Jared Levitt 
TGIF! It’s Friday and that means we’ll have a massive slate. Tonight we have ourselves a 13-game slate of MLB DFS. After last night’s debauchery, it will be nice to have more options to play with. Although we’ll have 26 teams in action, pitching is going to be very suspect tonight. Outside of Charlie Morton, all the high-priced pitchers have terrible matchups and matchups that they very well could fail in. That said, we do have some middle-tiered guys that have really strong matchups and are coming into the matchups pitching well.
Let’s Dig in and make some money!
MLB DFS Aces – Main
Bailey Ober ($8.8k on DK) vs. Seattle Mariners
I’ve been picking on the Mariners all season with righties and tonight is going to be no different. No team in baseball has a higher strikeout rate vs. righties than the Mariners. To make matters worse for the Mariners, they’ve also been mostly powerless vs. righties as they have just a .675 OPS vs. them. They’ve been impatient vs. righties and the results are in the pudding.
That said, Bailey Ober is coming into this matchup after 2 dominating performances against the A’s. Over those 2 starts, Ober amassed 18 K’s. While I don’t know if we get the same level of performance out of him tonight, this is a matchup against a free-swinging team that he should excel in.
Drew Thorpe ($7.3k on DK) vs. Colorado Rockies
This is how bad pitching is tonight. I’m relegated to using Drew Thorpe as my SP2. Drew Thorpe has now made 3 starts in the bigs, with only one of them being bad. He’s coming off an extremely solid start that saw him strike out 5 across 6 innings of work. His only blemish on the scorecard that night was that he also walked 4 Tigers. That is now 9 across his last 2 starts.
We should see a decrease in his walks tonight as the Rockies are one of the most impatient teams in baseball. Their 7.3% BB rate is the 4th lowest in baseball. Only the Orioles, White Sox, and Marlins have walked at a lower pace than them. The Rockies have also been terrible of late, striking out 37% of the time over the last week and scoring just 17 runs. Can Drew Thorpe have a repeat of his last outing? I think so.
There are just a few other pitchers that I like tonight. We could make a case for Charlie Morton but he’s one of the most expensive pitchers on this slate and I’m not overly comfortable paying that price for a pitcher with just a 22% k rate over the last month and facing a team that hasn’t been striking out much.
Maybe Marcus Stroman vs. Toronto, or maybe Kent Maeda vs. the Angels, or maybe Triston McKenzie vs. a struggling Royals lineup. Again, this is a tough slate of pitching where the highest-priced pitchers have matchups against teams like the Mets, Twins, Dodgers, and Orioles. All teams that are smoking the ball right now and ones that I would not want to face.
MLB DFS Stacks – Main
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. JP Sears
I’ve been mostly using the Diamondbacks vs. lefties this year. All season long, they have been a top-10 offense vs. lefties. They have several guys in this lineup that mash lefties. Something they also have going for them is that JP Sears has not been pitching well recently. Over the last month, Sears has had more outings giving up 4 or more runs than he has given up less than 4 ER. His last outing was the worst of the season, an outing that saw him give up 8 ER to the Twins in less than 2 innings of work.
One of the main things that has been doing him in this year has been his control. His BB/9 is at an all-time high. This has, in turn, caused him to have an all-time high WHIP. Over the last month, his WHIP is an astounding 1.9. That’s nearly 2 runners in every single inning. If the Diamondbacks can remain patient at the plate, the world will be their oyster and they’ll make for a short outing for Sears. I’m going to be mostly focused on the righties here. Righties have a .225 ISO and a .441 wOBA against him over the last 30 days.
Core Bats: Ketel Marte, Lourdes Gurriel, Christian Walker,
Secondary Bats: Corbin Carroll
Value Bats: Randal Grichuk, Blaze Alexander, Eugenio Saurez
Cleveland Guardians vs. Alec Marsh
The Guardians were a huge disappointment last night, scoring just 1 run against Michael Wacha and the Royals bullpen. They get a much easier matchup tonight against Alec Marsh and I just don’t see them disappointing tonight. Marsh has not been pitching very well over the last month. If we date back to May 27, he has just one outing under 3 runs allowed and 4 outings giving up at least 4 ER.
He’s someone that has been giving up a ton of hard contact. Across his last 25 innings of work, he’s allowed 10 barrels. His hard-hit rate is a whopping 40% over that period as well. With a contact rate approaching 80%, that’s a lot of hard-hit balls being put into play. The Guardians have one of the highest implied run totals on the board at 5.3 tonight. They should get all of it and then some.
Core Bats: JRam, Steven Kwan, Josh Naylor
Secondary Bats: David Fry
Value Bats: Bo Naylor, Daniel Schneemann, Gabriel Arias
Other stacks I like tonight will be the Red Sox vs. Randy Vasquez (close 2nd behind the Guardians), A’s vs. Slade Cecconi, Tigers vs. Zach Plesac, and Royals vs. Triston McKenzie. The stacks I like even though they are in tougher matchups are the Mets vs. Ronel Blanco and Orioles vs. Mad Max.
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