Adam Zibuda What is up everyone, happy Marathon Monday. While the Marathon is postponed again this year, today is still a special day in Boston and the Red Sox are playing an early 11 AM game which I cannot wait to watch. Check out the FanDuel MLB 4/19 breakdown below.
As usual, I will be going over 3 pitchers and 3 teams that we should be looking to stack in our FanDuel lineups. The main slate is relatively small tonight with 7 games, so let’s get to it!
The Aces
A. With this slate being on the smaller side of things, we do not have a huge amount of elite pitching options to choose from, so I will keep this section short since it is really just playing the cards that we are dealt. Unfortunately one of the best pitchers of the day is playing before noon in the Red Sox game, so Joe Musgrove ($10,500) tops the list for me today. The Brewers have really struggled this season, and Musgrove owns the lowest SIERA, second highest strikeout rate, and third highest swinging strike rate on the day.
B. Brandon Woodruff ($9,600) is an interesting hit or miss option for GPPs tonight as he is one of the best pitchers throwing tonight, but also draws a difficult matchup against the scary Padres bats. This is definitely the game to look to for arms as opposed to bats, so I am fine with either option here if you want to save some salary cap off of Musgrove. With a 31% strikeout rate and a 13% swinging strike rate, Woodruff is a high upside option that can help you take down a GPP on Monday night.
C. I have been hearing some love for Dylan Bundy tonight, but I would rather look to target Kevin Gausman ($8,500) at potentially lower ownership, and definitely a lower salary, against the Phillies. The Phillies sneakily strikeout at one of the highest rates in the MLB so far this season, so if Gausman can keep the ball in the park, he should be able to put his 30.4% strikeout rate to good use.
The Bases
A. I am starting to sound a bit like a broken record here, but the LA Dodgers are once again one of the top 3 teams to target with our stacks tonight. Especially on a shorter slate, the Dodgers are just difficult to pass on since their offense is so much better than most of the other teams in play. Not only that, but they also get to face off against Justus Sheffield, who is a bottom 3 pitcher on the night tonight with a 4.47 SIERA and very low strikeout rate.
B. A team that will definitely be lower-owned than the Dodgers but has similar upside is from the same city, the LA Angels. Kohei Arihara is statistically the worst pitcher on the slate tonight, so when we combine that with a team that owns the best hitter in the MLB, we have a combination that we can look to attack. Arihara has a laughable 12% strikeout rate, and he allows an insane amount of hard contact. I expect him to surrender some homers to this Angels lineup tonight in bunches.
C. My final stack of the night is not necessarily a team that I am super high on, but their ownership will be extremely low in GPPs, and that is the San Francisco Giants. Chase Anderson is not an awful pitcher, and his advanced metrics show that he has been the victim of some bad luck over the last 2 seasons, but his ERA of 6.54 is the highest mark on the day. The Giants are not a team that we expect to drop 10 runs with any type of regularity, but they are a fine option against a pitcher that struggles to limit runs.
That is it for me today! Please also check out our projection model by clicking here. If you have any questions, I will be in our expert chat in Discord leading up to lock so feel free to shoot me a DM!
