Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Thursday edition of Aces and Bases. Today we have a small 4 game slate of MLB DFS on Fanduel to navigate through.
My goal today will be to walk you through my 3 favorite pitchers and 3 favorite stacks on the day.
Let’s dig in to today’s slates!
MLB DFS: The Aces
I’ll start by saying no pitcher is safe tonight. It’s a weird slate in which the highest priced pitcher is just $9.1k. If you are playing the slate tonight, play light.
Jose Berrios ($9.1k) vs. New York Yankees – After a slow start to his Blue Jays career Berrios has really settled in nicely over the last couple of starts. He has struck out 18 in his last 13 innings of work.
Over the past month he’s sporting a slate leading 26% K rate and 3.69 xFIP. He’s been doing a great job of getting ahead of hitters with a 67% first strike %. He does have two red flags tonight. One being the match up isn’t the greatest as the Yankees are a tough lineup but from a pure K ability he’s the top pitcher tonight.
The second being that he’s been giving up a healthy amount of hard contact at 35.9% over the past month. The one reason I may lock in Berrios tonight is that he Yankees are struggling a bit this week with a 28% K rate. Can Berrios take advantage of a team on a downward spiral?
Ranger Suarez ($8.6k) vs. Colorado Rockies – Suarez may be the safest of the bunch tonight as he gets to take on a Rockies team that is nowhere near as good away from home. Suarez has also been very solid of late. Over the past month he has 3.79 xFIP and hasn’t given up a single homer in over 26 innings of work.
Suarez has one of the heaviest sinkers in the game and gives up just a ton of groundballs. While the Rockies lineup isn’t too bad against sinkers, most of that has to do w/ sinkers not doing a whole lot of sinking in Coors. Suarez has 3 straight outings of at least 34 FD points, with a 42 point effort against a solid Rays teams. Look for Suarez to be the top scoring pitcher on the night.
Antonio Senzatela ($8.4k) vs. Philadelphia Phillies – I expect this game to be a low scoring affair as we have *cough* two of the top pitchers on the slate throwing here. Senzatela isn’t a high strike out pitcher but if we look at the slate tonight, only 2 pitchers have a K rate greater than 24% over the last month.
In Senzatela we have a pitcher that stands a good chance to limit the damage. He’s an extreme ground ball pitcher with a 50% groundball rate over the past month. This has led him to give up just 1 homer in the last 33 innings of work. In his last 3 outings he’s scored 30 FD in each. During that stretch he’s faced the Dodgers and Braves. If he can perform well against those 2 lineups, he should also do well tonight.
MLB DFS: The Bats
Baltimore Orioles vs. Carlos Hernandez – I anticipate Hernandez being chalky tonight because of the match up against the last place Orioles. On a small slate like tonight I want to attack a questionable chalk choice. Hernandez has a bunch of red flags over the past 30 days.
The first being there’s a huge gap between his ERA and xFIP. His ERA is sitting at 2.55 while his xFIP is more than 2 runs higher. Here’s what I think is causing that delta. He’s given up 6 barrels in just 24 innings of work. So at least 1 per game. He’s getting behind on a large amount of batters with a first strike % of 57%. Lastly, he has a .232 BABIP. There’s been some luck on his side and at some point the luck is going to run out.
Surprisingly, the O’s have flipped the scrip a bit of late and are hitting righties much better. Over the past 30 days the O’s have 4 batters with ISO’s greater than .360 against righties. Mullins ($3.4k) has a .385, Mountcastle ($3.5k) has a .406, Santander ($3.3k) has a .367, and Stewart ($2.7k) has a .500. Look for the O’s to get to Hernandez early and then get a beat up pen for the Royals.
Toronto Blue Jays vs. Nestor Cortes – We have one team in the Yankees that are in a tailspin and a team in the Blue Jays that are fighting like heck to pass the Yankees in the standings. At the point in the season we are in, that’s where I want to go with my stacks. A team fighting for something that is playing great ball.
The match up for the Blue Jays is also solid. The sweet spot to attack Cortes is batters from the right side. Over the last 30 days righties have a 51% fly ball rate and 40% hard hit rate. They also have a .213 ISO. With the Blue Jays we have a lineup loaded with righties.
It starts with Alejandro Kirk ($2.6k) who is extremely under priced considering his recent form. Over the last month he has a .308 ISO against lefties. If we go with even more recent data, he has a 1.412 OPS and a wRC+ of 270 over the last week.
Teoscar Hernandez ($4.1k) burned me on Sunday, but we have to have short memories in DFS. Over the last 30 days he has a .464 ISO vs. lefties. Those two are my building blocks here but the entire lineup is in play. Don’t be scared to load up on the back end of this lineup. That’s where you’ll see the lower owned guys in what will be a chalky stack.
Kansas City Royals vs. John Means – Means’ biggest struggles of late have come against righties. His ISO jumps from .143 against lefties over the last month all the way up to .415 to righties. The good news for us is that the Royals have a few righties that are really hitting the ball hard. Over the last week one guy that continues to go under the radar is Michael Taylor ($2.5k). He has a 45% hard hit rate and a 35% line drive rate. He’s seeing the ball really well right now and gets a great match up tonight.
I’ll also look to grab Perez ($3.9k) who is riding a 7 game hitting streak. Look for him to take Means deep tonight. This game has the potential to be a shoot out tonight. You’ll want to grab bats from both side of this game.
MLB DFS: The Wrap Up
Pitching tonight is going to be tough. My lean right now is to go safe and grab Suarez who will provide us a decent floor. We don’t typically chase a floor, but on a night like tonight we may need to. A game stack of Bal/KC may be the way to go and the Baltimore side should be under owned.
Good luck and hope to see you in the green!
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