292 ISO in six games. Of the ten balls he’s put in play, 50% have been hard-hits with a 94.2 mph average exit velocity and an average distance of 264.1 feet. He gets a great matchup against Reynaldo Lopez today who’s allowing a .208 xISO and .374 xwOBA against right-handed hitters. As an added bonus he has speed and some stolen base upside as well. He swiped a bag earlier this week.

Colin Moran, PIT: 3B (DK: $3.6K,FD: $2K)

Moran being minimum salary on FanDuel while also batting in the middle of the order makes it pretty hard to pass up on him in cash games today. With David Freese out of the picture now Moran is seeing regular playing time which should help him get into a rhythm. He offers very little from a power perspective but has a solid .332 wOBA against right-handed pitching this season. Harvey struggles with lefties which only boosts my confidence that Moran can return value today.  

Main Slate

Brandon Lowe, TB: 2B/OF (DK: $3.2K, FD: $2.5K)

All aboard the Brandon Lowe chalk train! He’ll be popular today after some of the big games he’s flashed recently including a three for five performance last night with a home run and three runs batted in. I wrote about him when he was first called up as being a prospect with high expectations so it’s good to see things starting to come together. He has a .635 wOBA+ISO and a 2.32 FP/PA against right-handed pitching. He’s also had 38.9% hard-hits and an average exit velocity of 92.6 miles per hour over the past two weeks.   

Mike Zunino, SEA: C (DK: $3.1K, FD: $2.3K)

There’s nothing fun or safe about using Zunino but the power upside is enormous and with one swing of the bat (if he can actually connect) he’ll be returning you five times his salary. He has a .226 ISO and 38.6% hard-hit rate but it comes with a 35.7% strikeout rate which doesn’t exactly leave you feeling confident. It’s a great matchup though, against essentially a minor league pitcher in Josh Rogers who was only striking out 17.7% of Triple-A batters before being called up. If there were ever a time for Zunino to get a hold of one today would be it.  

Stacks on Stacks

Early Slate

For the early slate, the Astros have the highest implied total at 5.2 runs so I will assume they are the chalk and exclude them. Here’s a couple of other teams I really like today:

Chicago Cubs (vs. Zach Davies)

The Cubs have opened up a very comfortable five game lead on the Brewers and will look to put the final nail in their coffin as they open up a series against each other in Milwaukee this week. The Brewers have recalled Zach Davies to make the start after spending the past couple of months on the disabled list. Prior to going on the DL he has some glaring red flags including a very high 4.86 SIERA, 1.44 WHIP, and a 43.8% hard contact rate. He also has a low 16.3% strikeout rate. Rizzo is my favorite option from this team and I already talked about him earlier in the newsletter. Daniel Murphy has been fantastic since joining the Cubs and has a .194 ISO and .372 wOBA against right-handed pitching this season. Javier Baez had a pretty special day yesterday reaching a milestone. Baez became the fifth player in franchise history to hit 30 home runs and drive in 100 RBIs before his age 25 season. He now leads the National League in runs batted in and is a serious NL MVP candidate with a month left in the season. Kyle Schwarber is smashing righties with a .272 ISO and .357 wOBA and Ian Happ, who often goes over looked on this stacked team, has a .206 ISO and .350 wOBA against right-handed pitching. I’d call that group the priority list but there’s still more to like. Zobrist has a .177 ISO and .378 wOBA, Bryant has a .341 wOBA as he works his way back to full strength, Contreras has a .327 wOBA. This entire team is in play. They opened with an implied run total of 4.6 runs. 

Chicago White Sox (vs. Michael Fulmer)

I’m not chasing points here. I spent most of this week picking on the White Sox with pitching and obviously if you used Brian Johnson yesterday it did not work out. Even if he’d gone out there yesterday and thrown a complete gem I’d still be on the White Sox today. Fulmer is still working his way back and has only gone 4.2 and 3.2 innings in his first two starts off the disabled list. He has low strikeouts (19.7%) and allows a high 39.4% hard contact rate. Assuming he can’t get through five innings today (which is a real possibility) Chicago will get some extra swings against a pretty awful Detroit bullpen. They have a 4.49 xFIP with 11.6% walks and have allowed 37.1% hard contact over their last 30 days. I don’t love this lineup, especially with Abreu on the shelf, but there are a few pieces to look at including Daniel Palka, Yomer Sanchez, Yoan Moncada, Matt Davidson, and Avisail Garcia (currently day-to-day). Wellington Castillo was also activated yesterday. He had a .207 ISO and .332 wOBA against right-handed pitching prior to going on the disabled list. The White Sox opened with a solid 4.8 implied run total.  

Main Slate

On the main slate, as usual the game in Texas has the highest total of the day at 10.5 runs and both teams should carry ownership especially on the small slate. I’ll exclude them and look elsewhere for options.

Arizona Diamondbacks (vs. Bryan Mitchell)

Arizona must be licking their chops for this matchup tonight. Mitchell will make his return from the disabled list today so in addition to being rusty he wasn’t very good to begin with and gets a brutal matchup. He has an awful 6.37 SIERA with a very, very low 9.7% strikeout rate and 5.4% swinging strike rate. He was walking 14.8% of batters and has a 2.03 WHIP. A WHIP over 2.00 is automatically someone we stack against without hesitation. Everyone in the Diamondbacks lineup is in play today. David Peralta is my favorite with his .258 ISO and .403 wOBA against right-handed pitching. If it wasn’t for Nelson Cruz I would have put Peralta on the home run list today. Eduardo Escobar surprisingly lines up really well today as well. He hasn’t stood out as much since he was traded to Arizona but he’s a switch hitter that performs much better against righties with a .266 ISO and .358 wOBA. Daniel Descalso should also make the lineup today and has a solid .196 ISO and .349 wOBA. Also, unsurprisingly, I love Paul Goldschmidt (.238 ISO, .386 wOBA) and A.J. Pollock (.213 ISO, .351 wOBA). It’s very possible Arizona becomes chalk with their massive 5.6 implied run total I was hoping people would lean more towards the game in Texas but the more I look at these numbers the more I realize I might be wrong. I still love them today but the potential ownership makes it interesting.  

Seattle Mariners (vs. Josh Rogers)

This is my favorite stack of the night when we factor in game theory. With the Angels, Rangers, and Diamondbacks all getting a ton of attention the Mariners could go completely overlooked, on a small five game slate, with an implied total of five runs. That’s crazy. Josh Rogers is a minor league pitcher who is only up to make a couple of spot starts and will get sent right back down when this game is over. He doesn’t have a chance to make this rotation long term. In Triple-A this season he has a 4.25 xFIP with a very low 14.8% strikeout rate. A pitcher with an xFIP over 4.00 in the minors is almost as automatic to stack against as Bryan Mitchell having a WHIP higher than 2.00. Nelson Cruz, for obvious reasons, is one of my favorite players on this slate. I also mentioned Mike Zunino, who is boom or bust, but I’m leaning more on the boom side today. Even he’ll have a hard time striking out against Rogers. Other options here are Haniger (.354 wOBA), Segura (.350 wOBA), Span (.349 wOBA), Seager (.320 wOBA), and Robinson Cano (.336 wOBA). The Mariners power surprisingly drops off a bit against lefties outside of Cruz but there is still more than enough to work with here and as I said before they should be the least owned of all the teams with an implied total over five runs on this main slate.  

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).