This is your typical Thursday day off for MLB.  Of the games going today, two of them are make-up games (Braves/Phillies & Diamondbacks/Nationals) and then tonight there are 3 more games which we will just pretend are never going to happen. The Diamondbacks/Nationals game is a make-up from a couple weeks ago and the D’Backs are just in town for one day, likely tired as hell seeing all this rain and eager to get back on the plane and head back out west to face the Giants.  Look aheads really aren’t a thing in MLB, but holy heck this is a lookahead spot — hammer the under on this game.   WEATHER Mother nature is giving MLB a pass here today.  The two make-up games are both in rainy spots but it looks like it will be clear enough to play through both of them.  Those spots are ATL/PHI and ARI/WSH…   I could make a case for about 7 starting pitchers on this slate and there’s only 9 as Boston should be going with a true bullpen game.   ARMS I AM ON AARON NOLA This settles in as Nola, Ryan and Snell.  I cannot get on the Joe Ryan spot in warm Minnesota and with Boston hitting very well of late, he is the one who I just don’t see burning me by fading him.  The Giants are also hitting well of late too, but Snell is going to be right here with Nola overall. I assume the weather is clear, if it shifts obviously then we need to go down to Blake Snell, but you will see plenty of Atlanta ownership against Nola since they have positive history against him, but this is an advantage Nola spot coming off the extra days rest and a likely quick get away afternoon 2-0 Phillies win. Don’t be shocked if Bryce Elder has a 20+ DK game too, I like him a good amount. JAKE IRVIN When they announced this game a couple weeks ago as a fly in and fly out spot for Arizona, I had to circle it as a definite under.  Unfortunately we get Tommy Henry and Jake Irvin, two guys who can pitch well but won’t run away with any slate for you.  If we can get depth from Irvin, who has pitched well for the Nationals then we’re going to be just fine.  Go contrarian […]

WEATHER All games play TOP ARM LUIS CASTILLO Like Castillo a lot even going into the smaller park.  Yankees hit early last night but still no power at all. SECONDARY ARMS GAVIN WILLIAMS Williams is a legit prospect for the Tribe, he’s getting an easy intro with Oakland and should produce a safe score despite being a rookie which I normally fade YU DARVISH Padres win tonight and they’ll need Darvish to go 7 for that to happen OTHER PITCHING NOTES Ohtani is going to do fine vs the Dodgers and should finish with 9 strikeouts.  Don’t hate paying for him but also like the Castillo play as much for cheaper   RANGERS Seager, Lowe These are the top 2 plays tonight across the entire slate.  Kopech and power to lefties is the reason and these two don’t suck at all.  10+ mph winds out to right should help a little bit but probably isn’t needed for either of these guys. MARINERS Kelenic, Raleigh We can see a 4 man Mariners build working out tonight, I expect them to put up 5+ more runs and get to Brito early. BOSTON / MINNESOTA BOS:  Verdugo, Duvall MIN:  Correa, Buxton, Kiriloff Still warm in Minnesota and finally the Twins are waking up and Sonny Gray vs Boston is not going to finish well for him.     CATCHER Cal Raleigh Jonah Heim   FIRST BASE Nate Lowe Josh Naylor Alex Kiriloff   SECOND BASE Luis Rengifo Marcus Semien Ed Julien   THIRD BASE Rafael Devers Josh Jung Jose Ramirez   SHORTSTOP Corey Seager Carlos Correa   OUTFIELD – Mt. Rushmore Jarred Kelenic Teoscar Hernandez Seth Brown Adam Duvall   Jarred Kelenic – OF – Seattle Mariners – Chairman of The Dongers Club     TODAY’S BETTING ANALYSIS Good Over Upside — Meaning these have best potential to go way over… Rangers/White Sox Red Sox/Twins   Good Under Upside — Meaning best potential to be a 2-1 or 5-2 type game. Braves/Phillies Padres/Giants   ML Targets Mariners Padres Rangers Twins  

