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Today I’ll be highlighting one of my favorite contests on MKF, the Home Blast. For those not familiar with this contest, you get to pick 3 players that you’ll think will hit a homer. Within the game there are different tiers you can play. .5 you will only need 1 homer to cash and that pays double. 1.5 you will need 2 homers and that pays 5x your entry fee. 2.5 you will need 3 homers and that pays 10x your entry fee. With that said, lets dig in and see where we can find some long balls!
Salvador Perez vs. Dallas Keuchel
No pitcher on tonight’s slate is giving up homers over the past 30 days at a quicker pace than Dallas Keuchel. In his last 21 innings of work he’s given up 5. For a pitcher that’s always been considered a ground ball pitcher, that’s bad.
The guy on the Royals that matches up the best for a homer tonight is Salvador Perez. Keuchel’s main pitches tonight will be his sinker which he throws about 36% of the time and his changeup at about 31% of the time.
His sinker has been getting crushed this year with a .508 slugging % and a near 47% hard hit rate. Perez has a .456 slugging % and a near 48% hard hit rate vs. the pitch this year. Look for Perez to take Keuchel deep tonight. Confidence Level – High
Vladimir Guerrero vs. Nick Pivetta
Nick Pivetta is another pitcher that gives up homers at a pretty fast pace. In his last 22 innings of work he’s given up 5 homers. During the same stretch he’s given up a way too high fly ball rate of 42%. Against a powerful lineup like the Blue Jays giving up that many fly balls is a recipe for disaster.
PIvetta throws a ton of fastballs. More than 50% of the time. No batter in baseball has been better at hitting the fastball than Guerrero this year.
Against the pitch he has an insane .842 slugging % and a 63% hard hit rate. If Pivetta leaves one of his fastballs over the plate tonight to Guerrero, it has no chance of staying in the park. Confidence Level – Extremely High
George Springer vs. Nick Pivetta
I’m not straying too far from Guerrero as I also think his teammate George Springer takes Pivetta deep. Like Guerrero, Springer has great numbers against fastballs this season. He has an .806 slugging %, a .482 wOBA, and a 48% hard hit rate.
While not quite as good as Guererro, Springer is no slouch against the fastball and I really like his chances of leading off the game tonight with a homer. Confidence Level – High
Jose Abreu vs. Mike Minor
The White Sox should put up a big number tonight. Minor over the last 30 days has an xFIP of 5.53. He’s been getting hit hard and giving up a ton of fly balls. His hard hit rate over that period is 35% and his fly ball rate is 38.2%. Giving up that many fly balls that are hit that hard means there’s a much higher chance of giving up a homer.
The guy on the White Sox that takes Minor deep will be Jose Abreu. From a pitch mix stand point he lines up great as he has great numbers vs. 4 seamers and sliders this year. His slugging % is greater than .500 to both pitches. Confidence Level – Highish
The three guys I’m picking on tonight have been very susceptible to the long ball or are giving up a ton of barrels. And with barrels often times we see homers too. Look for a ton of offense in Boston tonight with Blue Jays taking Pivetta deep multiple times.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD 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!
Win Daily Sports is proudly partnered with Monkey Knife Fight. MKF is offering you a FREE Win Daily Gold membership for three months ($90 value) simply for making your first deposit on Monkey Knife Fight. And if free gold isn’t attractive enough, they’re also offering a 100% match bonus up to $100 when you use promo code WINDAILY.
Today I’ll be highlighting one of my favorite contests on MKF, the Home Blast. For those not familiar with this contest, you get to pick 3 players that you’ll think will hit a homer. Within the game there are different tiers you can play. .5 you will only need 1 homer to cash and that pays double. 1.5 you will need 2 homers and that pays 5x your entry fee. 2.5 you will need 3 homers and that pays 10x your entry fee. With that said, lets dig in and see where we can find some long balls!
Yordan Alvarez vs. Eli Morgan
Eli Morgan is someone that will eventually turn into a solid pitcher. He’s got solid swing and miss stuff when he’s on, as evidenced by his 11.6% swinging strike rate over the past month. That said, he’s still raw and leaving far too many pitches over the plate.
On the year he’s giving up a 53% fly ball rate with a 47% hard hit rate. He’s been pretty consistent across both sides of the plate as both righties and lefties have an ISO of .300 against him. He’s going to throw Alvarez a mix of fastballs and change ups tonight. Alvarez has had a ton of success against change-ups with a .266 ISO against. Confidence Level – High
Rhys Hoskins vs. Asher Wojciechowski
Woj is making his 2021 debut with a spot start for the Yankees. He last pitched in the Majors in 2020 with the O’s. As someone who has watched a ton of O’s baseball, we’re in for a treat tonight. Over the last few years Woj just has not been able to find success at the Major League level.
