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The Dongers Club – May 3rd

WEATHER

All games will play tonight.  Some cloudy/overcast conditions in Washington, New York and Boston, but none of them have a high PPD risk or any major delay concerns either.  The best weather hitting conditions are in Coors and Kauffman, but nothing extreme.

 

LOGAN GILBERT

Give me Gilbert or give me death.  Gilbert against the Athletics is likely to be just as good as Miller was last night, maybe with fewer strikeouts but as good of a chance of allowing 0 ER through his time on the bump today.

SHANE BIEBER

One of his better starts in 2023 came against the Yankees and they had more fire power in that meeting than they will tonight.  I personally think Shane is going to wind up being dealt if Cleveland cannot get it going as a team since they have so much pitching depth in the organization about to come up, and so if he wants that next big contract he needs to start acting like the Cy Young potential that he used to have.  This is a good spot for that to come true with the NYY watered down lineup likely giving him a start where he can be in the 70% range on his strikes thrown.

FAVORITE CHEAP ARM

Miles Mikolas … This is entirely a gut call because obviously Mikolas vs Trout/Ohtani combination warrants some fears but with Ohtani also pitching tonight I believe that does take a little out of him and so the stache just needs to get past Trout and this will be his best outing of the 2023 season.

OTHER PITCHING NOTES

  • No Ohtani for me, even vs a bad Cardinals lineup right now.
  • Marcus Stroman should be good, but also should not have a ton of K today, so for 9100 I see no point going there, it won’t win much
  • Kyle Gibson vs a possibly Salvy-less Royals team is going to be good.   On another slate he might crack the top 3.

 

Not a heavy ‘must stack this team’ type slate tonight.

TWINS vs WHITE SOX

The White Sox side seems pretty clear cut to me against Louie Varland.  He heavily relies on his cutter which LHH have hit much better in a limited dataset, so Andrew Benintendi gets a rare mention here along with Andrew Vaughn from the right side of the plate for Chicago.

To me the sneaky play here is Minnesota.  Cease has become the new Trevor Bauer, a guy who will throw a ton of pitches and try to work junk on guys to get by them and the more a team sees him the better they fare.  So the Twins are my favorite go all in stack today – Kepler/Correa/Polanco

BREWERS

Tyrone Taylor, William Contreras, Mike Brosseau

Couple bad lefties on the bump today, although both have the potential to pull out strong starts when you do not expect it.  This is a game I lean heavy on the Milwaukee side but see some good logic in using CRON/Bryant/Grichuk from Colorado

ORIOLES

Mullins, Santander, Henderson

Greinke pitches much better at home in Kauffman Stadium and that’s about the only nice thing I can muster up here for him.

 

CATCHER

  1. William Contreras
  2. Adley Rutschman

 

FIRST BASE

  1. Josh Naylor / Josh Bell … I lean Naylor just since he hits RIGHT after J-Ram most likely
  2. Andrew Vaughn
  3. CJ Cron

 

SECOND BASE

  1. Jorge Polanco
  2. Andres Gimenez

 

THIRD BASE

From a price perspective, Gunnar Henderson is higher ranked for me today but from an overall rating/confidence level Chapman is ahead of him and since we can use Gunnar at SS that’s where I am likely to go.  You’ll need 2xHR from Chappy today, but it wouldn’t shock me at all if he did all the Toronto damage tonight.

  1. Gunnar Henderson
  2. Matt Chapman
  3. Jose Ramirez
  4. Rafael Devers … I expect Manoah to be VERY careful with him

 

SHORTSTOP

  1. Gunnar Henderson
  2. Tim Anderson
  3. Alan Trejo (Can also use at 2B on DK)

 

OUTFIELD – Mt. Rushmore

  1. Andrew Benintendi
  2. Kris Bryant
  3. Tyrone Taylor

 

OUTFIELD – Tier 2

  1. Steven Kwan
  2. Julio Rodriguez

 

OUTFIELD – Value

  1. Max Kepler … MUST be leading off
  2. AJ Pollock
  3. Jarren Duran

 

  1. Josh Naylor – 1B – Guardians – Chairman of The Dongers Club
  2. Matt Chapman – 3B – Blue Jays
  3. Gunnar Henderson – SS – Orioles
  4. Max Kepler – OF – Twins
  5. Andrew Benintendi – OF – White Sox
  6. Kris Bryant – OF – Rockies
  7. William Contreras – C – Brewers
  8. Jorge Polanco – 2B – Twins
  9. BONUS …………. Tyrone Taylor – OF – Brewers

FAVORITE BET(s)

  • Guardians ML
  • MIN/CWS over 8
  • STL ML