Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Something dawned on me last night in light of my comments about how the week leading into the All-Star Break has been historically a good week. We’re not here to come in first place every night, we have realistic expectations, and managing to get yourself consistent 3x, 4x results is just as good as that once every season 20x or 30x return in the long run. Weeks like this are when those can compile up and yesterday it was a good breakdown but just not enough sauce on the wings to really make it an easy to cash slate.
We’re also going to have a weird schedule for the players with Tuesday being the 4th of July and most teams playing day games that day, so I’m kinda curious how that slate is gonna breakdown as teams will be playing 3 out of 4 days in the afternoon. Yes, these are the random things I think about on Saturday evenings…
Today’s slate breakdown is as such. We do not have Site Synchronicity as FanDuel included Tigers and Rockies on their main slate. Honestly, you won’t hear anything from me in this article on that game because I really don’t want much to do with it. Matt Manning will start for Detroit, his second start to return to the mound this year and I think we’re gonna see him get hit a little by Colorado but not enough to go all in there.
Otherwise this is a 9 game Main slate today, with a 3 game Afternoon tilt slate and then the Sunday Night ESPN game features the Giants and Mets, while the Twins and Orioles are handling the Brunch Showdown Game — lock in Donovan Solano for over 1.5 total bases which basically equates to him having to get a double in his first AB (which he will).
OPTIMIZER RE-DESIGN
Just a little plug here, the Optimizer has been re-designed both for Desktop & Mobile, of which one nice feature for the Mobile crowd is that you can now use it without having to wait 5 minutes for it to load, it’s much faster, cleaner and easier to use.
If you bookmarked the direct link, it changed and you can now click here to access it, or access it via the Menu. By default it will load to DraftKings, but click ont he settings icon to switch slates or sites. The ability to exclude players on Mobile will come soon.
WEATHER
Brewers at Pirates – Rain here, which is a big deal from a pitching ownership perspective (I’ll mention below). The risk is that these two could easily make the game up another day in the season, but they cannot do that tomorrow as the Pirates are going out to L.A. to do their annual sweep of the Dodgers. My gut says they play through light rain in this game.
Some rain concerns as well for SD/CIN, NYY/STL, CLE/CHC with the games in Cincy and Chicago being the most dangerous for delays, but nothing which we’re avoiding hitters for.
There are three very good pitchers who are five figures on DraftKings today (Strider, Gausman, Cole) and then there are six total pitchers below $7000 on DraftKings, four of which are below 6k, one of which is a lefty against the Brewers and another one is Brady Singer.
That lefty is ole Dick Mountain, Rich Hill, $6200 on DraftKings and basically if you trust him to do what other lefites have done to Milwaukee then the process is as simple as picking another pitcher and moving on. I see a guy coming off 100 pitches again and not expected to go over 10 DK FPTS in a game with rain concerns. I’ll pass…
TOP PITCHER
GERRIT COLE (DK: $11,200, FD: $10,600)
Coming off a DH yesterday in which Aaron Boone said screw it and just used every available arm out of the bullpen we should no doubt get 110 pitches from Cole today. That’s the safety that he provides and St. Louis has just as much swing and miss in them as the opponents for the other two aces (Strider/Gausman) who are going to get tons of ownership today. A final target stat line of 7 innings, 9 strikeouts and limited damage is going to put Cole, who should be much lower owned in a great spot as a little pivot if we can get lucky fading Strider. I just hope he doesn’t have flashbacks to his days with the Pirates since he is facing the Cardinals…
SP2 OPTION(s)
TONY GONSOLIN (DK: $8600, FD: $8800)
Last night the Royals scored 6 total runs, 5 of which came in the first inning when they had one LEGIT hit in the whole inning. Salvador Perez of all people scored on a sac fly to Mookie Betts, who has a decent enough arm and made a good throw but still Salvy scored. It was the most bloop/seeing eyed single inning ever and they luck-boxed their way into the win. They’ll probably follow that up with 6 strikeouts the first time through the order and while Gonsolin isn’t a big whiff guy, I trust him here.
KEVIN GAUSMAN (DK: $11000, FD: $11200)
See below regarding pairing him with Cole….
THE SUNDAY SLEEPER
Nobody that we are going to use, but here are the players who will fit the criteria
- Trevor Williams … Nobody wants to be known as the Trevor Williams whisperer, the guy is a poor mans version of Tanner Roark, but here I am trying to be that guy. T-Will the thrill as I love to call him always has horrific metrics vs LHH but gives up the homers to the RH bats, today he’ll probably give up hard contact to Schwarber and Harper for long, loud outs as chalk but Casty isnt going deep again, Turner isn’t going deep and Realmuto might sit. So besides Alec Bohm going yard again I’m not expecting a terrible performance from Williams, but are you going to want to use him given the depth up top today? Hell no…
- Sandy Alcantara … Put me into the camp of those who think Sandy is going to be one of the best pitchers in the second half while the rest of the Marlins rotation starts to fall off. Unfortunately, the second half hasn’t begun yet, but I do believe after the first inning he’ll be just fine today.
