I was certainly not expecting Jameson Taillon to shut down anyone and I definitely was not expecting an 11 game ‘Main’ slate on DraftKings today which starts at 1:00 pm.  FanDuel did what I expected them to do and will have their ‘Main’ slate roll at 4pm. The games that are DK only include Cubs/Yankees, Jays/Tigers, Cardinals/White Sox, Orioles/Twins   WEATHER Royals at Guardians … This one has PPD risk, they should be able to get it in though.   And since today is not a Friday night “popular” slate, we have accurate pricing on pitchers with three guys in the five figure range on DK. MY THREE PITCHERS Kevin Gausman (DK: $11,500) It’s the Tigers, they are not good and Gausman is good.  That’s the dynamite analysis you need to know my friends.  Gausman has the best xWOBA projected advantage today, he’s coming off a regular amount of rest and should be able to have a great outing to justify paying for him. Tyler Wells (DK: $9000) I suspect we’ll get another low scoring Orioles/Twins game today and while Sonny Gray is likely to give up fewer hits/walks, it’s Wells who has the better statistical advantage in terms of strikeouts.  He also does not have the disadvantage of having just faced the Twins where as Gray saw Baltimore a week ago and that usually leans towards the hitters in the second meeting. Brady Singer (FD: $6600) & Gavin Williams (DK: $7000, FD: $8500) For FanDuel users, Brady Singer is in play because you do not have options of Gausman & Cole and he is a viable bargain at $6,600.  On DraftKings, trust in Gavin Williams a little bit more since the Royals are whiffing a ton and even though they’ve got a prior history with him a couple weeks ago I don’t think they’re gonna go off today because they cannot string together long innings.   OTHER PITCHING THOUGHTS I suspect you’ll see a decent amount of G.Cole & K.Gausman lineups paired together.  Each is likely to be 40%~ owned if I took a rough guess and maybe 15% of those have both since there are 11 games to optimize/punt around some cheap sub 3k hitters today.  It’s not a horrible strategy but I also don’t sense a dominant Cole outing. Chalky mid tier arms are likely Matt Manning, Miles Mikolas and Gavin Williams. Alex Wood is what DraftKings […]

Top Drivers Stewart Friesen ($9,700), Starting 35th Friesen should be chalk as a place differential option and one that I feel good about investing in. As a veteran I expect him to keep the truck clean while others around him make mistakes. Ty Majeski ($10,000), Starting 2nd Majeski has turned a major corner this week […]

A little scheduling note as we go into the All-Star Break.  This weekend looks like it will be a one article day on Saturday and then one on Sunday before we are off for four days next week.  I will have a brief HR Derby Betting guide for Monday’s derby once some more odds get posted for that and then radio silence Tue, Wed and Thu. Absolutely nothing.  It’ll be like I didn’t exist for those three days.  Which honestly, is probably a good thing for all of you.  No MLB, no Taysom Hill tweets, no complaining about MLB scheduling, etc…   And then Friday will hit us with a 14 game slate and then I’ll be bitching and moaning about Juan Soto not being on the main slate. But for now, let’s enjoy this weekend and before you know it College Football season will be upon us.   WEATHER We should be clear of any big issues tonight.   Tonight we have the return of Carlos Rodon to the mound making his Yankee debut and he is doing it against Jameson Taillon who returns to Yankee Stadium as a visitor. Nobody is above 10k on DraftKings even though we have a LHP with a 27% whiff rate against the Brewers, Zac Gallen against the Pirates and Corbin Burnes/Yu Darvish/Justin Verlander/Dylan Cease also going today.  DraftKings just said fuck it, enjoy the cheap pricing and build whatever you want — FanDuel Style.  I honestly don’t hate it today because it’s better to just make the depth of the pool even rather than make pricing so extreme that everyone builds the same way.   TOP PITCHERS Zac Gallen (DK: $9600, FD: $10,100) Gallen got hit by the Pirates in PNC earlier this season, a rare occurance for him and he has given up a HR in each of his last six starts, but the guy is an absolute machine at home, very comfortable in the closed roof environment at Chase Field and I would wager plenty of money that the D’Backs offense gives him support vs Rich Hill today. Andy Abbott (DK: $9900, FD: $10600) When do the wheels fall off on the young kid, that’s what I would like to know?  This isn’t to imply that he doesn’t clearly have some talent and isn’t going to be a quality pitcher long term.  But everyone has their struggles at some point and […]

