Tony “Jigsaw” Cutillo is back giving you nothing but hard-hitting HEAT for the #draftkingsmlb 8 game slate on the Fantasy Firebox.
The Fantasy Firebox, #MLB Edition, packs all your value plays into one pod. Tony “Jigsaw” Cutillo takes you around the diamond for the featured Draftkings slate and picks out the best odds for you to make your lineup different.
Happy Tuesday! We have ourselves a nice-sized 8-game slate of MLB DFS tonight. This slate is mostly void of our normal top-end pitching. The most expensive pitcher on this slate is just $9.5k. That said, we do still have some solid pitching in solid spots tonight. With no real aces on this slate, it also will mean that we’ll have some very average to below average pitching as well. That will mean we’ll have plenty of spots for offense.
Let’s Dig in and make some money!
Clarke Schmidt is having a breakout season. After getting mixed results last season in his first full season as a starter, we’re seeing an evolution of the 16th pick of the 2017 draft. Through 9 starts, Schmidt has an impressive 2.49 ERA and an xFIP of 3.52. Both numbers are career-best numbers for the Yankees right-hander. Also, a career-best number is his K/9 that’s sitting 9.77. He has a nearly 4:1 K:BB number this season which would also be a career-best number.
Over the last month, Schmidt has a 27% K rate which is the third-best number of anyone on the hill tonight. While the strikeouts for the Mariners have started to come down a bit, they were still K’d 6 times by a low strikeout pitcher in Marcus Stroman. Schmidt should be able to replicate that and more tonight.
Alec Marsh has put together a string of really solid outings. Over his last 4 starts, he’s allowed just 2 ER. In 3 of those 4 starts, Marsh has struck out at least 6 hitters. His K/9 on the year is up to 7.54. For a pitcher that is just $7.5k tonight, I’ll take that number every single day. He’ll be facing off against a Tigers team that has very mediocre numbers vs. righties this season.
The Tigers have a 24% K rate vs. righties and also a sub .700 OPS. Their ISO is also .150 which is a number that I use as a landmark to determine whether a team has power vs. a pitcher or not. They have limited power based on the numbers. This is a good matchup for a pitcher that is pitching lights out right now.
Other pitchers that will be in my pool today will be Garrett Crochet vs. Toronto and Yusei Kikuchi vs. Chicago.
MLB DFS Stacks – Main
Lance Lynn’s best days are far behind as we’re seeing a pitcher who is a shell of his former self. Up until last season, Lynn was a pitcher who historically had an ERA that would hover in low to mid 3.00 range and someone who had a BB/9 less than. All of that changed last season as Father Time caught up to the big fellow. This season has been no different for Lynn as he’s struggled. After having an OK April, he appears to have hit a wall in May as he’s allowed at least 4 ER in each of his 3 starts this month.
He’s struggling mightily with his command as his first strike % is just 54% and he’s also allowing a 4.74 BB/9. He’s going to struggle tonight against a really strong offense in the Orioles. If they can be patient, they’ll do a number on Lynn and the Cardinals bullpen. The only thing that may stop the O’s is some potential rain later in the Lou. Keep an eye out for this one. If it gets PPD, I’ll pivot to the Dodgers.
Core Bats: Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Anthony Santander
Secondary Bats: Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Colton Cowser
Value Bats: Jorge Matteo, Austin Hayes
Oh Griffin Canning I feel bad for you tonight. You’ve put together a nice string of starts over the past month, haven’t you? That changes tonight. Canning has just one start this season this season where he had an xFIP under 4. Ironically, that was his worst start of the season. He’s been skating by thanks to a BABIP of just .225. He’s been getting shelled game in and game out, but the balls just haven’t been landing. He’s given up 7 barrels over the last month.
At some point, his luck is going to run out. With how well the Astros have been hitting, that should happen tonight. The Astros have been a top 5 offense over the last week and they line up extremely well with Canning. Canning is mostly a FB and SL pitcher. Those are both pitches that this team excels against.
Core Bats: Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, Jose Altuve
Secondary Bats: Alex Bregman, Jeremy Pena
Value Bats: Jake Meyers, Joey Loperfido, Jon Singelton
Other stacks I like tonight will be the Rockies vs. Aaron Brooks, Angels vs. Christian Javier
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for a PREMIUM account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
Tony “Jigsaw” Cutillo is back giving you nothing but hard-hitting HEAT for the #draftkingsmlb slate on the Fantasy Firebox.
