This weeks schedule sets up very normal for DFS. We have afternoon slates on Wednesday and Saturday and many more 10+ game slates on the Main 7PM spots. Great news for me and you as we get into a very nice routine now.
I will be doing a Bullpen breakdown later this week to highlight which teams we should be looking at to attack from a Bullpen standpoint and expect that to hit around Wed or Thursday of this week before the weekend series begin.
WEATHER
Seattle at Baltimore – Light rain, game plays
Philadelphia at New York – Heavier rain, game likely does not play.
Roof is likely CLOSED in Milwaukee
Roof is OPEN in Arizona
We are back to some good pitchers in the rotations and the prices are finally creeping into the territory on some guys where tougher decisions will be made and hopefully we see more chalk flops than we have seen in the first week of the season (ignore the weekend, it was just bad everywhere because of no choices).
TYLER GLASNOW (FD: $10,700 / DK: $10,400)
Glasnow and fellow Ace going today, Gerrit Cole (11k/10.7k) are both pitching down in the Tampa area of the United States, but Glasnow gets to pitch indoors against the Rangers while Cole will be out in the minor league type stadium versus the Blue Jays. Massive advantage to Tyler Glasnow from a safety perspective — however this is Gerrit Cole on the other hand so if you want to play both together on DK and take 20+ point floors from them both then go right ahead. But I’m taking Glasnow 9 times out of 10 over Cole in this scenario. Using anyone other than these two on FanDuel is just silly IMO.
Below the elite tier there are some secondary guys like Rodon, McKenzie (both so $$, you might as well go up to the elite tier) and Peralta. None of whom I want to use tonight at their price points.
VALUE SP2 ARMS
AARON SANCHEZ (DK: $6,900)
Sanchez when he is healthy has put together some really high upside starts in his career. The Reds came out white hot with favorable ballpark match-ups but with a banged up Jesse Winker, Tyler Naquin cooling off finally and going into San Francisco we can look here for a value play against the Reds. Sanchez is coming off a start where he went 5 IP with 0 BB and if he can continue to do that he’ll often times serve as a nice cheap SP2 when the match-up at home. Having Posey catching him can’t hurt either.
DEAN KREMER (DK: $6,500)
I don’t think we’ll get more than 5 IP out of Kremer, however I wanted to highlight that he’s in my mind the better of two pitchers in the Mariners-Orioles game. Kremer has proven he can strike-out big league hitters so far with 27 K over 21 2/3 IP in 5 brief starts. A cup of coffee in the bigs as they like to say. But that cup of coffee has come at the expense of facing the Yankees 3 times, the Rays and the Red Sox. Quality opponents and certainly better than what he’ll face in the Mariners tonight. Until someone pitches over 100 times in the bigs they can’t be trusted heavily, but it’s a good match-up for almost any pitcher and with his strike-out upside Kremer can off-set a solo HR or two better than Sheffield will on the other side.
Not touching
- Carlos Rodon – If you want to spend $9,400 on Rodon then you can find the money to get up to Cole or Greinke as an SP2 instead.
- Fastball Freddy Peralta – That’s nice and all that he’s throwing 45% breaking pitches now. Guess who just saw him 5 days ago? The Cubs. Avoid
- Justus Sheffield – Play Kremer instead
ATHLETICS
Canha, Chapman, Murphy
Time to play some bad offenses warming up! Oakland started to hit over the weekend and is a team we want to mostly target on the road. Not many better road spots than Chase Field with the roof open and Madison Bumgarner on the mound. MadBum can’t pitch clean games anymore and a Matt Chapman HR to get the Athletics going tonight feels about as certain as anything. Play 3 Athletics, no more, no less.
MARLINS
Marte, Cooper, Anderson, Duvall
Massive park shift for the fish who get the benefit of the Braves worst SP option in Ynoa. In addition to Adam Duvall returning to Atlanta, we have a dream spot for Brian Anderson and Garrett Cooper today assuming both get the start (they should).
YANKEES
LeMahieu, Judge, Torres
Robbie Ray does three things. Strikeouts. Walks. Homers. And he does all of them. So we are crazy to not like the Yankees in this scenario and can hope that yesterday’s big late win gets their offense going for tonights purposes. I would either build a full Yankee stack with cheap SP2 or just pick a one off. Tough team to fit with the stud arms going but one that you want to get players from weak positions (i.e. 2B and SS) rather than just blind stacking those positions from other teams.
CUBS / BREWERS
Rizzo, Bryant, Hiura, Shaw
I want more on the Cubs side getting a second look at Peralta, but honestly neither team is that great offensively to expect an 8 or 9 run game from one side. Total combined? Absolutely and it’s one of the overs I like tonight and a good park generally for offense when the roof is closed. Keston Hiura is my player to get going this week and I would expect him to get hot starting tonight.
Update – Yelich is out tonight, which I did kind of anticipate. Cubs side is just preferred more.
ANGELS
Trout, Upton, Walsh, Ohtani
#AlwaysAngels
CATCHER
- Sean Murphy
- Wilson Ramos
FIRST BASE
- Anthony Rizzo
- Carlos Santana
- Keston Hiura
SECOND BASE
- DJ LeMahieu
- Jed Lowrie
- Brandon Lowe
THIRD BASE
- Matt Chapman
- Brian Anderson
SHORTSTOP
Terrible position once again.
- Gleyber Torres
- Nick Ahmed
- JP Crawford
OUTFIELD – MT RUSHMORE
- Mike Trout
- Adam Duvall
- Yordan Alvarez – Astros will be TOO popular overall tonight. Mize is better than the data/people think. But Yordan takes him deep.
- Mark Canha
OUTFIELD – Tier 2
- Kyle Tucker
- Justin Upton
- Ronald Acuna Jr
OUTFIELD – Value
- Kole Calhoun
- Darin Ruf
- Ramon Laureano
THE DONGERS CLUB
- Matt Chapman – 3B – Athletics – Chairman of the Dongers Club
- JP Crawford – SS – Mariners
- Yordan Alvarez – OF – Astros
- Justin Upton – OF – Angels
- Anthony Rizzo – 1B – Cubs
- DJ LeMahieu – 2B – Yankees
- Adam Duvall – OF – Marlins
- Sean Murphy – C – Athletics
- BONUS …………….. Brian Anderson – 3B – Marlins
BETS
Cubs / Brewers OVER 8.5
Athletics / Diamondbacks OVER 9.5
SF Giants ML -115