Dear Thursday’s.  I am tired of being your bitch….  Today, we take back what is rightfully ours. Six games tonight ont he MAIN slate as the The Blue Jays and White Sox have sadly been removed from the DFS slate tonight.  The new series tonight include the Royals in Cleveland and Mariners in Houston.   WEATHER KC @ CLE … This is the one ugly spot today and I am not even talking about the Kansas City Royals.  It’s not too heavy of a storm/rain chance though so I think they’ll find a way to play and given the state of the Royals hitting Tanner Bibee is going to be someone people wanna use.   TOP PITCHERS KYLE BRADISH (DK: $7200, FD: $8500) Both offenses are garbage right now, the top 4 on the Yankees are very hot garbage & Bradish is quietly now the ace on this Orioles staff.  I trust him to keep it up and do not mind a game stack with Severino here.  If these two teams (Baltimore is tired and the Yankees are bad) who haven’t done shit consistently for a while now decide to go off tonight then I’ll just take next Thursday off from MLB DFS…. … … … Yes, there are no games next Thrusday, what’s your point???   SP2 OPTIONS LUIS SEVERINO (DK: $6900) Classic case of something has to give.  Severino is a roll the dice between good Sevvy and bad Sevvy but the Orioles are cold as you can be.  If he is gonna die, it’s gonna be Cedric Mullins who takes him yard. TANNER BIBEE (DK: $8700, FD: $9200) Pending weather, but as long as the game starts on time he is good to use and as of now it’s trending that it’ll be a cleanly played game with JULIO URIAS (DK: $9400) He’s going to pitch much better statistically speaking than last Saturday in Kansas City when the Royals posted 5 ER on him in the first inning thanks to nothing but bloop singles and the worlds greatest BABIP ever.  Problem is, he could pitch clean and effective today and still only get you 14 DK FPTS because he won’t throw more than 75-80 pitches.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Bullpen or spot starter likely for Houston… Eovaldi back in Fenway Park, should have 5+ strikeouts but that’s not enough for me today.   MARINERS Kelenic, Suarez, Hernandez […]

11 game Main slate today.   WEATHER TOR @ CWS – Threat of severe weather, hail, and lots of lots of rain chances throughout the day.  We’ll see the status closer to lock to determine what they want to do here.  Berrios vs Lynn is advantage Lynn believe it or not, but I wouldn’t go either SP for sure. Elsewhere its muggy, hot, muggy, hot….  Just miserable…   TOP PITCHER JUSTIN STEELE (DK: $10,300 / FD: $9700) Well now, what do we have here?  Not only a lefty vs the Brewers, but one who has been great most of the season and also is properly priced on DraftKings.  Steele isn’t walking batters, the Brewers strikeout among the worst in the league vs LHP and rank 18th, 26th, 27th and 25th against his four primary pitches. The only reason for Steele to be bad today is if he is going to start tipping pitches, and even then I would bet all my Taysom Hill memorabilia that a Craig Counsell led team could not figure out how to read a pitcher tipping pitches.  Lock in on Steele on both DK and FD.   SP2 OPTION(s) The 8k-9k range on DraftKings is very interesting today.  Lots of potential with Gray, Cobb, Bello, Lynn, Miller, Jos. Gray, all have delivered before but all but Cobb are facing some tough competition today — yeah, that includes Bobby Miller because young hits young and apparantly they Pittsburgh Pirates are going to move to Los Angeles as they seem to NEVER lose in Chavez. Rolling another high $ option with Steele would be Lopez or Senga and while Senga was my guy yesterday – that was when there weren’t any other SP’s I wanted to consider up there.  Lopez is not worth the 10k even though he should get 20 on DK… So we’ll go bargain hunting.   SETH LUGO (DK: $7900) If for some reason the Angels sit Ohtani after everyone is dropping like flies then this shoots up to be a pretty popular pick today.  You see Lugo and you think of the Yugo Car, but he’s better then that, he’s more like a Honda Civic.  He’s not gonna take you far in life with the ladies, but it will get you from point A to point B without a headache and without costing you much. MIKE SOROKA (DK: $6700) Fear not on the fact […]