The Fantasy Firebox, #MLB Edition, packs all your value plays into one pod. Tony “Jigsaw” Cutillo takes you around the diamond for the featured Draftkings slate and picks out the best odds for you to make your lineup different.
It’s Saturday and that means we’ll have a full day of baseball. I’ll be focused on the 7-game slate of MLB DFS starting at 7 pm EST. The best part of playing MLB DFS is that every day is a new day. We’ll need to forget about last night’s major disappointment handed down to us by the Toronto Blue Jays. In a marvelous matchup, they were nearly no-hit. Tonight, we’ll have some interesting matchups to look at. We should be able to afford most bats as the most expensive pitcher on this slate is just $9.4k.
Let’s Dig in and make some money!
Is it too early to start talking about Seth Lugo being a legit Cy Young candidate? All he has done this season is mow down hitters. Through 9 starts, Lugo has an ERA of 1.66 and a K/9 of 7.24. Impressively, his walks are super low at just 1.81 per 9 innings. Overall, he’s having one of the finest seasons of his career. While the A’s have played much better than expected this season, they are still a below-average lineup and one that Seth Lugo should be able to dominate.
At $9k, we’re going to be getting a pitcher who faces a team that is striking out 26% of the time against righties and has just .671 OPS. This is a game where Lugo should be able to continue his impressive start to the season. Expect him to be chalky, but this may be chalk we need to eat to get to the top of the leaderboards.
Is Jack Flaherty finally putting it all together at age 28? Flaherty has all the talent in the world but has struggled with his consistency at the Major League level. One of his biggest issues throughout his career has been walks. Over the last 2 seasons, Flaherty has had BB/9 of 5.50 and 4.12. This season? Well, this season it’s sitting at just 1.11. This has allowed him to go a little bit deeper into games and in turn, strike out more hitters.
His K/9 is all the way up to 11.65, by far the highest of his up-and-down career. He’ll look to keep the good times rolling against what has mostly been a disappointing season for the Diamondbacks. Last year’s NL Champs are just 21-24 and have been wildly inconsistent at the plate. I can see Flaherty having another dominant outing here.
Other pitchers that will be in my pool today will be Zac Gallen vs. Detroit and Walker Buehler vs. the Reds.
MLB DFS Stacks – Main
Miles Mikolas is having, statistically speaking, the worst year of his career. His ERA is the highest it has been since all the way back in 2014 with the Texas Rangers. His HR/9 are the highest they have ever been as is his hard-hit rate. He’s allowing a hard-hit rate of over 43% this season. That is an astronomical number of hard hits and something we really need to attack. Over the last month, he’s allowed 11 barrels in just 26 innings of work. That’s almost 1 every other inning.
I’m going to continue to attack him whenever I can. Most of the time, it’s working as he’s allowed 3 ER or more in 5 of his last 6 starts. With Mikolas, we want to attack him with both sides of the plate. Righty or lefty, they each have a slugging % over .500 vs. him this season.
Core Bats: Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Rafael Devers
Secondary Bats: Connor Wong, Tyler O’Neill
Value Bats: Dom Smith, Garrett Cooper, Vaughn Grissom
The Royals bats have been mostly quiet of late, but that all changes tonight in a great matchup vs. Ross Stripling. I’ve never been a huge fan of Stripling and maybe that’s swaying my head tonight, but this is a game the Royals should be able to dominate in. Stripling does nothing special and he does a lot that makes us want to stack against him. If he gives up an above average amount of fly balls at 40% and he also gives up an above average amount of hard-hits at nearly 36%.
If we look a bit deeper, he’s also giving up a contact rate over 82%. So that means there are going to be a lot hard-hit fly balls I play. Good things happen with that.
Core Bats: Sal Perez, Bobby Witt, Vinnie Pasquantino
Secondary Bats: Michael Massey
Value Bats: Nelson Velazquez, Hunter Renfroe, Kyle Isbel
Other stacks I like tonight will be the Rangers vs. Patrick Sandoval, Padres vs. Bryce Elder, and Dodgers vs. Graham Ashcraft.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for a PREMIUM account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
TGIF! We made it to Friday. In a few hours, we’ll get to sit back and count the hours left we have until the new work week starts. Until that happens though, I have you covered for tonight’s massive 13-game slate of MLB DFS. This is going to be a tricky slate as the top pitchers aren’t in the best of matchups. The pitchers with the highest K rates are facing off against teams that don’t K much. However, we do have some clear-cut stacks to play around with.
