Welcome to another edition of Def Pen sports MLB Daily Fantasy breakdown series. Today we will break down the top 3 pitcher plays in our opinion as well as give the best hitting stacks of the night. We will be using FanDuel’s pricing and scoring system as that is our personal preference.
Pitchers:
*Important Note: When playing FanDuel daily fantasy baseball it has become evident that having a strong starting pitcher is an integral part of the success of a lineup. Strikeouts are weighted heavily in FanDuel’s scoring system thus making guys with a high strikeout upside very appealing. The SIERA stat (Skill interactive ERA) has become very popular amongst sabermetrics crowds of baseball and helps understand just how good the pitcher is. These two aspects of strikeout percentages and SIERA combined with ballpark factors as well as weather factors are all taken into consideration when analyzing the best fantasy pitcher of the night.
- Chris Sale $11.8K – You simply cannot go wrong with the most dynamic pitcher in the game. With a K/9 of 13.02 against a Rangers team that struggles mightily against left-handed pitching (4th worst in strikeout percentage and 6th worst in OBP%), Sale should cruise. Whether he gets the necessary run support is to be determined, but a SIERA of 2.16 will always give DFS players reason to believe that he’ll be worth his high FanDuel price. Despite the park considerations for Fenway, he’s the number one option.
- Luis Severino $9.5K – This could be a really strong play. Luis Severino is a strikeout pitcher (10.34 K/9) who is also projected to have a team win tonight (which would yield an extra 6 points) as the Royals have an extremely unfavorable matchup with respect to both hitting and pitching. While the Royals are nearly average, in terms of strikeouts against RHP, they are 4th worst in OBP%. If you need a slightly cheaper option than Sale, Severino should be strongly considered.
- Charlie Morton $8.5K – Morton is very adept at racking up Ks. He’s got a very respectable K/9 of 10.48, and although his WHIP is a little startling at 1.42, his 3.61 SIERA suggests that he isn’t remarkably lucky up to this point in the season. While the Tigers, his opposition, have a potentially lethal group of tenured, explosive hitters like Miguel Cabrera, they rank 8th worst in batting average, 6th worst in strikeout percentage and have only scored 4 runs in their last three games.
Hitters:
*Important Note: While often times you can get lucky by selecting individual players off of different teams, the best strategy for MLB Daily Fantasy is to stack hitters in a lineup as to rack up runs/RBIs if a guy scores another guy in your lineup. Think of it as similar to a QB/WR stack in football, where both get the points for a touchdown connection so by starting both and in the case that they score a touchdown you are getting seemingly double the points. This works in the same way, wherein if you stack a lineup you are maximizing your potential points.
- New York Yankees – Can’t really ever go wrong stacking a bunch of hitters in Yankee Stadium, one of the most hitter-friendly parks. However tonight the Yankees have one of the best opposing pitcher matchups of the night as well, facing pitcher Jason Hammel who has a 5.06 SIERA ranking among the league’s worst. With guys who can leave the yard at any moment in Sanchez, Judge, etc. It would be wise to get some Yankees in your lineup tonight.
- Atlanta Braves – Although they have lost Freddie Freeman to injury, the Braves lineup has still been consistently good. With a plethora of cheap options to stack your lineup with a favorable matchup against a guy with a 5.13 SIERA, stacking Braves tonight could allow you to get a more expensive pitcher in your lineup (i.e Chris Sale).
- New York Mets – To the naked eye, this stack might not look that appealing as their opposing pitcher hosts a 2.70 ERA. However, if you dig a little bit deeper, Jarred Cosart actually boasts a 5.42 SIERA which suggests that he has been getting quite lucky this year and should be susceptible to giving up a fair amount of runs in a short period of time. This team also hosts a number of cheap options tonight that could allow you to get an Ace as your starting pitcher as you work through the salary issues that FanDuel provides.
All stats and data courtesy of baseball reference and Fangraphs.
Contributed to by Josiah Brady, @steadylosing on Twitter.
As always with MLB Daily Fantasy make sure you check the weather as well as the starting lineups before lineups lock. If you have any questions comments concerns or would like advice, feel free to contact me or Josiah via Twitter.