Five night games today behind all the fireworks, including the return of Tarik Skubal and Juan Soto talking trash against Shohei Ohtani.   WEATHER Everything is clear.  The game in PETCO is a 6:40 EST start which means 3:40 Pacific out there.  Should be a game with the ball carrying a little more and creating the potential for a nice LAA/SD contrarian exposure.  I wouldn’t go too heavy but there are specific hitters I like to go yard in that game.   THE TOP SP MATCHUP Joe Musgrove vs Shohei Ohtani No doubt Ohtani will strikeout 6-7 Padres tonight, but he likely gives up a bomb to Tatis (not Soto) and the pitch count gets up high enough that you can get by without him. Musgrove, on the other hand, has more blow up potential IMO even though he is always great at home.  I will avoid both though and go with a full Blue Jays stack tonight…   SP RANKINGS Chris Bassitt Shohei Ohtani Tarik Skubal Emmet Sheehan   ANGELS vs PADRES I mentioned some Angels, here is the build.  Ward, Moustakas, Renfroe. The Padres is Tatis and Ha-Seong Kim ATHLETICS vs TIGERS Nothing major on Oakland’s side.  Skubal isn’t the best spot to get cute with Oakland.  Brent Rooker is your key Oakland hitter to look at. I want no part of the Tigers either.  Their K% has dropped vs LHP of late, but really they only make sense if you go with Ohtani/Musgrove to get cheaper hitters in, they’ll cool off coming away from Coors.   BLUE JAYS vs WHITE SOX LOVE Toronto and expect them to be my #1 team tonight.  Bichette, Springer, Vladdy and Varsho. Zero White Sox love from me today   BRAVES vs GUARDIANS Back to the Eddie Rosario well today.  Atlanta really pops off on the model, shocker I know.  If they can win their last 5 games before the break they would go into the break on a 28-3 run, which is just hilarious and something we should all be rooting for, except for Atlanta fans….   Rosario, Olson, d’Arnaud Former Ranger Kolby Allard will start for Atlanta, and likely give them 5 IP if he can.  He won’t repeat the 8K over 4 1/3 vs Minnesota, probably serves up a 2 run homer to Jose Ramirez in the first inning too.   Top “Stacks” Toronto Cleveland   CATCHER Travis d’Arnaud Danny […]

Well, I for one am not shocked that the Brittish DFS company not only had a site outage for the second straight 4th of July, but once again on America’s Holiday they have said fuck you to our pastime, so good luck playing over there today. We’re gonna focus on the MAIN 1pm slate on DraftKings, which is done properly by including 8 total games. I do not consider this to be a normal slate.  This is your high variance, high trust the gut type scenario.  Those wild games yesterday afternoon between the Cubs/Brewers and Astros/Rangers were just a sign of what we could expect today.   WEATHER There are five games in Dome’s on this afternoon slate, and the three which are not all have some potential for storms/rain. BAL/NYY … Should be able to play through it. TEX/BOS … Early delay likely KC/MIN … Big burst of rain/storms late in the game   On America’s fine Holiday we have Kenta Maeda, Kodai Senga and later tonight Shohei Ohtani all pitching.  This is the most sure sign that we are going to go to war with Asia very soon my friends.  We also have two Zach’s and a Zack going today.  Yes, that would be Eflin, Davies and Greinke But the most important name related correlation today comes from having three Kyle’s going today, including Gibson, Hendricks and how do you not lock button the cheapest pitcher on the slate — KYLE FREELAND, today?  I mean… C’mon folks, they’re just GIVING you the free narrative there. There is no clear top pitcher today.  My initial gut reaction to seeing Nola vs Eflin was that we would get a high scoring game there.  Philly vs Eflin gives us Realmuto for sure and I do not like Nola vs that Tampa lineup at all, but with both guys they’ll pitch into the 5th inning so you’re gonna amass point production, just not a 20 point game. Kenta Maeda? More like Kenta My Fade-a. MY TOP PITCHER Kodai Seinga (DK: $10,100) Arizona is a good lineup, but this is a chance to sneak one by since you wanna have prior exposure to Senga to deal with the truckload of stuff he throws and his Ghost pitch.  He’s my top arm since we for sure have a roof closed in Arizona today and his form has been very good of late.   SP2 OPTION(s) […]