Let’s Dig in and make some money!
I don’t love the matchup, but I do love the pitcher. Tarik Skubal has been nothing short of masterful this season. On the year, he’s averaging a shade of 25 DK points per game. His ERA is at a career low of 2.02 and his xFIP of 2.53 indicates that he’s not getting lucky to have such a low ERA. He’s pitching as expected. After reaching 11 K/9 in 2023, he’s followed that up with another solid K season with a K/9 of 11.02 through his first 8 starts. His walks are also down as they are 1.47 BB/9, also a career-best number. Nearly every metric is at or near a career-best level.
My only concern here is that the Diamondbacks do not strike out much vs. lefties as they K only 18% of the time vs. them. Skubal is a different animal though and I can see him mowing down some Dbacks tonight. He’s the cheapest he’s been in a month. I’m locking him in as my SP1 tonight.
I’m going to go a bit cheaper for my SP2 tonight and that’s going to be Mets prospect Christian Scott. Scott has only made 2 starts so far in the Show, but they’ve both been solid. While he gave up 3 ER against the Braves, he also struck out 8 of them. That was on the heels of a 6 K performance against the Rays. The kid has legit stuff and if he can K 8 Braves, it will be interesting to see what he can do against a far inferior team in the Marlins.
Scott has been able to do a great job in limiting contact. Hitters have just a 69% contact rate against him and he also has an impressive 17% swinging strike rate. That trails just Jesus Luzardo of tonight’s pitchers. Look for him to continue with his impressive start to his hopefully long and successful career.
Other pitchers that will be in my pool today will be Nestor Cortes vs. the White Sox, Cole Ragans vs. Oakland, and Brayan Bello vs. St. Louis.
MLB DFS Stacks – Main
Only 2 teams in baseball currently have 30+ wins. They happen to be the 2 teams I loathe the most the Yankees and Phillies. While I hate it, it’s hard to argue that they aren’t 2 of the best teams in baseball. Both lineups are strong and both have solid pitching. I’m going to target that strong lineup the Yankees have today as they get a strong matchup vs. Mike Clevinger.
Thanks to signing late, he’s only made 2 starts so far. One of those starts was pretty poor and the other wasn’t bad. Overall though, he’s getting hit extremely hard so far this season as hitters have a 40% hard-hit vs. him so far. He’s also letting way too many runners on base so far as he has a 2.1 WHIP. If the Yankees can be patient tonight, they should smash.
Core Bats: Aaron Judge, Juan Soto (if you can only afford one, Soto is my preference)
Secondary Bats: Alex Verdugo, Austin Wells, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton
This may the first time this season I’m playing the Toronto Blue Jays. As I dig into the numbers, this is a really strong matchup on paper. Tyler Alexander is a below-average pitcher. Through his first 8 outings, 5 of which have been starts, Alexander owns a 5.45 ERA and an xFIP nearing 4.75. While he can occasionally throw together a solid start or 2, he’s also known to throw some duds. He’s coming off his worst start of the year, a game that saw him give up 6 ER to the above-mentioned Yankees.
This seems to be a start that could go south just like his last one. He’s someone that we can count on to give up some hard contact as hitters have a 40% hard-hit rate vs. him this year. He’s only had one start without giving up a barrel and gave up a whopping 6 vs. the Yankees. That’s more than some pitchers will give up in a year. From a pitch standpoint, the Blue Jays lineup well with him. He mostly throws a cutter and although it’s a small sample size, there are a handful of Blue Jays that crush this pitch from lefties.
Core Bats: Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero, Davis Schneider
Secondary Bats: Danny Jensen, Justin Turner, George Springer
Other stacks I like tonight will be the Braves vs. Matt Waldron, Rangers vs. Tyler Anderson, and Angels vs. Andrew Heaney
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for a PREMIUM account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
At WIN DAILY®, our motto is to “change your game and change your life.” We want to help you win that bet, parlay, and big DFS tournament and have some fun while you do. Our goal is to help you turn your love of sports into a profit center while playing responsibly and enjoying your time with a like-minded community.
