DraftKings & FanDuel MLB DFS Lineups & Picks 4/3/19
Welcome to the world of MLB DFS. I have been in the DFS industry for about five years now, and have been playing fantasy baseball for well over that. The purpose of these articles is to help you build a lineup with suggested players for both cash and tournaments. Each player pick comes with my analysis and process of why I chose that specific player. I dive into advanced stats, trends, and other DFS tools to help me build each day. Oh, we also want to win some money, right? Right. There is also full transparency with my picks, recapping prior slates. Because this article is tied to both sites, I might reference one player being a better player on one site, compared to another. This happens because of pricing, or maybe position eligibility. Feel free to reach out on Twitter at @JGuilbault11
Contents
Last Slate’s Recap
My last slate was broken into FD/DK picks. You can check out yesterday’s articles to see who I was on. Blake Snell, Jose Berrios, Marcus Stroman, and Zack Greinke were pitchers I talked about between the two slates. Bats were mostly a bust.
Vegas, Slate, & Weather Info
Vegas and weather are two things to look at before diving into a slate. This is where I will touch on important weather-related notes, and Vegas numbers suggesting to good plays. This helps you cut down your study time, and cuts down the risk of putting potential zeroed out players into your lineups. I encourage you to track this throughout the day, but this will be an early day look into what to expect.
Just five games on the main slate today, leaving us with an easy choice for pitching, and a few offenses to target. Houston has the highest run total at 5.5 on the main slate, followed by Boston and Atlanta. Houston and Los Angeles are the biggest favorites.
Fantasy Tools: Matchups – MLB Odds – Fantasy Projections – Starting Lineups
The Hurlers
Gerrit Cole – SP – DK: $11,400 – FD: $11,200 – On a five game slate with limited pitching options, Gerrit Cole is the safe name that will draw high ownership. That is fine in both cash and tournaments, as you can still differ with your bats to be contrarian. Cash games, you play Cole and move on. He dominated Texas last season with 40 strikeouts over four starts, allowing eight earned runs. He averaged 28 DK points. The Rangers projected lineup has a 23.1% strikeout rate against right-handers since last season, and a pedestrian .326 wOBA. Cole leads the slate in with a 34.5% strikeout rate in 2018, dominating both sides of the plate with an improved fastball, and nasty off-speed stuff. He is an excellent option in all formats.
Ross Stripling – SP – DK: $10,200 – FD: $9,300 – Ross Stripling is a bit expensive for his ability to go deep into games, but secondary options beyond Cole are quite limited. Stripling is easily in the best spot, as the Giants lineup continuously looks like a Triple-A lineup. They have a .315 wOBA off right-handers in 2018, with a few more higher strikeout prone bats now in the order. Stripling dominated last season in a starter/reliever role. He started most games down the stretch, finishing with a 27% strikeout rate and 3.18 xFIP. You can make the case for using a cheaper arm from the Pittsburgh game in your SP2 spot or a riskier Nathan Eovaldi, but Stripling is still my guy for safety.
The Bats
Josh Donaldson – 3B – DK: $4,600 – FD: $3,400 – I tried to keep things in a reasonable sense for the bats, given you aren’t going to have a ton of leeway with cash if you are paying up, which you likely are. Josh Donaldson comes in as an upside bat for a reasonable price. He gets the lefty, Jon Lester, tonight who has been over performing a great deal for the last year. He had a sub 20% strikeout rate against right-handed hitters last season, and his groundball rate dropped. Donaldson has been on and off the IL over the last two seasons, but still when healthy, he has a .418 wOBA and .336 ISO off southpaws. He has a couple hits in the last few games to get him going in 2019.
Ben Zobrist – 2B/OF – DK: $3,900 – FD: $3,400 – Staying within this game, Ben Zobrist will likely be leading off, and is a mid-range piece to get exposure to the Cubs still. Zobrist had a .363 wOBA off right-handers last season, and a 12.3% strikeout rate. He is a nice table-setting piece to this matchup against Julio Teheran. The right-hander has allowed a .328 wOBA and 40% hard-contact rate to lefties. Zobrist is a good fastball and sinker hitter, which Teheran throws a combined 63% of the time to left-handed hitters. Zobrist has a .456 wOBA off this fastball range, and a .361 wOBA off sinkers. Solid option tonight, as are most of the Cubs bats.
Yuli Gurriel – 1B – DK: $4,200 – FD: $2,800 – The big market teams have high run totals, and with that comes high DFS price tags. Houston’s back of the order are priced around the norm, so we don’t get a huge bargain. Yulieski Gurriel had a .375 wOBA and .182 ISO off southpaws last season, also sporting a 35% hard-contact rate and over an 80% contact rate in general. He is behind some excellent bats, and often will find himself in RBI situations. Mike Minor isn’t a bad lefty, but got himself in trouble last season by the power he gave up. Right-handers had a .196 ISO and 38% hard-contact rate off him. He also allowed over a 45% flyball rate.
Cheap Seats
Christian Vazquez – C – DK: $3,300 – FD: $2,300 – You don’t need to bother with a catcher on FanDuel, but DraftKings I will be punting away. There are not a lot of cheap DraftKings bats, so we are sort of in no man’s land with this one. This is more about salary relief than anything. The positive is that Vazquez is a good contact bat, sitting at 85% last season against right-handers. Unfortunately, he didn’t do much with it. Marco Estrada allowed a ton of production to right-handers, as they had a .396 wOBA and .258 ISO off of him last season. He is a major flyball arm, relying on his fastball and changeup. You could do worse here.
Robbie Grossman – OF – DK: $3,400 – FD: $2,600 – On FanDuel, you have plenty of value like Jason Heyward at $2,400 and the back of the Houston lineup is extremely cheap. However, on DraftKings, there are about 10 players below $3,500, and half of them are on the Giants. We are very thin. Robbie Grossman is at least a cheap leadoff bat to consider, especially if the Boston pitchers keep laying them over the plate. Going back to 2017, Grossman has a .321 wOBA and 82% contact rate against right-handers. He is about your average right-handed bat. Eovaldi has made some changes but has always been a bit weaker against left-handed hitters.