Since 2019 his xFIP is sitting at 5.53. That’s a pretty high number and it indicates that we should be able to find some fly balls and homers. My lean here is to the right side of the plate as Woj gives up a 50% fly ball rate to righties. To righties, Woj will throw a mix of a low 90’s fastball, slider, and curve. Hoskins has historically done well against all three of these pitches. Confidence Level – Medium/High
George Springer vs. Garrett Richards
Richards has been one of the most affected pitchers in the game since the ban of the sticky stuff. Over his last 17 innings of work he has a 6.03 xFIP to go with 5 homers and 6 barrels. This is someone that we should take full advantage of. The guy here I’m most interested in is Springer. He just lines up so well tonight.
Richards throws his 94 mph fastball almost 50% of the time to righties. Over the last several seasons Springer has a .733 ISO against this pitch with an average distance of 377 feet. That’s just insane. The next pitch he’ll likely see tonight is a slider. He has a .227 ISO against this pitch. Confidence Level – High
The three guys I’m picking on tonight have been very susceptible to the long ball. If you want to go a little bit of a different route, JT Realmuto stands a good chance to also homer against Woj and Guerrero against Richards. All three games should see a healthy amount of long balls tonight.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD 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!
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Aces and Bases. Today we have a nice sized 8 game main slate of MLB DFS on Fanduel to navigate through.
Eventually we’ll get a solid pitching slate right? We’ve got some dicey pitching again tonight that we’ll need to navigate though. With dicey pitching comes solid stacks though.
Let’s dig in to today’s slate!
Lance McCullers ($10.2k) vs. Cleveland Indians – This is a little more than I’d like to pay for McCullers but on a slate like tonight we may be forced to. Over the past 30 days McCullers has seen an small uptick in strike outs. His K rate during that time is a little more than 31% compared to 29% on the year.
We know we’re going to get someone that has elite K upside and that’s what we want in GPP’s. The lineup he’s projected to face tonight has a 27% K rate vs. righties this year. The Indians have really struggled coming out of the AS break. They’ve K’d 49 times in just 149 at bats and have just 6 barrels. Look for McCullers to take full advantage of a struggling lineup.
Adam Wainwright ($8.8k) vs. Chicago Cubs – The goal tonight will be find pitchers that won’t get us negative points. Kidding. Kind of. Wainwright hasn’t had a single start this season where he finished under 20 FD points. So know we have a floor with him.
Wainwright isn’t a strike out pitcher at this point in his career. His K rate over the past 30 days is only 21%. He has shown some K upside though at times with more than a handful of games over 7 K’s. With the match-up today there’s definitely a real shot at getting to that 7 K number again.
Like the Indians, the Cubs have really struggled out of the gates since the break. Of the teams in the main slate tonight, only the Indians have struck out more over the past week. While I don’t see Wainwright getting us 50 FD points, I do think there’s a real shot at a 30 point floor tonight. With some of the struggles we’ve seen with starting pitching of late, I will 100% take that.
Robbie Ray ($10.6k) vs. Boston Red Sox – This is a high risk high reward pick for tonight. Ray has been one of the better and more consistent pitchers on the year. He has an elite 32% K rate and a 3.28 xFIP. He has consistently plowed through solid lineups such that have historically been very good against lefties.
The match-up tonight against the Red Sox is not an easy one. They have a power house lineup. That said, Ray is an ace and has the ability to overpower any lineup.
Toronto Blue Jays vs. Garrett Richards – Richards post sticky stuff has been bad. He’s been one of the most affected pitchers in the game. Let’s look at his numbers over the past 30 days. 6.03 xFIP to go with 5 homers and 6 barrels in just 17 innings of work.
He’s someone that when on the mound we should look to take full advantage of. His match-up today is about as bad as bad can be. He’s facing a Blue Jays team that has just crushed righties all season long. They have a .796 OPS, .195 ISO, and 115 wRC+. Guerrero ($4.5k), Springer ($3.8k), and Hernandez ($3.4k) all profile extremely well tonight against Richards’ pitch mix and should be in your stack.
Detroit Tigers vs. Jordan Lyles – Lyles had a handful of starts recently that looked great from a distance. He had back to back 40 fd point outings and a 31 pointer. It was all smoke and mirrors. In the two 40 point games he had a 90 LOB % and an 86% LOB %. In both starts he gave up a healthy amount of hard contact.
Lyles has 9 starts this season in which he’s given up multiple barrels. He is a low strike out pitcher who gives up way too many fly balls and way too much hard contact. He is the type of pitcher you want to and have to target in DFS.
Once a laughing stock of baseball, the Tigers are now just 6 games under .500. They’re riding a 5 game winning streak and against Lyles today I like them to make it 6. Lyles is the type of pitcher who is bad against both sides of the plate. His ISO against the last couple of years is .204 to lefties and .202 to righties.
With the Tigers you need to go all in or fade. They don’t hit too many homers so we need to make sure our players correlate well. The guys I’m focused on today will be Baddoo ($3.1k), Schoop ($3.4k), Grossman ($3.2k), and Candelario ($2.7k). Haase ($2.8k) is also an interchangeable part of this stack.
