Monday, Aug. 24, has two early games and then a seven-game main slate beginning 7:10 p.m. EST on DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo and SuperDraft. Before you lock in your MLB DFS lineups and MLB DFS picks, make sure to check out check out Awesemo’s DFS baseball MLB rankings and projections.
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Greetings, Gamers! We are getting a fresh set of series today with two early games and a seven-game main slate.
Similar to last year, I will be providing a review of one stack for each of the day’s slates. Some of these short-slate options will be good for the full-game set, others will be more contrarian and better suited for the mini-game sets.
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Early-Slate Pick
Tampa Bay Rays vs. RHP Tanner Roark – 5.2 implied runs
Toronto and Tampa Bay are wrapping up their series with an early getaway game. Since the beginning of 2018, Roark has allowed 55 home runs. Of those, 30 have been earned by lefties and 25 by same-handed hitters. This is the 15th-most home runs allowed in this time frame for any hurler with at least 360 innings. While this game is in pitching friendly Tropicana Field, Roark does himself no favors allowing opposite-handed hitters a 41.0% fly ball rate and a .195 ISO.
The trio to target will be Austin Meadows, Brandon Lowe and Ji-Man Choi on the early two-game slate. Hunter Renfroe, Kevin Kiermaier and Mike Zunino are the differentiation plays, and both have boom/bust upside.
Main-Slate Pick
Cincinnati Reds at LHP Brett Anderson – 5.1 implied runs
For the record, Anderson has allowed more than four runs just six times in his last 51 appearances. The Reds are going to be wildly popular today, so it may be best to focus on them as one-offs in the hopes of corralling a home run with the rest of the stack sputtering out.
There is a good chance we will see four right-handed batters in the top half of the order. Eugenio Suarez and Nicholas Castellanos are phenomenal options against both lefties and whomever is coming out of the bullpen. Matt Davidson is a wind machine, but if he does make contact, the ball is going to leave the yard. Finally, Phil Ervin is cheap and has surprising pop in his bat with a .218 ISO in his last 199 righty/lefty plate appearances.
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Late-Slate Picks
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. RHP Ryan Castellani – 5.1 implied runs
We are still awaiting word on the status of the Chase Field roof for this series. Fortunately Arizona does a good job of scheduling things out for each homestand in advance. Either way we are going to want to consider the Diamondbacks on all slates today. Castellani has just 14.1 innings under his belt in The Show. While he will be a 10-15% SP2 for me on DraftKings at $5,200, that is really the only place I can consider recommending him.
In 10 starts last year for AAA-Albuquerque in the hitting-friendly Pacific Coast League, Castellani had an ungodly 30.4 HR/FB rate giving up 14 taters in 43.1 innings. For perspective, that rate over 200 innings would be double any other full-time starter in the league over the last five seasons. To be fair, 10.1 of his innings this season have been in Coors Field, where he has also allowed all three of his home runs.
So who do we target?
While Jake Lamb and catcher Carson Kelly have been struggling, the top half of the Arizona lineup has been solid. Veteran Kole Calhoun has carried last season’s power surge from Anaheim to the desert and he already has seven home runs. Fellow lefty David Peralta and switch-hitting Eduardo Escobar are top targets as well with their .225-plus ISOs over the last two seasons. Christian Walker strikes out a lot, but he does bring out the boom stick. Finally Ketel Marte and Starling Marte are competent hitters in all situations.
As always, you can reach out to me in Awesemo.com Premium Slack or on Twitter @EMacDFS if you have any questions or want to discuss anything MLB DFS related.
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