For today’s early slate we have both FD and DK ignoring the Royals/Diamondbacks game and DraftKings has the Rangers/Reds game as a Showdown only contest at 12:35.  This type of stuff like last night is very annoying when we have start times of games about 30 minutes apart and they are on different slates just for money grabs.  Are we gonna convert NFL to be 4PM as the Main slate and 1PM as the Turbo slate going forward?  Last night was a perfect example of why larger MLB slates are better because once again all those Turbo games were filled with good options and this moron decided to stack up the White Sox. On to Wednesday, five game early slate (DK) and six game (FD) now and then another short main slate article tonight. WEATHER All early games are fine and chilly with two dome games (Milwaukee, Toronto)   We have two Germans, two Asians a Tanner and a Tyler, which is about as nice of a way as I can say this group of pitchers sucks. FREDDY PERALTA Chalky Freddy Peralta, winds up with him giving up 3 HR or striking out 12.  It’s the Tigers, who have won two in a row vs the Brewers in Milwaukee, so I am going to lean that the striking out 12 is bound to happen here. DOMINGO GERMAN Another cold game in Minnesota and German was great vs the Twins on April 15th getting 41% CSW in that start at Yankee Stadium.  Let’s not expect him to repeat that exactly today but out of the 9.5 pitching options we have, he’s servicable. TANNER HOUCK Houck is the one arm who I could see matching Peralta’s upside.  Would use him as a direct pivot off Peralta with some Tigers bats to further your leverage.   FanDuel Only:  Jon Gray vs Graham Ashcraft.  Back Gray as an SP1.   Pitching notes on other guys … Cleveland has called up Tanner Bibee, a 6’2 RHP prospect as we’re likely to see Cleveland shift in the new era of pitching to jumpstart their slow season.  It’s a rookie SP but he is pitching in the cold, I don’t think he’ll be terrible outside of early inning walks and a Ryan McMahon homer.  He is $8,100 on FD and not in the DK playerpool. Kenta Maeda is back on the mound, let’s see what injury he […]

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

WEATHER Cold and Wind blowing IN at Wrigley Field.  There’s also some lingering rain but I believe they play and I believe the pitchers will get hit a little but obviously not a lot of scoring or HR upside. Expect roof to be OPEN in Arizona   There’s no free square like Strider last night and really lots of arms that are in question here today. NESTOR CORTES Minnesota could not be more jeckyl and hyde vs LHP right now.  On paper there’s potential for some good splits in this lineup but in reality we also see plenty of strikeouts vs LHP and just overall average performances.  It’s once again chilly and the wind is blowing IN at Target, so Nestor should be fine and hopefully he can repeat some of what Sale did vs the Twins last week. A big decision on DK today is Nestor or Joe Ryan, who should wind up doing well like Sonny Gray did last night but Nestor is my lean to beat him and paying for both makes things tricky on DK.  If you want to be simple and move on, just gamestack these two together. BLAKE SNELL If there IS rain here I would shy away, but if it’s just cold and misty then I trust Snell with the wind blowing in and a night Wrigley game.  I mentioned that there will be runners on base on both sides, but Snell is more likely to have that big strikeout game and can get out of the jams tonight.  His FanDuel $7600 price is very tempting.   Why I am still trusting Brady Singer … In other words, you can just keep on reading beyond this because yes, I write him up all the time and yeah he hasn’t been 2022 Singer the last couple of starts.  I base most of that on his time spent in the WBC where he sat on his ass mostly and he has struggled so far getting the same whiff % and giving up too much hard contact.  But he’s still great vs LHB and Arizona might roll out 5 of them tonight, so I’ll take the risk as an SP2 or second lineup with Singer tonight on a day with very limited pitching options.   While this slate is weak in terms of ‘lock’ options up top, it does offer some depth in what I would categorize as […]

