Dave Gloeckner 
Welcome to a Money-Making Monday here at Win Daily Sports. We went 1-2 yesterday as only the Phillies came through with a winning ticket for us. The Braves struggling against Miles Mikolas came as a surprise and they added injury to insult with the loss of 2B Ozzie Albies to a wrist injury. They’ll look to get back on track today against the Reds who are struggling in their mightily as they were swept by the Washington Nationals. One of the better series opening today is the Cardinals and Pirates meeting in Pittsburgh. As mentioned last night on the Win Daily Sirius Show, I was out in Pittsburgh over the weekend and there’s a real buzz around town about their Bucco’s. Having a series against Skenes, Jones, and Keller (or Ortiz) could really be problems for teams in the NL.
Both Jared and I will be posting articles during the week and have a central focus on both MLB betting and DFS. Today is my turn and I will provide you a centralized focus on betting, props and DFS plays.
GAME BETS & PLAYER PROPS
DETROIT TIGERS -125 at CLEVELAND GUARDIANS (640pm)
The pitching delta in this matchup is one of the widest on the slate tonight as Tarik Skubal faces off against Carlos Carrasco. First off, Carrasco has pitched better of late but still has a 3-7 record and 5.02 ERA. And that’s coming off a season where he was 3-8 with a 6.80 ERA in 20 starts. The point is, as he moves into his 37 year old season, the Cleveland RHP doesn’t have much left in the tank. He has the third highest BA against at 0.271 and has a K rate below 20%. While Detroit is in the bottom 10 in the league in most offensive categories, they’ve found a mini hot streak by scoring 57 runs in their last 9 games (6.3 runs/game).
And the main reason for this play in Tarik Skubal facing a Guardians offense that has been feeble of late. Starting with Cleveland, they’ve scored 1 run or less in 5 of their last 7 games. In fact, starting pitchers have a quality start in 8 straight games against Cleveland. As for Skubal, he’s 10-3 with a 2.41 ERA, the latter being the 3rd best in baseball. While he hasn’t faced the Guardians this year, he has seen them three times in the past two season and has a 1.99 ERA against them. And the Tigers are 12-7 in Skubal’s starts. So I’m backing my preseason choice for AL Cy Young tonight and just hoping Detroit’s offense can muster enough runs off Carrasco to cash us a winning ticket.
NEW YORK METS -160 at MIAMI MARLINS (640pm)
The Marlins have taken two of the first three games in their long weekend series with the Mets. And they hand the ball to Yonny Chirinos tonight to try and seal a series win. And that’s where my concern lies as Chirinos has a 5.76 ERA and batters are hitting 0.321 against the Marlins RHP. While regression is certainly ahead, SIERA (4.76) and xFIP (5.17) both show it won’t get that much better.
On the other side, the Mets hand the ball to David Peterson who is 4-0 with a 3.09 ERA. But more impressively, the Mets have won the last 7 games that Peterson has started including one against Miami back on June 12th. Add to that, the Marlins are just 5-28 in games started by LHP’s. Which aligns with their batting metrics of being dead last in the MLB in OPS, Slugging %, wOBA and wRC+ against lefties.
ATLANTA BRAVES -150 vs CINCINNATI REDS (720pm)
Adding a 3rd bet for tonight and I’m backing the Braves as they hand the ball to their best pitcher tonight, Reynaldo Lopez. Besides all the good stats he has, which includes a mind-blowing ERA of 1.88, the Braves win when he pitches. Overall Atlanta is 11-6 when Lopez starts, but 7-2 when he takes the mound at home. And he’s 4-0 at home with a 1.24 ERA including an opponents batting average of 0.201.
We’ve highlighted the Reds struggles below, as they were swept in Washington this weekend. They’ve also struggled when Hunter Greene starts as they’ve lost four of their last five games when they hand the flame-thrower the ball. Overall, they are just 6-13 when Greene starts the game. He’s only started 2 games against the Braves but has a 4.91 ERA in his career against Atlanta. For those reasons alone, I’m backing the Wahoos to get back on the winning track tonight.
DOG OF THE DAY: SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS +120 at LA DODGERS (1010pm)
If you really want to dip your toes into the dog cage tonight, I’m backing the San Francisco Giants and SP Blake Snell. This is a half-unit play for me but one I am willing to play as San Fran has won three of their last four against LA. And the Dodgers are throwing rookie SP River Ryan giving SF a decided edge at pitcher as he faces last year’s NL Cy Young in Blake Snell who has a decent history against LA.
PLAYER PROPS
TARIK SKUBAL over 17.5 outs (-175 DK)
Yes, I’m drinking the big juice cup. But as highlighted above, SP’s have eight straight quality starts against the Guardians. And Skubal has gone 6 innings (18 outs) in eight of his last nine starts. In fact, he’s tied for 4th in quality starts with 14.