Tomorrow is of course not only the 4th of July, but a Tuesday where you have a ton of afternoon games.  I really want to try and cover all of it but we’ll see what we get from a slate perspective between FanDuel and DraftKings.  Place your bets now on the number of slates which FanDuel will try to roll with, I think 7 seems optimal to them. My vote for the ideal slate tomorrow?  Start us at 1:10 with the Cardinals/Marlins, including the 3 1pm/2pm games and then the five games in the 4PM window, make that an 8 game main slate and then do a five game night slate starting at 6:40.  You can still have the Nationals 11am showdown slate and all is well.  My guess is that DK does three slates, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm.  And FD will have 11am, 1pm, 4pm, 6pm, 7pm with a bunch of cheezy ass contests names like Joey’s Chestnuts and Schlongs. For today meanwhile we have a six game MAIN slate even though there are two games in the afternoon and two games in the turbo/6pm window.   WEATHER Everything should play fine tonight with a chance of storms/late rain in New York and Minnesota   TOP PITCHER Logan Webb (DK: $9200) We should of course assume that Webb was already back in San Francisco and could watch the SNB game last night from the comfort of his couch while sipping on a case of Busch Beer – he’s definitely a Busch guy. I think there is most definitely some logic to a game-stack on pitching here, but my preferred side is picking on Seattle who has a 34% strikeout rate vs RHP over the last week and really that’s been them most of the season as well. SP2 OPTION(s) Mitch Keller (DK: $8800) Kershaw will not go for the Dodgers tonight, instead Michael Grove will start.  Just gonna erase what I had written between both of these guys here but Keller remains my SP2 choice.   OTHER PITCHING CONSIDERATIONS Domingo German has the worlds most unheralded perfect game I could have ever imagined.  Please, do not take the cheese and use him.   These 3 1/2 teams are all pretty equal tonight. ORIOLES Mullins, Rutschman, Hays A very cold lineup against a SP coming off a perfect game?  Yep.  The Orioles should be able to get a couple HR […]

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 […]

It’s a glorious Saturday, the first day of July.  We are officially in the 10 day stretch to the All-Star break which is slightly earlier this season and often a time when I am able to detach from Baseball or maybe like, a day or two and then come back.  Usually when we go into the break it means a steady streak of cashing day in and day out.  Last night was a good start to that run and so let’s keep it going today as I very much feel locked in on this weekends series. We have a 7 game MAIN slate this afternoon in the 4PM window after 3 games going early and then 5 in the evening. TBD as always on a Saturday night article (translation, yeah, I’ll do one)   WEATHER Rain and Smoke in Pittsburgh.  What a potent combination and this is the only one I could see getting PPD since it is a divisional game.  There is risk in both SP. Rain storms in Baltimore, game should play though. Atlanta summer heat and storms.   TOP PITCHER DYLAN CEASE (DK: $8000 / FD: $10300) In the DFS world the term “smash” is way overused and a day game in Oakland usually has offense with it, but there’s no path by which I don’t see Cease continuing his late run of doing extremely well and pushing towards double digit strikeouts. If you are an avid reader of the Dongers Club, I applaud you, and you should also know why Cease has turned things around by facing the Marlins, Dodgers, Rangers & Angels.  It’s clear folks, he is the new Bauer in that he does well versus teams who haven’t seen him enough to know you just need to be patient and not chase.  Oakland is not that team.  Lock him in. SP2 OPTION(s) JUSTIN VERLANDER (DK: $8300 / FD: $8800) I’ll bite here on Verlander at this price mostly because one alt option Kyle Bradish, has storm/weather concerns and a surging Twins team in a park they definitely fit well in.  JV is pitching well in Citi Field, you’ll get 2.5x from him today for sure on DraftKings.   OTHER PITCHING CONSIDERATIONS Nate Eovaldi pitches well and is best pivot off Verlander IMO. Eury Perez has been fantastic in his rookie season and now he gets the white hot Braves after they hit so many […]