WEATHER Seven games on the main slate, no issues with any of them playing tonight. Expect roof to be closed in Toronto, it is chilly up there. Expect roof to be close din Milwaukee, it’s also chilly there. Expect roof to be OPEN in Arizona   SPENCER STRIDER Easily the top pitcher on the slate.  He will get Jorge Soler to go down swinging on a pitch up around his face in Soler’s first AB as he is feeling good off some good hacks yesterday and wants to hit homers back in Atlanta — he won’t off Strider.  And this will continue throughout the night as Strider should be able to get 7+ strikeouts and only Jazz could touch him up for a double. JORDAN MONTGOMERY I don’t want to pay $9500 for Jordan Montgomery and I know you don’t either.  But we both should do this much like we should probably eat healthy every once and a while too. MATTHEW BOYD And if you don’t like that lefty, let’s try a cheaper one who isn’t going to be chalky.  Boyd’s slowly inching his way to being fully back and all I want is a 13-14 DK result here.  Expect the Brewers to insert Mike Brosseau and Luke Voit into the lineup tonight, which are risks I will gladly take.   This sort of sets up as a gamestack night as I see a few games dominating the scoring… ROYALS at D’BACKS ARI:  Carroll, Rojas, Marte KC:  Perez, Pasquantino To Chase Field we go for starting off our offense tonight.  Go heavy on the Diamondbacks to beat up on Brad Keller.  Arizona is a decent contact team who should be patient as well and I see getting some walks, steals and long crooked innings.  Corbin Carroll projects to have the highest whiff rates here but he also is most likely to come up with the bases loaded.  His upside is tremendous. For the Royals, welcome to the Salvy Perez week, he should get hot and with that comes MJ Melendez and Vinnie Pasquantino as the benefactors around him in the lineup. WHITE SOX Benintendi, Vaughn, Jimenez, Grandal I’m on the White Sox all series long.  They get Bassitt today, Berrios tomorrow and Kikuchi on Wed.  If they can’t start lifting the ball vs these three then just pack it up, send them home and let the Southside mens Softball team […]

WEATHER Chilly in pretty much all the spots today.  One day it’s 85 and feels like 100, the next day you wake up and its 35 degrees in the morning, Spring.  Fun… All games play   This fine Sunday brings us aces like deGrom, Kershaw, Burnes and Fried.  It features the return of Zach Eflin to the mound, Kevin Gausman in Yankee Stadium and E-Rod in Baltimore.  Young stars Hunter Greene and Grayson Rodriguez are on the bump and so too are veterans Lucas Giolito and Marcus Stroman.  And of course, we have the holy trinity on a Sunday with Cristian Javier, Jesus Luzardo and Patrick Corbin. JACOB deGROM I may just start using this exact write up going forward for every deGrom start…  It does not matter who he plays, where they play and what day or time they are playing.  Using deGrom is a guessing game.  The guess is how many pitches will he throw and does that result compared to the rest of the options on the slate make you comfortable enough using him.  Will he throw 40 pitches and get you 12?  Will he throw 90 pitches and get you 40?  Or is it somewhere in between.  I don’t care if he is facing Oakland, Kansas City, Toronto, Houston or the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, it’s entirely a guessing game on how much he will pitch and today I think he’s in the 70-75 range and puts up a 28-30 on DK. MAX FRIED I actually would consider Max #1 today and with the depth on pitching I don’t hate coming off deGrom and starting your build with him at around 5% ownership tops?  We are many years now into knowing that you simply do not touch Fried in his first 2-3 starts of the season and since he went on the IL and burned through a few of those we got everyone to forget just how good he can be.  He showed that in his return on April 17 vs San Diego, going 5 IP, throwing 79 pitches and dominating his command with 0 BB. Houston still scares people because of their name and lack of strikeouts, but the Braves will avoid the sweep with Fried going into the 90’s on his PC today and delivering once again. HUNTER GREENE Greene off a start when he didn’t last long feels like a GREAT time to buy […]

Natural instinct today is to go opposite of all four previous games, but I still think the Isles are going to be able to push the Hurricanes, so that’s the one I am leaning on going same as the prior game. EDMONTON McDavid, Kane Evander Kane is a must today, I would take him as […]

WEATHER DET @ BAL – If they wait they can get the game in eventually and this is possibly our first true test of teams realizing they can get games in that start very late because of the faster pace of play.  If they wait until 10pm to start they could still be done by midnight, so I think they play. Chase Filed Roof = Open Miller Park Roof = TBD Day of week in Anaheim =   I think we can live in the mid range on pitching tonight.  Framber Valdez will be good vs Atlanta, but at 10k he won’t be dominant to worry about fading.  Wade Miley isn’t delivering a second straight ridiculous start and the Cardinals know Luis Castillo all way too well to trust him.  Joe Musgrove makes his debut for the Padres tonight in Arizona vs Merrill Kelly in Chase Field with the roof open, big time fade. KYLE GIBSON I said we would live in the mid-range and the poster child for mid-range is Kyle Gibson.  Take a risk tonight if they start in a delay with Gibson who once they do start will be able to get through the Tigers lineup with lots of ground balls and a low pitch count giving him depth. ANDREW HEANEY Oakland in Texas seems to always bring them a boost, but their 35% DCPA strikeout rate today projected vs Heaney is the boost that helps in DFS.  Heaney has shown the ability to have huge K games — especially at home. GARRETT WHITLOCK A few sleeper options today for me are Whitlock, Mikolas and even Fujinami.  Out of these options it’s Whitlock who I would roll the dice with     This is mostly a one off or 2-2-2 type slate.  A lot of pitchers going will get ‘hit’ enough to not trust them to dominate, but there isn’t that full 5 man stack that’s gonna go nuts today, so spread it out among these spots. ANGELS Mike Trout, Taylor Ward, Gio Urshela Trout will be back in the lineup tonight and Greinke does not pitch well anymore on the road.  He should go no more than 5 at best and the Royals pen will give up a few runs as well tonight. ROYALS Bobby Witt Jr, Salvador Perez, Edward Olivares, Matt Duffy Much easier time tonight vs Tyler Anderson than Shohei last night.  No kidding, right?  Good weather […]

