Friday Night DFS Analysis
I love Friday night baseball slates. It’s one of my favorite things.
I’m jamming this in at the end of my day, so things are going to be really quick and rough here - but I know that plenty of you really like these summary articles so I want to throw them out there when I have time. Just forgive me for the typos/brevity.
Pitchers
It’s a bit of a lame pitching slate, here is a quick peek at the Pitching+ board for today’s starters (available for paid subs in the pitching projections file daily)
Cash
By the projections, the cash plays are Nestor Cortes and Kodai Senga. I don’t really trust either of those names, but it’s not like there is anybody else to trust on the board. Senga gets the Athletics and definitely has great strikeout stuff. Cortes has started slow but we shouldn’t get bogged down by that.
The one guy that my projections are almost surely too low on is Drew Rasmussen, who has really improved by the numbers this year. However, he has faced the Athletics and Nationals - so that has certainly boosted his numbers a bit. We’ll see what he can do against the Blue Jays tonight, that’s like a different league of lineup as compared to what he’s seen so far.
I think the only one of these guys I want to play in tournaments is Senga, but I’ll likely end up with two of those names in cash.
Tournaments
I’m all over Jose Berrios in tournaments tonight. He has actually looked pretty good this year in terms of getting whiffs. We know he can just go off for these big scores randomly, and I doubt anybody is going to want to play him against the undefeated Rays who have punished almost every pitcher they’ve seen so far.
Worst matchups in the league so far:
The other cheap names I’m considering
Brady Singer (the Braves can strike out and Singer can be very good when he’s on his game)
Johan Oviedo (revenge game!) (16% SwStr% this year)
I had Houck & Gomber on that list but took them off. You often can get by with the 12-18 points those two can give you if your expensive hitters just go nuts - but if you’re only making a couple of lineups I don’t really see it.
Hitters
Orioles vs. Mike Clevinger
They lead the projections as a team. Clevinger has not been anything special since his elbow surgery, and the O’s offense is pretty potent. The 1-4 of Mullins-Rutschsman-Mountcastle-Santander is a pretty nice grouping.
Astros vs. Martin Perez
I think people will avoid this stack a little bit too much. People don’t love to play Kyle Tucker & Yordan Alvarez against lefties, and everybody kind of views Perez as a good pitcher after what he did last year. Maybe he is a good pitcher, but he’s not the type of guy that just can’t get railed by one of the league’s best lineups - so I like that angle.
Padres vs. Gomber
This one is likely to be popular, which makes me not want to do it with my three tournament lineups. But yeah, Gomber is bad and the Padres are good.
Top Projections
Judge 10.4
Mullins 9.67
Rodriguez 9.64
Ohtani 9.45
Betts 9.22
Marte 9.20
Acuna Jr. 9.20
Soto 9.19
Machado 9.17
Top Values
Tellez ($3,000)
Pasquantino ($3,400)
Winker ($3,300)
Thompson ($3,000)
Santander ($4,100)
Machado ($4,900)
Refsnyder ($2,400)
B Lowe ($4,300)
Campusano ($2,200)
Sorry I’m out of time, this was a lame one but we got some stuff out.