KBO DFS: Spotlight Hitters DraftKings, FanDuel

“Well what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.” welcome to KBO DFS Groundhog Day. With four of the five games scheduled for last night getting postponed by rain and rescheduled as double-headers for tonight’s slate we’re going to be covering some familiar ground. We had a few things change in games that are makeups of last night, and the Eagles vs. Lions game will be a fresh one, as the only contest that played last night. For the re-runs I’ll add any new context that has emerged and see about finding a new angle for each game to add. All new information for each game is in the first italicized paragraph.

The KBO has some interesting rules about scheduling double-headers and makeup games this year with the reduced calendar. According to a helpful thread on Twitter by KBO beat writer Jeeho Yoo (@jeeho_1) from the Yonhap News in Seoul, if the first or second game of a three-game set is rained out, it will be played as a double-header the following day. If the third game is rained out it will be rescheduled for the second day of the two team’s next meeting, which now means their first meeting in September, because the league is not holding July or August double-headers to protect players from extreme heat. Still with me? The exception to the third-game rescheduling rule is if that game was the Sunday of a weekend slate, in which case the game will be made up the following Monday, which is usually a KBO off-day. But the KBO is also not holding any Monday games in July or August, so those will now also be rescheduled to September. And since there will be no double-headers in July or August, I’m pretty sure Yoo’s final tweet means any makeup games for rainouts the next two months will all land in the Fall. So, hope for good weather or it’s going to be a busy KBO September!

KBO DFS Picks: DraftKings + FanDuel Hitters

The game that did play was a flat 3-2 Lions victory that thankfully ended up not counting anywhere. Good job by both sites cancelling the slate and refunding contest entries, instead of attempting to carry things over in what would have been a mess. With most of the same matchups, we have similar lines going into tonight. The game total for the new Hanwha vs. Samsung game comes down somewhat, but there are players KBO DFS owners are going to want to get to in the one 5:30A.M. contest on FanDuel. DraftKings smartly just went with a four-game set.

The bulk of this analysis comes directly from reviewing Awesemo’s KBO DFS projections and the top stacks tool. Check out the rest of our KBO content, Awesemo’s projections, rankings, and ownership on the site for all your KBO DFS needs.

As usual, I’m going to look game by game, calling out a hitter or two from each team, and giving some top stacking options as we go. Pricing and popularity will be considered, more so as KBO DFS trends begin to emerge over the coming weeks. The numbers included with Suggested Stack are the projected lineup positions I would target for stacking that team, but do not restrict yourself exclusively to those spots. For example, if it says Wyverns 3-6 it means 3,4,5,6 in the projected lineup. If it says 1-2-3-5 it means those guys. If it means a two-man it will say so. I’m also going to start trying to include positions more, hopefully it helps speed up the process of finding guys as you build lineups.

With lock still hours away (2:00 A.M. EST), official lineups have not been released, so be sure to double-check status before you plug players into your lineup.

Hanwha Eagles @ Samsung Lions – 9.5 run total (3.86/5.89) – Suggested Stack(s):

These two teams played a boring 3-2 game last night that wouldn’t have been overly eventful for KBO DFS if anything had counted. The main piece would have been someone I wasn’t really on board with, Shi-hwan Jang managed to harness his stuff for a night striking out nine and only walking two in his five-inning appearance while somehow throwing a gargantuan 116 pitches. Tonight’s game is the only one taking place at 5:30A.M. and it is only on the FanDuel slate. There’s about a 45% chance of rain in this one right now, so play it at your own risk with no late-swap options available.

The Eagles are going to have a lot to handle tonight in starter David Buchanan, who has benefited from luck and defense in posting an earned run average more than a run lower than his FIP. He also only strikes out hitters at a 16.4% clip so far this year, but the Eagles lineup is just awful, and he should have no issues. The Eagles rank last in stack rankings for FanDuel tonight, there’s not much to like here. The highest projected bat in the lineup is Sung-yeol Lee ($9), with the five guys ahead of him in the order drawing similar numbers. Getting to them in a three-man is probably the only way I would approach this lineup, attempting to pick off extremely contrarian correlation on the off chance that they go bananas here isn’t worth the time. Tae-kyun Kim ($7) is this team’s top bat in my home run model again tonight.