No site synchronicity today.  DraftKings has just 6 games on their ‘Early’ slate while FanDuel has included the Marlins/Guardians 3:05 game, which is the 1st game of a double header and the original one scheduled.  This is somewhat unusual for DK to not include a DH game but I have no complaints because I just hate DH games for DFS purposes. WEATHER MIA @ CLE – Probably good that DK did not include this game.  It’s rainy again but they’re likely to find a way to play one of the two games.  I think the early one gets in so on FD you can trust hitters here. TOR @ NYY – Weather is PERFECT for Manoah to pitch well where he made his MLB debut.  It’s foggy, mid 60’s with rain coming later in the day but the game will play and I expect a great SP environment WSH @ MIN – Oh look.  It’s cold in Minnesota again with a chance of snow showers.  Bring back the Metrodome. LAD @ CHC – 1060 West Addison should get the game in.  Maybe a delay, but no major risks here IMO.  Wind isn’t that big of a deal either. COL @ PHI – Kinda shocked they only moved the start time up by an hour to 3:05.  This indicates to me they’re confident they will get the game in although a DH on Sunday is fine for both teams given their schedule afterwards.  Given the start time change, lets assume they play and they play quickly. CWS @ TB (Game is in a Costco Warehouse with a roof) – COSTCO Special today, come one, come all, get your free Kirkland samples and enough toilet paper to handle all the shits your pitchers are going to take today.   PABLO LOPEZ I strongly think that this game gets PPD.  But if it doesn’t then Lopez is a no brainer not gonna get lit up pick today. ALEK MANOAH He has been bad, there’s no doubting it.  The areas he have struggled with definitely seem tied to the pitch clock and his lack of getting his command right, which leads to giving up some hard hit contact when he does try to just get it over and ultimately some bad outings.  Manoah has alot of ‘gamer’ in him and I don’t mean the Kyler Murray type of gamer.  He’s going to be focused […]

COLORADO Nathan MacKinnon, Arturri Lehkonen, Evan Rodrigues, Cale Makar What if I told you this was the final game the Avalanche would win this season?  I think MacKinnon is going to shine out in Seattle’s first home playoff game, where the atmosphere should be electric but the juice helps out the road team here as […]

Finally a perfect Friday.  A 15 game MLB slate with a 2:20 Showdown Cubs game, a couple senior citizen circuit turbo games and then our main 12 game slate tonight which includes Yusei Kikuchi vs the Yankees and the Royals trying to solve Shohei Ohtani. WEATHER WSH at MIN:  Cold, ugly, miserable, depressing.  Also known as, Minnesota. MIA at CLE:  Rain in Cleveland, which sucks because we miss LiC with Jazz going there.  I dont see how they get the game in. Chase Field Roof = Open   AARON NOLA It’s a pay up for pitching Friday night, with Nola being in a fantastic setup to bring home 10-12 strikeout performance vs the Rockies.  I would even rank him above Ohtani on FanDuel considering not just the $2100 price difference but also because I hvae him getting 10+ strikeouts tonight.  A nice ladder opportunity on his K props today as well. SHOHEI OHTANI What should I tell you?  You want me, the Royals homer, to try and sell you on Royals in Anaheim?  A place they always rake in?  You want me to say that they’re getting out of cold Missouri and into warm LA and they suddenly start getting offense from Melendez, Salvy and Massey? Do you wan’t me to tell you that they’re going to magically bring back Kevin Seitzer, Danny Tartabull and Rookie Year Bob Hamelin here tonight? No. They’re not.  Move on… TYLER MAHLE If this game does go, we gotta like Mahle vs the Nationals.  They might not whiff a ton versus most pitchers, but Mahle can get 7 strikeouts out of this bad lineup in a cold and ugly Minnesota night.   Gave some consideration for:  Nick Pivetta, JP Sears (value) Do not like at all:  George Kirby, Zac Gallen, Jon Gray   BLUE JAYS Bichette, Guerrero, Merrifield, Chapman Yes, I do actually believe Max Scherzer and other pitchers are using a modified rosin bag to get extra sticky stuff and this includes Domingo German.  The only difference is that Domingo used soap to wash his hands and not alcohol, which is way more sticky.  The bottom line is that Domingo’s about to get shellacked once again by RHH and seeing Toronto is not great for him in any way — well, no Teoscar Hernandez here helps, but he’ll smell his former Jays vs Domingo and do something on his own (more on that […]