Ten games on both sites MAIN slates tonight and just one weather concern among the games on the slates. Shohei Ohtani is pitching for the Angels tonight and will be only counted as a hitter on both sites because they simply cannot figure out how to have two Shohei Ohtani’s in their system — even though they have two Will Smith’s and two Sebastian Aho’s in hockey.
The game with WEATHER concerns is Detroit at Boston, where rain is going to be fading away around game time. They could call this one early and just play two tomorrow or decide to wait it out. Martin Perez is on the hill and the Tigers have struck out nearly 40% of the time against LHP — but it’s Martin Perez and honestly I don’t think we need to risk it on that biscuit tonight.
Shane Bieber (DK: $10,400, FD: $12,200)
I thought Beebs would take a slight step back this season but so far he’s managed to continue to face Central only teams with one exception and naturally that one exception is the only time he has not reached double digit strikeouts. The Royals hit much better at home but this should be a low scoring game and Bieber is looking like he’ll have another 10 strikeout game tonight.
Yu Darvish (DK: $10,200)
Yu are not gonna pay $11.8k for Darvish on FanDuel tonight when Bieber is only $400 more since FD is weighted more towards strikeouts — but there’s no reason to not expect him to be at the top among the big 3 who are on this slate today because he should avoid giving up hits and walks. The Pirates, yes those Pirates are not winning back to back games in San Diego even though the Padres cannot hit well there. Darvish had a 32.6% CSW when he faced the Pirates on April 12th in Pittsburgh and has not pitched fewer than 6 IP in any start this season. His comfort in San Diego is growing and I would expect him to have a near 30% strikeout rate tonight.
Brady Singer (DK: $5,500)
This is a pricing error, plain and simple on DraftKings as he has been performing in the range of a $7,300 pitcher who now has a match-up that is in the range of an $8,200 pitcher. Singer left his last start against the Twins early because he took a line drive off the shin and the Royals decided to be cautious with him. Before that, the second year Gator had continued to show the promise from a season ago by posting scores of 17, 22 and 31.95 against the Angels, Jays and Tigers. Cleveland isn’t much better than the last two teams on that list and for sub 6k on DraftKings there’s just no reason not to think Singer will get 17+ fantasy points tonight. He’s gotten virtually ZERO run support at home and with Bieber on the mound we should expect that to continue tonight but in terms of fairly reliable SP2 options this is just bad pricing that we should take and move on.
I also expect Walker Buehler to pitch great and win tonight for the Dodgers but his upside away from Dodger stadium has always been less and it’s hard to rank him above Bieber and Darvish today.
Don’t like
- Freddy Peralta: More risks on him than the other guys. The biggest strikeout bats in the Phils lineup today just happen to be the two who are most likely to take him deep (Rhys and Miller)
ATLANTA BRAVES
Freeman, Riley, Ozuna, Albies — Trea Turner (WSH)
Buying into good teams who have under-performed for a few days in a row is one of the more profitable spots in DFS. Atlanta has an equally good match-up tonight against Erick Fedde and will get overlooked given their last couple of games where the big names didn’t perform for everyone. Trea Turner on the other side to make this a full game stack play as Soto might be back in the lineup giving them a big boost.
HOUSTON ASTROS vs NY Yankees
Altuve, Correa — Stanton, Urshela
Houston is very good against LHP and should be one of the primary HR targets again tonight. I expect this to remain a high scoring series and there’s some very reasonable prices here on Altuve, Tucker (even in LvL) and Bregman being below 5k. The Yankees are obviously no slouches either and the way Stanton is hitting he is someone you just ride when he is on a heater like he is right now.
MILWAUKEE BREWERS
Wong, Urias, Vogelback, Shaw, Garcia
The good news for Chase Anderson is that his improved numbers against RH hitters should continue to remain good. The bad news is that the Brewers are likely gonna roll out a ton of lefties against him and his past two seasons struggles to blow fastballs by lefties are gonna only get worse tonight. Happy Daniel Vogelbach day. Probably the best bet to cash tonight on DraftKings is to take Bieber+Darvish and roll out the Brewers 1-5 hitters.
CATCHER
This is a very weak position tonight and thus on FD you can ignore it and play two 1B or SS there, and on DK you want to spend down at C.
- Austin Nola
- Mike Zunino
FIRST BASE
Very good position tonight but the value on Vogey is too good to pass up for me.
- Daniel Vogelbach
- Freddie Freeman
SECOND BASE
- Jose Altuve … Buzzer jokes aside, Altuve went from a 200-300 ISO against LHP down to .083 last year and 0.49 this year. The one difference in 2021 however is that his exit velocity is back up to 90 MPH against LHP after a major dip last season. Altuve is going to get hot at some point and tonight he’s getting a big tall LHP to get started with and will likely be shot while rounding second base by someone in the stands which is okay because the 14 points from the HR will be enough to justify playing him. Also if he does actually get shot, then we never met. Thank you.
- Kolten Wong
- Brandon Lowe
THIRD BASE
- Travis Shaw
- Alec Bohm
- Gio Urshela
SHORTSTOP
- Trea Turner
- Dansby Swanson
- Carlos Correa
OUTFIELD – Mt Rushmore
- Giancarlo Stanton
- Kyle Tucker
- Ronald Acuna Jr
- Austin Meadows
OUTFIELD – Tier 2
- Teoscar Hernandez
- Jared Walsh
- Jason Heyward
OUTFIELD – Value
- Josh Naylor
- Adolis Garcia
- Avisail Garcia
- Odubel Herrera
The Dongers Club
- Daniel Vogelbach – 1B – Brewers
- Trea Turner – SS – Nationals
- Jose Altuve – 2B – Astros
- Gio Urshela – 3B – Yankees
- Giancarlo Stanton – OF – Yankees
- Austin Meadows – OF – Rays
- Jason Heyward – OF – Cubs
- Not a damn person – Catcher…
- BONUS ………………….. Daniel Double Dong Vogelbach – 1B – Brewers
LINEUP CONSTRUCTION THOUGHTS
Chalkiest Stacks
- Red Sox – Rain could drive the ownership down here.
- Twins – Fade for me
- Oakland
- Yankees – Prefer this over Twins
Team with most upside getting overlooked and also not being attacked with a SP (i.e. Low owned secondary stacks)
- Washington Nationals – Fried will be limited and will usually not fare well against Trea Turner, makes for a potentially high scoring game today.
- Toronto Blue Jays – Everyone is on Oakland it seems and the Jays are a sneaky spot for Bassitt who doesn’t get much in the way of K’s.
Best Leverage Spots
- Casey Mize against Boston chalk in a spot where they could delay the game and then just come out flat. High risk though. It’s not really a slate to consider leverage on and for that we must just be smart about or hitting options today to win things.
3-Entry Max Builds
- Bieber/Darvish/Buehler combination with 3-5 Brewers
- Bieber & Singer
- Darvish & Singer