The Lions opponent on the mound tonight, Bum-soo Kim, has been gradually stretching out to start games in the rotation. He looked average in 4.1 innings against the Dinos last time out, but that can be forgiven against that lineup. What concerns me far more about Kim here is his 6.49 career FIP over a five-year career in both the rotation and the bullpen. This is a guy to target with bats and the implied total for the Lions reflects that, climbing to nearly six. Accordingly, the Lions are pumped up to third in the FanDuel stack rankings. As it stands right now, they’ll also be at nearly unplayable ownership levels, with the team pulling a 30% share. Did I mention that this is the late game and there’s a threat of rain? I can’t advocate putting Lions in your lineups tonight, regardless of how good they look, unless we get better news on the weather. With no game to pivot to you’re dead in the water if you have them and this one rains out.

The Lions will also be without Tyler Saladino for the next few games at least. If you’re willing to roll the dice with the risk your bats are Won-seok Lee ($8), Ja-wook Koo ($9), Hae-min Park ($7), with Hak-ju Lee ($7) and Heon-gon Kim ($7) as my favorite low-owned add-ons. Mix and match most of the other hitters if you dare.

Kia Tigers @ Lotte Giants – 9.0 run total (4.03/5.18) – Suggested Stack: Giants 1-5

Not much change in this one. Straily still has the Tigers total pushed even lower than yesterday and they rank last in stacks on both sites. I would look at three through six for Tigers. The Giants look better and land in the middle of stacks but are over-owned. Machado and Jung are still important lower-owned pieces to include but ownership on the others is up in not the best spot. Byung-hun Min ($9/$3,400) bounces around this lineup but is playable as a differentiator most of the time. This is the other game on the slate with some weather concerns tonight.

The Tigers and Giants played a game that had a few semi-relevant performances, including a home run from Hyung-woo Choi, but ultimately nothing critical in a 4-3 Tigers victory. The real story was Tigers pitcher Aaron Brooks, who allowed only one hit over his seven innings.

The Tigers draw a tough spot here with Dan Straily taking the mound for the Giants. Straily will be looking to extract some revenge (don’t believe in narratives) tonight, like last night’s pitcher his only poor performance so far this season came against these Tigers. The tough matchup has the Tigers at the bottom of stack rankings for both sites and this is mostly a pass for me. No one is going to be near them, so if you roll the dice just look to our usual favorites in the middle. Preston Tucker ($17/$5,700), Ji-Wan Na ($9/$3,800), and Hyung-woo Choi ($10/$5,000) as a three-man should be more than enough Tigers. Feel free to add hitters like Min-sang Yoo ($7/$3,500) or Ho-ryeong Kim ($10/$3,700) if you like compounding risk.

The Giants land in the middle of tonight’s stack rankings which makes sense with their matchup against one of KBO DFS’ more confounding pitchers. Min-woo Lee seems to be focusing on control sacrificing some strikeout upside and not sweating pitching to contact since his conversion from a reliever to a full-time starter. His strikeout rate has come down but so has his walk-rate. His earned run average has been consistently more than 1.5 runs higher than his FIP since the start of 2019, and he doesn’t yield home runs. This isn’t a spot to jump on for a pitcher necessarily, but he seems like a guy who will be able to handle this Giants lineup on the right day. Dixon Machado ($10/$4,300) continues to hit in the middle of this lineup and he looks decent in both projections and my home run model. At under 10% ownership on both sites he’s a playable part of the Giants stack, and you can go a spot further in the lineup and connect him to Chi-hong An ($9/$3,000) before looking back to the top of the lineup for the bigger bats. Hoon Jung ($9/$3,500) continues to go unowned in the leadoff spot, if I’m playing this lineup I love getting to that opportunity as a point of differentiation if it’s there.

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NC Dinos @ KT Wiz –10.5 run total (5.99/4.75) – Suggested Stack: Dinos pick ‘em

The Dinos and Wiz are also in essentially the same spot as last night. There looks like a huge ownership disparity between sites on Myung-gi Lee ($9/$3,700) with the outfielder way less popular on FanDuel, which could be advantageous. Ultimately this is still a smash spot for the Dinos, they rank first in stacks and are still under-owned. The Wiz’ outlook doesn’t improve.

One of these days we’re going to catch that Dinos lineup on the right night where they’re not drawing enough ownership and they really go off. Last night wasn’t it. Eui-ji Yang got into one for a home run, but otherwise the 4-3 victory was a relatively quiet one for the Dinos. Drew Rucinski came away the better of the two import starters, but Odrisamer Despaigne wasn’t a disaster on the other side.