7 game early slate today and 6 game Main slate tonight.  The seven games going early include: Blue Jays at Marlins Orioles at Rays Cubs at Pirates Rockies at Reds Royals at Tigers Diamondbacks at Brewers Mets at Astros   WEATHER No weather concerns early.   TOP ARM ZAC GALLEN (DK: $10,100, FD: $10,500) No chance Mr. Jesse Winker touches the baseball today after his HR we called last night, so just mark down those K’s in the box score, but make sure one is backwards so you don’t get canceled for being racist. Oh, and throw in some more for Adames, Urias and Tellez too.  Maybe a walk for Tellez.  But really I cannot find a single hitter on the Brewers I like, which means they might put up 10 in the first inning given how that usually plays for for stud pitchers.  Gallen hasn’t thrown over 100 pitches in his last 2 starts which is a good thing here, he should be fresh to go deep.   SECONDARY ARMS ANDREW ABBOTT (DK: $8,200) As much as I am backing the Reds right now and through this season now I am still not buying into AA long term as more than a #3/#4 arm, although really that’s what they just want him to be.  But if you listen to DFS analysts you probably think he shits golden turtles with PhD’s every time he eats McDonalds food. All that aside, the Rockies are in a getaway spot before returning home after this road trip (DO NOT GOOGLE WHO THEY PLAY AT HOME THIS WEEKEND IF YOU DONT WANT TO RUIN YOUR DAY) and their two best hitters right now are both on the left side (McMahon/Jones) — so we’re basically wondering if Randal Grichuk or Jurickson Profar are gonna be able to touch Abbott’s pitch from the left side and maybe Grichuk can get the bat out in front to pull one to LF or it’s going to end up going foul in his 2nd AB today.  Either way, Abbott will come through with another 15-18 point performance. BRADY SINGER (DK: $5,500) Hang on.  Singer vs the Tigers for 5500?   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Gausman vs Sandy is quite the name draw, can Gausman strike out Luis Arraez though?  That’s the drama I want to see in this game.   I won’t laugh at you if you want to go Gausman […]

Broken down by pricing tiers, Mark Farris outlines his favorite PGA DFS plays on DraftKings

Somewhere out there in the DFS land someone is going to mention that today is a “big” slate.  It’s not, we are deprived of four Turbo slate games my friends.  Some might say this is a random Tuesday, and they would be right, but it’s not your average random Tuesday night because there’s some large contests out there in DFS land.   WEATHER Couple minor spots with rain but all should play. Cardinals at Nationals Cubs at Pirates Rockies at Reds Athletics at Guardians – Expect this one to be delayed at the start then play. TOP ARM GERRITT COLE (DK: $10.9k, FD: $10,600) Mr. $100k for me last year is getting a Mariners team who has been striking out more than a single white nerdy dude who lives in an apartment and sells DFS advice on the internet does at his local watering hole.  The 4-9 part of Seattle’s lineup is strikeout heaven right now for opposing RHP, Cole is getting what should be a quiet weather night in Yankee Stadium and most likely this game finishes as a 1-0 final, just not sure we can be positive who wins it with the way the Yankee lineup is hitting.  But Cole is our guy today for 8 IP, 10K performance.   SECONDARY ARMS DYLAN CEASE (DK: $7700, FD: $8,600) Two guys who are probably too cheap in Cease and Verlander, and while Verlander gets all the attention tonight I will jump on the Cease heater coming off a 10K performance last outing and now facing the best team in the AL right now.  It’s dangerous, it’s contrarian, it’s also a Dylan Cease night my friends. MARCUS STROMAN (DK: $8900, FD: $10,300) – Minor rain pop up concerns A guy who isn’t known for strikeouts against a lineup not known for strikeouts is not exactly a “win me the slate” spot when you are almost 9k and certainly not for his 10.3k price on FanDuel.  But if you put that aside, we should see Stroman have a clean game today, he’s pitched well all season and should be pitching well down the stretch to either help the Cubs or get potentially shipped out somewhere else before the trade deadline.  7 innings of limited hits and runs tonight gets him into the 18 DK FPTS range which should be a fine pairing with Cole.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES I really like both […]

