The Dongers Club – Thu, Sep 17th

Results, not excuses.

Another bad night last night which really makes it three in a row and a rough stretch this past week and a half. As great as the first 7 weeks of the season have been I know some are looking around and going W.T.F! When they see Dylan Bundy posting a -1 and the Yankees backup catcher hitting 3 HR. Stick with the process folks, the first 7 weeks were not a fluke but we do have the challenge of MLB teams cruising into the playoffs and thus the variance is increased dramatically.

If shit don’t change tonight, I’ll be cracking some heads tomorrow in the Dongers Club.

Shane Bieber

There is zero Baseball analytical advice that one can give as a negative about Shane Bieber today. Yes, the wind is blowing OUT over 10 MPH in Comerica, but it’s below 60 degrees and quite honestly the Tigers won’t be able to exactly put the bat on the ball enough to make that matter at all. So the only logic on not playing Bieber today is either you don’t have the patience to creatively come up with a lineup that fits his high but not insane salary — or you want to just gamble and hope he gets lit up tonight. I mean… You are going to play the Showdown NFL slate right? Soooo, you do like to gamble? Make your choice though, because I am not going to tell you not to play him just to be cute. He should roll on Detroit.

Seth Lugo

If you want to be contrarian on DK tonight, I would do it by going against Aaron Nola instead of going agaisnt Shane Bieber. The Phillies offense is up and down with plenty of guys who will swing and miss as four guys are over 25% in their strikeout rate vs RHP on the season. And what if I told you that Lugo had a higher Swinging Strike % this season than Aaron Nola? Tempting, I know!

Framber Valdez

Don’t love him as much as Lugo today to be honest but Framber when he starts off well can have a great game — the problem can be that early inning 30 pitch count challenge. Risky, but a cheaper mid range alternative tonight.

Guys I am not on

Aaron Nola … Always a better pitcher at home, but I can totally see this going opposite of the deGrom game last night. Mets rebound.
Casey Mize … You will see below
Julio Urias … Sure, he might not allow a hit, but he probably only pitches 4 innings.
Cards/Pirates pitchers … LOL, you new here???

You should take a simplified approach down the stretch to building lineups. 3-3-1-1 is all I am going to be doing from here on out if possible. This means, two teams with 3 players and my favorite two one offs from the secondary teams.

Cardinals & Pirates

Death, Taxes and betting the over in Cardinals-Pirates games! Lets go! Give me two of the coldest offenses in the league squaring off in a get right game for both of them as neither team knows how to win of late. This game has no right being an 8.5 over/under tonight and a little Hayes-Moran-Bell stack for the Pirates seems nice.

Cleveland Indians

Francisco Lindor, Franmil Reyes, Delino DeShields

So while I said it’s not balmy hot in Detroit, I cannot ignore that wind and I cannot ignore that Francisco Lindor is playing with 5x the energy he has all season long. Watching him in Chicago this week you saw the exit velocity, you saw the aggressiveness on the base paths and you saw a guy who realizes he needs to shine before going into the off-season as the top free agent on the market. But ignore all of that. Today is Bubba Ramirez’s birthday and he loves himself from Comerica park. Indians will fiddle with Mize enough to get him out in the 4th inning and then it’s run up the score city on the Tigers pen.

Other spots to consider

Jays and Yanks … Jays are your sneaky team of the night (well, so are Pirates/Cardinals, but not as HR happy as the Jays are). Tanaka is either going to strikeout 9 Jays or give up 4 HR…

Game to go light on

Dodgers vs Rockies … The Dodgers have clinched a playoff berth and would be the only side to touch in this game tonight IMO.

CATCHER

With only six games, as you can imagine this is a bad position today.

Yadier Molina
Jacob Stallings

FIRST BASE

When (not if) the Indians wind up with more than 7 runs tonight you’ll realize Carlos Santana was arguably one of the best value spots on the board today.

Carlos Santana
Dominic Smith
Paul Goldschmidt

SECOND BASE

DJ LeMahieu
Adam Frazier

THIRD BASE

This is what I hate about these short slates. There’s literally four 3B here I would play over any Catcher, 1st Baseman, 2nd Baseman and half the outfielders today. So this is the position you do last based upon which stack/core you build around. But man, how does one not play KeBryan Hayes and Jose Ramirez together on FD?