Adam Zibuda What’s up everyone, happy Friday! Check out the FanDuel MLB 4/30 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. We have every single MLB team playing tonight, with just one lone early game, meaning 28 of the 30 teams are on this gigantic main slate. This slate locks at 7:05, so let’s get into the picks.
The Aces
A. It is Bieber vs. Cole for the battle of the ace of the slate tonight up top on FanDuel, with only $200 in salary separating the two studs. I will be taking the salary savings here and rolling out Shane Bieber ($12,000) not due to the slight savings, but due to the quality of the pitcher himself.
While Cole draws an amazing matchup against the pathetic Detroit Tigers, Bieber is the better pitcher and there are some seriously strong winds blowing out in the Bronx tonight. Cole can be taken deep sometimes, so I would not be surprised to see a couple of Tigers benefit from these strong winds. On top of that, Bieber owns a better SIERA, ERA, strikeout rate, swinging strike rate, and hard contact rate than Cole. I will gladly take the cheaper pitcher who is likely to be lower owned as well, simply because players tend to gravitate towards the top priced pitcher on the night.
B. After the top two arms, it gets pretty ugly pretty quickly on Friday night, despite the massive slate. One of the next best arms in Freddy Peralta has a brutal matchup against the LA Dodgers. That leads me to gravitate towards Drew Smyly ($6,300) to save a ton of salary off of the aces.
Smyly is a pitcher who has been around for a long time, and I think many baseball fans would be shocked to hear that he has a 33% strikeout rate over the last two seasons combined. His 3.14 SIERA is good for fourth best on the entire day, and he should be due for some positive regression since his ERA sits up at 4.79. The Blue Jays are no cake walk, but this price for a pitcher with this upside is sometimes too tough to pass on.
C. My final pitcher for the massive Friday night slate is Yu Darvish ($11,000). Darvish is the second largest favorite behind only Gerrit Cole, as the Padres are around -200 as of the time that I am writing this article.
Darvish is expensive, but he has the second lowest ERA on the night, behind only Shane Bieber and ahead of Gerrit Cole. Darvish owns a 3.17 SIERA and an elite 31% strikeout rate. The Giants have been a huge surprise so far this season as they have been hitting extremely well, but I expect Darvish to shut them down and pick up the easy win bonus on Friday night.
The Bases
A. One of my favorite teams to stack on FanDuel tonight is undoubtedly going to be the Atlanta Braves. Robbie Ray is a pitcher that can get absolutely shelled in a hurry, and these Braves bats are a group of hitters that can do just that.
Ray has a slightly above average strikeout rate of 26%, but that is where the good news ends for double R. He sports a 5.35 SIERA, a 17%(!!!) walk rate, and he allows fly balls at an extremely high frequency. This could easily be one of those games where Robbie does not make it out of the first inning.
B. My second favorite team to stack for Friday night is my very own Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox get the pleasure of taking swings against Kohei Arihara, and the prices on their bats towards the middle and bottom of the order are more than reasonable.
Arihara has the absolute lowest strikeout rate on the entire slate after accounting for sample size, as he is only able to punch out 14.3% of opposing batters. With a 5.11 SIERA and massive 44% hard contact rate, this Red Sox offense should be able to put runs on the board early and often in Arlington.
C. The final team that I will be looking to target in stacks and one-off plays tonight is the Cincinatti Reds. As expected, the Reds have cooled off a bit since their scorching hot start to the season, but this offense is still nothing to scoff at.
Jake Arrieta will be taking the mound for the Chicago Cubs, who were surprisingly able to actually pick up a win last night. Arrieta sports a 4.76 SIERA and a subpar 19% strikeout rate. He does not do anything particularly well other than somewhat limiting hard contact, and I like the Reds as a team to mix into our lineups in this spot.
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 or @ me in chat!