This Monday kicks off what should be a big contest week across the mean DFS streets there at DraftKings and FanDuel.  It’s their last chance to grab some of that GOLF DFS money from everyone before we really go into a 2+ month stretch without any other big sports (sans The Open in July). Tonight starts off with two games in the 6:40 PM Turbo window not on the MAIN slates and then a 7 game MAIN slate on both FD and DK. Overall tonight is an UGLY slate, so I would tread lightly and not be afraid to just go all in on a contrarian spot.   WEATHER Rockies at Reds — If you had this as the game of the night back in March then congrats.  Unfortunately, it’s got a TON of rain and likely is going to be PPD long before this article actually publishes.  It should be a rough week for the Reds grounds crew as they have rain projected every day and a full week of home games coming outside of Thursday when BOTH these teams are off.  So basically they have four days to figure out how to get 3 games in and my guess is today they’ll just go with a PPD and figure it out Tue-Thu. Red Sox at Twins — It’s gonna be hotter than … well, tits on a Kirby Puckett blow up doll, up in Target Field.   TOP ARM CORBIN BURNES (DK: $10k, FD: $10.6k) Normally I would back the Diamondbacks on the road in a sneaky park, but this isn’t the best matchup hitting the road for your first game after a nice long homestand.  They’ll struggle to do work on Burnes who’s been solid of late vs LHH in particular and he’ll see about 6 of them tonight.   SECONDARY ARMS MICHAEL WACHA (DK: $8300) The mighty Giants, fresh off the most runs they have ever scored in a 3 game series vs the Dodgers now will be shut down by the suddenly resurgent Michael Wacha?!?!  Yes, you are reading that correctly.  Don’t overblow the fact that the Giants beat up on some bad Dodger pitching and bullpen right now, they should go back to being bad at home and it’s hard not to like what Wacha is doing of late.  He is a big fat NO on FanDuel though, not 10k, GTFOH… MERRILL KELLY (DK: […]

Happy Father’s Day to everyone who is going to be celebrating today by working hard to grow their kids inheritance somehow betting on the Angels to not blow an 8-2 lead against the lowly Royals! There is no brunch game today, because Dad’s don’t want Brunch although the Orioles @ Cubs game is a 1:05 start which is a Noon start there in Wrigley. The Yankees and Red Sox are playing two up in Fenway in a split double-header, with the first game on FanDuel’s MAIN slate and the second game the Showdown Sunday Night Baseball game for both sites.   WEATHER Tigers at Twins … They can wait it out and get this game in, but there is a strong chance the rain continues long enough to have them just PPD the game.  Both teams have games tomorrow at home, they can wait it out. Rockies at Braves … Chance of pop-up storms.  Typical Hotlanta day. Angels at Royals … Rain all morning, should clear out before first pitch   TOP ARM / SUNDAY SLEEPER Ronel Blanco (DK: $5500, FD: $6300) All good things come to an end, even the Cincinnati Reds hot streak.  Do you all remember my love affair with Jake Junis?  Okay, so there was a little homerism there, but Blanco is basically the Dominican version of Junigoat.  He’s gonna throw his slider over and over and it doesn’t necessarily pop off the charts in terms of movement, but it just dies right at the front of the plate allowing him to get by with it and have a pretty good 27.2% swinging strike rate.  Cincinnati is fairly aggressive on sliders biting on that pitch 30%+ of the time and at this price in a spot where I see the Reds streak ending we can comfortably take him today coming off two 94 pitch games.   SECONDARY ARMS Jon Gray (DK: $10.1k, FD: $10.4k) Jon Gray is arguably the next best pitcher right now on this slate but Toronto has managed to drastically reduce their strikeouts of late – down to just 19% over the last 10 days.  It’s hard for me to push him up as your top must own even though he was on a roll prior to missing a start due to a blister.  However, the Jays are RHH and Gray has not been blown up by RHH at all, gotta think he […]