Philadelphia Phillies vs. Asher Wojciechowski – Woj as I like to call him from his day with O’s is just not a good major league pitcher. He’s making what is most likely just a spot start for the Yankees today. He hasn’t pitched in the Majors this year but has struggled in a short stint in the minors.
If we look at the last couple of years we see that he gives up a ton of fly balls and hard contact. He is mostly a fastball pitcher with his fb sitting in the very low 90’s. Realmuto ($3.4k), Hoskins ($3.5k), and Miller ($2.4k) are my building blocks here as they have crushed fastballs this year with hard hit rates over 56%. The Yankees bullpen hasn’t been as bad of late so the hope here is that they keep Woj in long enough to do a ton of damage.
There are a ton of other stacks that could be talked about as well tonight. Houston is also in an incredible spot as Morgan is giving up a ton of fly balls and hard contact (the key to finding success with stacks). My hunch is that they’ll be a popular target and ownership will be high on them. If I’m going to eat chalk, I’d rather eat it with Blue Jays than Astros.
Tonight will be about picking the right stack. We have a handful of teams that are facing pitchers that are gas cans and should put up big numbers. For pitching, I’m going to focus on pitchers that have a safer floor tonight. It’s a different type of strategy that isn’t normally one that wins a GPP but with how bad pitching has been of late, it may end up working.
Good luck and hope to see you in the green!
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD 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!
Win Daily Sports is proudly partnered with Monkey Knife Fight. MKF is offering you a FREE Win Daily Gold membership for three months ($90 value) simply for making your first deposit on Monkey Knife Fight. And if free gold isn’t attractive enough, they’re also offering a 100% match bonus up to $100 when you use promo code WINDAILY.
Today I’ll be walking you through some of my favorite spots for the More or Less, strike out edition! I picked spots where we have some high strike out teams and low strike out teams. Let’s see if we can find some K’s, and not find some K’s.
Matt Harvey Under/Hyun Jin Ryu Under
A few years ago a 3.5 K total for Matt Harvey would have been unheard of. He would have had that by the third inning. A lot has changed for Harvey over the past few years. His prime was short and he’s well past his prime.
There are a couple of reasons I’m going with under for Harvey. Over the past 30 days Harvey’s K rate is sitting at 12.5% and his CSW is just 24.9%. He’s not fooling batters and he’s definitely not missing any bats.
The other reason is that the Blue Jays have been dominant against righties. They are striking out just 22% against the time and have a high OPS of .787. It’s going to be a short day for Harvey with him getting 3 K’s at most.
A lot of what I wrote for Harvey could also be said for Ryu. Just not the whole being past his prime part. Ryu has been in a little bit of a funk over the past month. He too hasn’t been striking out many batters. His K rate over the past month is almost identical to Harvey’s. It’s sitting at just 12.3%.
His match-up today is surprisingly not an easy one. The casual fan will look at the Orioles record on the year and think they are one of the worst teams in the league. Well technically they are. It’s 100% related to their pitching though as their offense has been pretty good. Especially against lefties.
They have been pretty dominant against lefties this year. They have a high OPS of .767 and just a 22% K rate. I don’t see how Ryu lasts long enough to get his 5 K’s tonight. The under on this one seems like a slam dunk.
Kyle Gibson Over/Casey Mize Under
This game has two teams that have high strike out rates. Starting with Gibson, he’s facing a projected lineup today that has a 28% K rate to righties on the year. While Gibson isn’t a high strike out pitcher, he’s shown the ability on occasion to dial it back and rack up some K’s. In his last 12 innings of work he has 17 K’s. With the Tigers high propensity to strike out against righties, I really like this spot for him to get his 6 K’s today and hit the over.
Casey Mize also gets a team that strike outs at an above average rate, but I just don’t think he has enough swing and miss stuff to get his 5 strike outs today. Mize is going to face a pretty left handed lineup today and if we look at his metrics he has just a 21% K rate against lefties.
If we look even deeper, he’s going to throw a ton of mid 90’s fastballs today with a mix of sinkers. It’s two pitches that the Rangers normally fare pretty well against. Look for Mize to keep it under 5 K’s today.
Eduardo Rodriguez Under/Andrew Heaney Under
We have a battle of the south paws in Los Angeles today. Both the Angels and Red Sox have been two of the better teams vs. lefties this year so I’m expecting short outings from both pitchers.
Starting with Rodriguez he’s facing a projected Angels lineup that has a 22% K rate vs. lefties this year. While Rodriguez has gotten 7 K’s or more in 4 of his last 6 outings, they were against teams that strike out more than the Angels do. I just don’t see him having the K strength to get to 7 today.
Heaney gets an equally tough match-up today as he’s facing a Red Sox team that doesn’t K much against lefties. They have just a 21% K rate vs. lefties and hit for a lot of power with a .173 ISO.
The Red Sox should throw out 7 righties today so expect to see a ton of fastballs from Heaney. If we look at how they have fared against his pitch type we can make the assumption there won’t be many K’s for Heaney. 6 would be super tough for him. Going with the under here.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @rangerzfan79 and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD 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!
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