- Colin Rea … With everyone likely going to Rich Hill, Rea offers a nice pivot in the same game vs an equally bad offensive lineup.
OTHER PITCHING CONSIDERATIONS
- Between Gausman and Strider my no doubt lean is Gausman as someone to consider pairing with Cole and riding high $ pitching while finding cheap hitting to build up with. I do not see the offensive explosion we saw on Saturday’s slate today, so getting 60 from your stud pitchers makes a ton of sense, but do it with Gausman + Cole.
I very much prefer building around the top end pitching and specific one offs today instead of loading up on a single team. But here’s your list of teams who jump out at me the most…
REDS
Joey Votto, Jonathan India, TJ Friedl
In terms of ‘throwing in the towel’, we definitely will see that today out of the Padres from a pitching perspective as they had initially planned to bring back Yu Darvish today but will go the bullpen arm route. Good weather for hitting in Cincy, despite storms the ball carrying with the wind blowing out of this tiny park makes it hard for me to ignore this.
RANGERS
Nate Lowe, Adolis Garcia, Ezequiel Duran
Houston is starting RP Shawn Dubin today, how long he goes is not what we are really bothered with here today, it’s more getting to go after a bullpen which isn’t that dominant and probably isn’t going to have many 1-2-3 innings either. Please inform me when the Nate Lowe homer lands, thank you.
DODGERS
Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy
I’ll be shocked if Singer comes out attacking the zone with confidence versus Mookie/Freddie. Unless L.A. decides to go with a get away lineup (something they dont do a ton of) they’ll have runners on, balls leaving the park and a good day.
If you are into the “JUST STACK THE BRAVES” mindset today, pause and jump over to the Dodgers for a 4 HR stack.
GUARDIANS
Josh Bell, Andres Gimenez, Will Brennan, Jose Ramirez
The Cubs bullpen is VERY good, so do not go more than 2 Guardians thinking you can just stack against Taillon and win… But also, stacking against Jameson Taillon and winning is usually a good strategy.
It’s about 10:30 now and only one team (Boston) has posted their lineup, which is telling me we’re gonna see today as the day lots of Veterans get the day off… This usually opens up fantastic salary relief options.
CATCHER
- Gary Sanchez
- Mitch Garver
- Austin Barnes
FIRST BASE
Best position on the board today, might be the best position of the week too just based on the “oh yeah, I forgot about that guy” potential we have here today. So apologies to Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson and and Vlad Guerrero Jr, but there’s other options we have today.
- Nathaniel Lowe
- Joey Votto
- Josh Bell … I can’t see Josh Bell leaving Wrigley without a homer, which is why I lean him over Naylor, very slightly…
SECOND BASE
- Miguel Vargas
- Jonathan India
- Gleyber Torres
THIRD BASE
Much like 1B, this is a good position, unlike 1B this is a pay up position besides Bohm.
- Max Muncy
- Manny Machado
- Jose Ramirez
- Alec Bohm
SHORTSTOP
Kind of a weird position today, fading Turner and Bichette could both wind up being dangerously stupid on my part, but I like some contrarian guys who haven’t had great stretches of late to do damage here.
- Xander Bogaerts
- Dansby Swanson
- Willy Adames
OUTFIELD – Mt. Rushmore
- Brandon Belt
- Stone Garrett
- TJ Friedl
- Adolis Garcia
OUTFIELD – Mid Range
- George Springer
- Fernando Tatis Jr
- Harper, Bryce
- Harrison Bader
OUTFIELD – Value
Dude… I put Stone Garrett in Mt. Rushmore…. Do you really need more value?
- Josh Palacios
- David Peralta
- Brandon Marsh
- Stone Garrett – OF – Washington Nationals – Chairman of The Dongers Club
- Brandon Belt – OF – Blue Jays
- Gary Sanchez – C – Padres
- Joey Votto – 1B – Reds
- Gleyber Torres – 2B – Yankees
- Dansby Swanson – SS – Cubs
- Adolis Garcia – OF – Rangers
- Max Muncy – 3B – Dodgers
- BONUS ………….. Josh Bell – 1B – Guardians
- BONUS 2………… Nate Lowe -1B – Rangers
For the record, Anytime HR props per DraftKings: Stone Garrett (+425), Freddie Freeman (+450)….
TODAY’S BETTING ANALYSIS
Good Over Upside — Meaning these have best potential to go way over…
- None
Good Under Upside — Meaning best potential to be a 2-1 or 5-2 type game.
- None
ML Targets
- Dodgers + Jays Parlay
- Reds
- Nationals
- Rangers
- Rockies