MICHAEL LORENZEN over 17.5 outs (-105 DK)
DraftKings doesn’t like Lorenzen’s chances of cooking tonight against the White Sox. And that’s likely due to the fact that he hasn’t surpassed 5 innings or 91 pitches in four straight starts. But that has been due to control issues, as he’s walked 14 batters in that four game stretch. And that’s where I think tonight will be different as the Chi Sox are 29th in the league in BB rate at 7.1%. And Chicago just faced three RHP’s over the weekend in KC and each one went a minimum of 7 innings with Seth Lugo pitching a complete game against the Sox.
PLUS PROP OF THE DAY – JARED KELENIC over 0.5 HR’s (+500 DK)
The Braves leadoff hitter has managed 11 HR’s this season and faces a pitcher who is prone to flyballs in Hunter Greene. The Reds SP has a career low HR rate this year, but to me that has occurred due to luck. His flyball rate is exactly in line with his past two years, at 47.7%, but his home runs are cut in half. So I look for that to regress and the Braves to put at least one over the fence tonight. Ozuna is on fire with 5 homers in his past 10 games, but I’m going with Kelenic due to his high FB rate which is over 50% in the last month.
DFS – 7:20 PM SLATE
We’re looking at the 7:20pm slate today as that has the largest pool of games with 9.
Top Pitchers to Target:
REYNALDO LOPEZ ($9000 DK):
The MLB’s league leader in ERA takes the bump tonight in Atlanta. And to me, this a pricing error by DK. While Lopez doesn’t go deep in games, he still averages 5.2 innings per game and gets almost 1 K per inning pitched. And tonight he gets to face a slumping Cincinnati team who was just swept by the Washington Nationals. In the month of July, Cincy is hitting just 0.235 (24th) and is striking out at a 26.6% clip (3rd highest). And they’re coming off a series where they scored just 11 runs and batted 0.190 as a team. I like Lopez’s chances to keep the Reds batters down and put up another quality start and solid outing for ATL.
BAILEY OBER ($8300 DK):
I’m going against my Phillies tonight as they travel to Minnesota to face the Twins. First, the Phillies were able to put up 13 runs in 2 games started by LHP’s over the weekend. But the one game started by a heavy sinker throwing RHP, they scored just 1 run. They also have a propensity to strike out, sitting 10th overall in K rate in the month of July. As for Ober, he’s much better at home posting a 4-1 record and 3.29 ERA. He’s allowed 2 ER’s or less in every home start except one (vs KCR on 5/29). And his K rate goes up in Minnesota, posting a 10.7 K/9 inning at home vice 9.01 K/9 inning on the road.
OTHER SP’S IN MY PLAYER POOL: TANNER HOUCK ($8500 DK), RANGER SUAREZ ($8800 DK),
Value Pitchers to Target:
BLAKE SNELL ($7500 DK)
It’s crazy to think last year’s NL Cy Young award winner has dropped into the value range. But that’s what a 0-3 record paired with a 6.31 ERA will do for a pitcher. However, Snell showed some life last outing when he shutout the Twins for 7 innings and allowed just 1 hit. And tonight he gets a familiar foe in the Dodgers who he faced 4 times last season. In those four starts, Snell posted a 2.73 ERA and struck out 26 batters in 23 innings of work. Because of his recent form and past experience against LAD, I’m willing to take a chance on a very volatile pitcher who could get us 30 fantasy points or 0.
HONORABLE MENTION: TOBIAS MYERS ($7200 DK), MICHAEL LORENZEN ($7600 DK)
Top Stacks to Target:
RED SOX:
The Red Sox have been one of the hottest teams in baseball. And while they were swept in LA this weekend, the bats still stayed hot as they scored 13 runs and had 28 hits. Since July 8th, they are batting 0.288 as a team which is the best in the MLB. They’re also 3rd in OPS, wOBA and wRC+ in that stretch. So I’ll look to keep those hot bats in my lineup when they arrive in Coors Field tonight to face the worst pitcher on the slate in Austin Gomber. The Rockies SP has an opponents batting average of 0.269 and has allowed 18 HR’s on the season. I’ll circle my Boston stack around Rafael Devers, Jaren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Tyler O’Neil.
ATHLETICS:
While I highlight the Red Sox with the best batting average in baseball since July 8th, it’s actually the A’s who are tied with them at a 0.288 clip. And it’s the A’s that lead the league in runs scored, OPS, wOBA and wRC+ in that same stretch. They get to face Spencer Arrighetti tonight who owns a 5.67 ERA overall and a 6.70 ERA on the road (with a 1-5 record). We have to get the red hot Lawrence Butler (5 HR’s in past 9 games) and Brent Rooker (4 HR’s in past 5 games) in our stack. We’ll also look at Max Schuemann (0.393 BA since July 8th) and Miguel Andujar (0.333 BA since July 8th) in our lineups as well. And Zach Gelof could be another option as he has hit for power of late, just not average.
Other Stacks to Consider: BREWERS, MARINERS
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