Dave Gloeckner 
It’s a Sunday Funday here at Win Daily Sports. We welcome in the final month of baseball and look to finish this season strong. After a 5-1 weekend in NCAAF, we focus our betting attention on the diamond. As rosters expand in the MLB, so do our betting limits. That’s because September often becomes a “big favorites” month with the teams that are playing for nothing typically lay down and play prospects over veterans. So, we’ll need to dip into the heavy fave market at time-to-time this month, but we may ultimately end up getting creative and looking at run lines, first fives, no at-bat in 9th, and parlays if necessary.
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
MINNESOTA TWINS -170 vs TORONTO BLUE JAYS
The Twins got rocked by the Blue Jays yesterday to the tune of 15-0. That was highlighted by Will Wagner’s five-hit game. But the major problem for the Twins hasn’t been their pitching as they have just 2 runs in their current series with Toronto. And taking that back a step further, the Twins have scored 2 runs or less in five of their eight games in their current homestand. But I like that to change today as they face Yariel Rodriguez and his 4.82 ERA with a 1-6 record. They Jays lost all five of Rodriguez’s starts in August, as he allowed 6 homers in 24.2 innings during last month.
The other factor is Twins SP Bailey Ober who is 7-2 at home. He also faced the Blue Jays once this year and had his best game of the season pitching 6.1 innings of 1-hit ball while striking out 10.
BALTIMORE ORIOLES -180 over COLORADO ROCKIES
The Orioles are happy to turn the page to the month of September. They ended up with just a 13-15 record in August and have not won a series since early in the month against Tampa. But they get good news today as SP Zach Eflin returns to action. The O’s pitcher has been out since mid-August with a mild shoulder strain. Since coming over to Baltimore, he’s 4-0 with a 2.13 ERA in four starts. The other good news is they face SP Ty Blach who has a 6.36 ERA and opponents are batting 0.342 against him. The Rockies have lost 7 straight games that Blach has started. Kind of reminds me of Taijuan Walker and we know how that’s been going. So, I’ll back the orange birds today to win and get a series victory before heading home to face the White Sox.
DOG OF THE DAY: TBD
PLAYER PROPS
LAWRENCE BUTLER over 0.5 runs (+105 DK)
Since August 18th, which is 2 weeks ago today, Lawrence Butler has scored 15 runs which leads all of baseball. And he’s batting 0.347 in that stretch. Add to that the A’s are likely facing a bullpen game from Texas and we have a plus environment in which runs should be scored.
PROP #2
PLUS PROP OF THE DAY –
DFS – 1:35PM SLATE
We’re looking at the 1:35pm slate today as that has the largest pool of games with 9.
Top Pitchers to Target:
DYLAN CEASE ($10000 DK):
Dylan Cease has definitely hit a rough patch of late. And a lot of it is pointed back to his White Sox struggles as his walk rate skyrocket last month (12 walks last 4 starts). But today he’ll look to get back on track against a very weak Tampa Bay Rays offense. While there is some punch left in this lineup, it rarely shows up in bunches. In the last 2 weeks, they are batting just 0.211 (4th worst in MLB) and have the 5th fewest runs at 41. However, the key is their strikeout rate which leads baseball over that stretch at 28.7%. So to see them rack up 16 runs in the first two games of their series is very surprising as they had only 7 runs in the four games prior to seeing the Padres. Case in point, this offense is not sustainable, and Cease’s negative regression will turn for the positive. His predictive numbers say so, 3.57 ERA with a 3.16 FIP and 3.30 xFIP, and he has the perfect opponent to do so today in the Rays.
SEAN MANAEA ($8700 DK):
Sean Manaea has been fantastic for the Mets this season posting a 10-5 record and 3.51 ERA. He’s also top 30 in both K’s (149) and WHIP (1.14). And it’s been the recent uptick in strikeouts that’s most impressive as he has 48 K’s in his last six starts which consume 37 innings. Notably, three of those outings resulted in double digit strikeouts. Today he gets to face the White Sox, who with one more loss would set a franchise record for most losses in a season. And we still have a whole month to play. You know the futility of this team, and recent data matches season long results. For the overall year, they are batting 0.220 (29th) and are ranked that low in all other major hitting categories. Their recent K rate is 23% which matches the season number of 24%. And those numbers are consistently bad against LHP’s as well. So this looks like a good spot for Manaea to keep up his positive results.
OTHER SP’S IN MY PLAYER POOL: BAILEY OBER ($9500 DK), NESTOR CORTES ($8500 DK)
Value Pitchers to Target:
JORDAN WICKS ($7300 DK)
The Cubs SP returns to action today after nearly 75 days on the IL due to an oblique injury. The Cubs had high hopes for the young LHP as he earned a rotation spot out of Spring Training. But the results have been mixed primarily due to an extremely high WHIP of 1.46. However, his advanced metrics show that was met with some unlucky events as his 0.356 BABIP would rank 2nd in the MLB if qualified (McKenzie Gore leads the league at 0.364). The other positive news is he does have a 25% K rate which is good for pitchers in this range. The Nats also have worse splits against LHP’s (20th in BA, 24th in OBP, 29th in Slugging) than they do against RHP’s (14th in BA, 12th in OBP, and 21st in Slugging).
HONORABLE MENTION: MITCHELL PARKER ($6700 DK), ALEX COBB ($6600 DK)
Top Stacks to Target:
YANKEES:
Because you can find pitching combos today that will be affordable, you have the luxury to spend up on Yankees bats. This is similar to last Sunday when we saw a Yankees stack go off. The Bronx Bombers face off against Miles Mikolas today who owns a 5.23 ERA. In August, he posted a 6.29 ERA with a 0.295 opponent’s batting average. So his season is trending in the wrong direction. Even though they are both around $7K each, I can see a situation where we’re able to afford Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. Mikolas is an equal opportunity pitcher when it comes to splits (LH bats hit 0.279/0.310/0.796 and RH bats hit 0.278/0.304/0.765). So we can look at either side of the plate with Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Jazz Chisholm all having faced Mikolas before with some success.
Other Stacks to Consider: RED SOX, ATHLETICS, TWINS
Now that you finished reading the MLB Sweet Spot article make sure to check out MLB Lineup Optimizer and our YouTube Channel which keeps you in tune with all of our shows.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter (@dgloeck) and my other content that is part of the Win Daily Sports family.
