Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Sunday Funday edition of Aces and Bases. Today we have a nice sized 10 game main slate of MLB DFS on Fanduel to navigate through.
To say that pitching options on today’s slate is a wreck would be an understatement. We only have a 2-3 arms that really stand out so we’ll need to be careful where we pick our spots. The slate today also cuts off before the Coors’ game so we don’t have worry about deciding whether or not to fade that environment.
Let’s dig in to today’s slates!
MLB DFS: The Aces
Corbin Burnes ($11k) vs. Arizona Diamondbacks – Burnes has come back down to earth a bit. While he has a 40% K rate for the year, his K rate over the past 30 days is a bit lower at around 35%. That’s still an elite K rate so we know we can bank on a bunch of K’s from him.
There’s definitely some concern with the match-up today as the expected lineup for Arizona has only a 20% K rate to righties this year. That said, strikeout pitchers tend to find their strikeouts regardless of their opponent. Burnes is a heavy favorite today and he’ll be my top arm.
Dylan Cease ($7.6k) vs. Detroit Tigers – Need to preface this with saying this is far from a safe pick. Tigers have been a decent lineup for about a month now. Still, they K a lot. On the season they are still striking out at a 27% clip to righties and in DFS when selecting pitchers strikeouts are what we chase.
Two of Detroit’s top hitters of late are Jonathan Schoop and Eric Haase. Both righties. Against righties Cease throws his slider almost 40% of the time. Haase has a 63% whiff rate to the pitch and Schoop a 40% rate. If Cease’s slider is on today he can really neutralize the two of them, severely weakening this lineup.
Cease has shown some upside at times with a 10k performance vs. Baltimore as recent as the end of May. Again, not a safe pick but I think there’s upside here today.
Cal Quantrill ($6k) vs. Baltimore Orioles – I’m mostly sticking with the top 2 here but Quantrill is in an intriguing spot and is about as cheap as you’ll find a starting pitcher on FD.
I don’t think you’re going to get more than 5 innings out of Quantrill today. And even that’s a stretch. But we have a pitcher here with the third best K rate on the slate. Quantrill is striking out batters more than 29% of the time. When he’s not striking out batters, he’s mostly giving up ground balls as his GB rate is over 50% on the year.
The lineup that he’s expected to face today has a 24% K rate against righties and an ISO below .160. The Orioles can do damage at times, but more against lefties than righties. My hope here is that he K’s a batter per inning and can last until he gets through 5. This is a pure punt, and on a day where there are limited options, you may want to.
I don’t like Bauer today. He’s facing a tough Braves lineup and he hasn’t necessarily been sharp his last couple of outings. Not sure if it’s related to the crackdown on foreign substances or he’s just not as good as he thinks he is. But I’m off Bauer today.
MLB DFS: The Bats
Houston Astros vs. Steven Matz – Matz’ season has been like a rollercoaster. He’s been up, then down, then up, and then back down. Today, I think he’s on the down. He’s facing off against an Astros team that has been killer against lefties. On the season they have a .783 OPS and a wRC+ of 122. Both are amazing marks.
He’s going to have a really tough time today against a team that does really well against sinkers. Alex Bregman ($3.2k) has a .276 ISO vs. this pitch over the past few years. Carlos Correa ($3.3k) has a .200 ISO. While Jose Altuve ($4k) has a little bit of a lower ISO, he still does extremely well against this pitch. This should be a short day for Matz.
Washington Nationals vs. Vince Velasquez – Velasquez is someone when is he on, is extremely dominant. But as evidenced by his last outing, he’s very susceptible to bad outings as he gave up 6 ER in just 3 innings of work.
Over the last 30 days, he’s given up 4 homers in just 20 innings of work. He’s also given up a 50% hard hit rate and 6 barrels. He’s attackable and I’m going to attack him with the Nationals.
It’s going to approach the mid 90’s in this region today and the ball will travel, especially at Citizens ball park. I’m going to prioritize 1-4 in this lineup. Trea Turner ($4.1k), Josh Harrison ($3.2k), Juan Soto ($4.1k), and Josh Bell ($2.8k).
Kansas City Royals vs. Bailey Ober – Ober has only made one appearance this season in the bigs and it wasn’t good. He gave up 4 runs in 4 innings vs. the Twins.
With a stingy Royals offense, I expect some of the same today. In that one start his biggest struggle came against lefties. He gave up a 71% fb rate and a 43% hard hit rate. The two main cast of characters here will be Carlos Santana ($3k) and Andrew Benintendi ($3.1k). I have no problem also adding in White Merrifield ($3.4k) to this stack. We may see Ober go longer than normal today due a heavily taxed Twins bullpen.
MLB DFS: The Wrap Up
Pitching will be tough today. We really only have 1 stand out guy in Burnes and then just a bunch of risk. The Tor/Hou game should be high scoring. I didn’t write them up, but I also really love Toronto as a stack today. They should do well against Garcia.
Good luck and hope to see you in the green!
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