Today’s features on the MLB menu include a 2 game early slate, this MAIN 4PM 9 game slate and then a 4 game pass out Saturday night slate. TBD on doing an article for that late 4 game slate.   WEATHER Every thing on this 4PM slate will play and all games are actually starting at 4:05 or 4:10, there’s no 5pm or 6pm games included here.   TOP ARM(S) Logan Gilbert (DK: $10,300) This has been a very weird season for Gilbert.  He’s either been rolling out and giving up lots of hits and some early inning struggles or cruising along with decent results.  And of late he has been more bad then good allowing 6 HR over his last 5 starts combined and some low strikeout rates in that span too. The White Sox could just be the cure he needs.  They are 18th vs four-seamers and 27th in xWOBA vs Sliders on the season, a potential advantage for Gilbert to get going early and cruise through with a nice 6 inning clean bounce back game.   SECONDARY ARMS Hunter Greene (DK: $9000, FD: $10.2k) The ‘cheap’ options today leave a lot to be desired, but so do the mid range guys as well.  The upside of Greene is the obvious fact that his velo could negate Houston’s strength of not striking out. Jake Irvin (DK) Jake’s best pitch so far has been his breaking-ball, which coincidentally is the Marlins worst pitch as an entire lineup.  Sometimes we’ll over analyze pitch type metrics because there’s a lot more variables which go into that type of information, but we also should have some strong winds blowing in from LF in Nats Park today and I would suspect the Marlins are a chalky ‘value’ team too with tons of cheap bats throughout the lineup.  If you want a leverage play for cheap, Irvin is my favorite choice.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Don’t ‘pay up’ for pitching to try and get stud performances.  You would pay up on this slate simply to avoid getting negative or less than 6 points total. I don’t like Braxton Garrett because he relies on opponents chasing a ton, something the Nationals don’t do.     RANGERS Corey Seager, Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Jung Please let me know when Seager’s homer lands.  Toronto turning to Trevor Richards against this lineup, even if he is slated to only […]

Coming back to the perfect Friday MLB DFS configuration is peak joy.  A 2:20 PM Cubs/Orioles game should be well underway by now on the Friday drinking before technically a 3 day holiday weekend + Fathers Day + US Open on TV coming up and ladies and gentlemen.  We have a 14 game MAIN slate tonight.   WEATHER Marlins at Nationals – Rain chances with storms around gametime, but I expect this one … ah, you know what, I am not gonna predict Nationals games.  Nope.  Not gonna do it. Cardinals at Mets – We are monitoring this one VERY closely.  Big PPD risk but if they do PPD it I would assume its before lock time. Roof closed in Arizona   TOP ARM(S) Joe Ryan (DK: $10,600) Almost a 100% full slate and Joe Ryan could still wind up being a 40% chalk pitcher despite three straight games where he has not put up elite numbers.  Ignore the game log reading though because the Tigers are 25th and 28th respectively in splits against his primary pitch usage this season.  Their inability to take walks is also going to help him here tonight and he has to easily be the most sure thing safe option. Zac Gallen (DK: $10,200, FD: $10,800) Love Smash Gallen today.  The Guardians lefties won’t phase him, he has been great vs LHH this season and really for a good part of his career.  Cleveland’s recent power surge in San Diego also does not phase me here as I trust the larger sample size of what we know the offense is.   Gallen is great at home, he should be great tonight as long as Jose Ramirez stays quiet.   SECONDARY ARMS Patrick Sandoval (DK: $7300, FD: $8100) He is the clear cut #1 value for me if Salvador Perez is out.  If Salvy is in though I would still use him just don’t think he is as clean as we want, but the price for someone I am extremely confident wins today at 7300 here on DraftKings makes him the no doubt SP2 for me.  He will beat Rich Hill folks.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Everyone will use Rich Hill for $6700 vs the Brewers because they’ve been dog poop against LHP.  I hate the spot for Hill who is coming off throwing 119 pitches on June 9th vs the Mets and last I checked he […]

Top Pitchers Sonny Gray (MIN), $9,300 Sonny comes in after a bounceback effort in his last start against the Blue Jays. Prior to that, he had been roughed up in two consecutive starts but tonight he gets a great matchup against the Detroit Tigers. Detroit has the eighth-highest K-rate in baseball at 24 percent. They […]