It’s a special day as we have a solid 12 game Sunday slate, a ode to the old 15 day all day slates almost but without three showdown games at Noon, 4PM and then 7PM tonight. So the six teams whom you are not subjected too today include Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Anaheim, San Francisco, New York and Philadelphia. Unless, of course, you are in need of island showdown action in which case I do not fault you one bit for making Junior Caminero, Jorge Soler and Bryce Harper your captains.
We’re also quickly approaching the end of Sunday MLB DFS. Some of you probably find that to be a good thing, and certainly I do not blame you. It’s actually almost the end of weekend MLB DFS as well. So, enjoy it.
RANDOM BASEBALL NOTE
The Red Sox/Nationals trade is a brilliant trade for both sides. Washington returns Brady House to 3B while getting some much needed pitching help and Boston gets someone who is actually built to rake in Fenway Park in Curtis Mead. I love this deal for both sides, especially Boston.
WEATHER
Chance of storms in two spots, but no PPD risk
- Athletics at Twins: Hope mother nature just wipes these teams off the planet.
- Reds at Cardinals
Three aces today going in climate controlled environments. The Miz, Gilbert and deGrom. The latter of which are facing each other down in Texas & will be fighting to see who is first to give up that solo homer that they both can be prone too doing. Miz actually is NOT facing the highest K% on the slate. These Rockies do a good job of getting their bats on the ball — but he is the Miz and the opponent really doesn’t matter.
LOGAN GILBERT (DK: $10,300)
All that above aside, Gilbert’s going to be my top choice here. He’s in such good form at the moment & I don’t see a blow-up coming today. I’m not opposed to being cute and finding a way to stack Gilbert & Misiorowski together and punt some hitters but my lean is save a little with Gilbert.
CONNOR PRIELIPP (DK: $7300)
Here, I’ll fix this damn series. There’s about 8 pitchers who are in the 7k-8k range today and most of them just terrify the piss out of me. But, with Prielipp we’re trusting the opponent to keep sucking as the Athletics are 30th vs 4-seam fastballs, 28th against 2-seamers and 28th against sliders. Those three combine for essentially all of what Connor throws & his velo on the 4-seamer is doing well. The Athletics should be a good strikeout boost and if the weather holds off he probably gets a Win as well.
SUNDAY SLEEPERS
- Kyle Freeland (COL: $5200) – Absolutely love the path of taking Freeland to get into a low scoring pitchers duel with Misiorowski where Miz strikes out 12 and Freeland gets 12 ground ball outs.
- Andrew Abbott (CIN: $7500) – The Reds win today. But it’s just gonna be hot as hell, so quite the risk there.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- Ranger Suarez: He should not be $9700. This isn’t someone that you’re going to win a tournament with when Gilbert, Miz, deGrom are all out there. Shoot, even Ashcraft likely bounces back to finally get back on track somewhat. I’d lean Gausman before Suarez for strikeouts. Ranger might get 2 if he is lucky — but this isn’t going to be a scenario where he implodes. He’ll be alright….
- ReyNO and Shane Baddddz…. A billion runs in this game. Avoid
- Freddy Peralta will be better. He will give up 3 homers though.
With a 12 game slate finally we can go back to my old model of putting games into tiers (A/B/C) and just focusing on the A’s with one or two B’s. The nice thing here is that it can equally be three buckets of 4. So find your top 4 games, pick from there your favorite one offs. Then in the second tier that is where you probably find your core stack that will be a little contrarian and then the third tier is what you force yourself to just ignore. This doesn’t mean you cannot take a ‘high total’ game and put it in your third tier. You absolutely can and should do that with a big slate to reduce the noise.
My Tier A:
- Diamondbacks / Nationals
- Braves / Orioles
- Dodgers / Mets: We have traditions. Some of them are worth skipping. This one, is not.
- Astros / White Sox
My Tier B:
- Reds / Cardinals
- Blue Jays / Red Sox
- Cubs / Pirates
- Padres / Marlins: Slight edge for this one over the Royals/Tigers …. Slight.
My Tier C:
- Royals / Tigers: Even though I trust neither pitcher.
- Rockies / Brewers
- Athletics / Twins
- Mariners / Rangers
TOP SACKS
REDS
They strike out a ton but Leahy is not someone they should do that against. They’ve also seen him once before & are the side I lean to benefit from the heat the most today. Love Cincinnati to win and project them to score 8+ runs.
- Sal Stewart
- JJ Bleday
- Eugenio Suarez
DIAMONDBACKS
Tough call here between AZ & Washington. But Mikolas? Seriously. Trust Zona, play Kepler. Enjoy the 8 runs.
- Max Kepler
- Ketel Marte
- Nolan Arenado
BRAVES / ORIOLES
You see dead people, I see offense. Shoot, maybe it’s the same thing today, but I see the Braves bullpen really struggling, so the Orioles are going to touch up Lopez & have fun pilling on afterwards. Not to be lost, however, are the Braves smoking Baz in this one. His walk rate is down — that’s good for him, but not likely to hold up today.
- Drake Baldwin / Matt Olson
- Pete Alonso / Dylan Beavers / Colton Cowser
CATCHER
The smart move here is just to punt catcher with a Sunday Cheapie play. I love Baldwin, but with the top pitchers likely dominating you’re probably best to use this as one of two positions to punt down into the $2500 range.
- Drake Baldwin
- Connor Wong
FIRST BASE
You got Sunday boys in Pete Alonso & Matt Olson squaring off, while both Stewart/Steer and Lowe offer good 1B options from the Reds as my top overall team today. This appears to be the deepest infield spot today
- Nathaniel Lowe (or Stewart or Steer, but they can be moved to other spots)
- Pete Alonso
- Michael Busch
- Matt Olson
SECOND BASE
- Ketel Marte
- Brandon Lowe: It’s been a while … Jameson Taillon should help that.
- Jackson Holliday
- Jose Altuve
THIRD BASE
Favorite HR parlay today? Mead and House to both homer.
- Brady House
- Curtis Mead
- Max Muncy
- Sal Stewart / Eugenio Suarez: In reds stacks obviously
SHORTSTOP
- Elly De La Cruz
- Geraldo Perdomo
- Jeremy Pena
OUTFIELD – Mt. Rushmore of One Offs
- Max Kepler
- Teoscar Hernandez
- Luis Robert Jr.
- Mike Yastrzemski
OUTFIELD – Three Asians and JJ Bleday Walk Into a Bar Tier
- Shohei Ohtani
- Seiya Suzuki
- J.J. Bleday
- Masataka Yoshida
- Max Kepler – OF – Arizona Diamondbacks – Chairman of The Dongers Club
- Curtis Mead – 3B – Red Sox
- Sal Stewart – 1B – Reds
- Drake Baldwin – C – Braves
- Brandon Lowe – 2B – Pirates
- Jeremy Pena – SS – Astros
- Luis Robert Jr – OF – Mets
- Teoscar Hernandez – OF – Dodgers
- BONUS …. Brady House – 3B – Nationals
BETTING CARD
- 2 UNITS: Reds ML
- Dodgers / Mets OVER 9
- Diamondbacks ML
- Red Sox ML
- Braves / Orioles OVER 8.5