KBO DFS players get a bump in the game total tonight, with most of that implied run share landing on the Dinos again here. The favored first place team is getting Min-soo Kim in his fourth start of the year. Kim began the season in the awful Wiz bullpen before joining the rotation. If there’s an opening at the snack stand, we might see him there next. Kim is simply a guy who at every turn has put far too many runners on base and allows the big home run ball far too often. Add this fuse to the explosion in waiting that is the Wiz bullpen and we’ve got a great spot for the Dinos bats again here. This time around they’re at the top of the stack rankings, but it looks as though the public isn’t quite with it. Maybe the trust in “Swole Daddy’ and his team is slowly fading? In a much better spot at the same advantageous ownership, I’ll be right back on these bats tonight. Eui-ji Yang ($14/$5,900) and Sung-bum Na ($17/$6,000) will both be popular, but they are key bats for this offense. I can see leaving one out of a stack to get different in some builds, leaving both out is a stretch. Everyone else in this lineup will be under what their exposure should be, so fire away. The KBO DFS community in general seems to have not quite caught up on the year that Jin-sung Kang ($15/$4,600) has been having. With his dual first base and outfield eligibility and reasonable pricing he makes a lot of things work with this team and combinations as well. If you’re looking at a stack that does leave out both Na and Yang, I would consider a three-man with Kang and two of Hee-dong Kwon ($7/$2,600), Suk-min Park ($10/$4,900), or Aaron Altherr ($16/$5,200).

The Wiz once again have an implied total under 5 runs, facing import Dinos starter Mike Wright and they rank near the bottom of stacks. Wright has been getting slightly lucky so far, with a FIP about a run higher than his earned run average, but he’s among the class of the KBO. It’s just not a good spot again for the Wiz. If you’re going to these bats, it’s Groundhog Day, because Mel Rojas Jr. ($17/$5,100) is the only popular guy on this team. If you look this way add any two of the top five bats to Mel in a three-man or stretch it out to a five-man with those guys plus projected sixth hitter and my Wiz home run pick Jae-gyun Hwang ($8/$4,800). Hwang is a veteran who is yet to get it going in 2020, but he’s hit over 20 home runs each of the last four seasons. Prior to hitting 20 in 2019 – in nearly 90 fewer plate appearances – Hwang had hit 25 home runs for three straight seasons. This is a guy who knows how to drive the ball out of the park, and he’ll be owned at less than 1% on both sites. He’s your man if you’re playing Wiz stacks, don’t forget him.

Doosan Bears @ SK Wyverns – 10.0 run total (5.60/4.63) – Suggested Stack: Bears 2-3-5-6-7

The total in this one came down by a half-run compared to where we had it last night. The Bears implied total comes down slightly but they still rank second on the stack tool. The ownership today is up significantly, so they’re a bit tricky. They get a big bat back in the lineup tonight in third baseman Jae-il Oh, who is my home run pick for this team now. If the slugger goes under-owned it would be foolish to leave him out of Bears stacks. The Wyverns should still get rolled here. They rank next-to-last on both sites and there are no real changes to address.

The Bears got on the board early and often last night in a 9-2 victory. The Wyverns starter was simply overmatched by this offense, and most of the key hitters at the top of the lineup produced fantasy points for anyone who included them with their KBO DFS picks. Bears starter Chris Flexen stood strong for six innings, producing eight strikeouts while yielding only two runs in another of the night’s four strong pitching performances.

The Bears look strong again here tonight. On FanDuel they are going under-owned by a few points from second in the stack rankings. That puts the top two teams in terms of probability of success on the blue site as great ownership plays, based on that alone I would start mashing them together over a broad share of entries. Standing in their way will be sub-mariner Jong-hoon Park. Park is a respectable KBO pitcher with MLB aspirations. His incredible delivery is one of the better submarining approaches I’ve seen watching baseball at any level. He makes it work primarily in the strikeout column, where he ranks fifth among qualified starters in total strikeouts this year and fourth in the KBO in whiffing hitters at a 25.3% rate. Park has a demonstrable ability to keep the ball in the yard as well, with a HR/9 of 0.79 over his eight-year career. This might be a deceptive spot after all. Joo-hwan Choi ($11/$2,400) is a high-quality bat on any slate, but at over 40% ownership on DraftKings in a questionable matchup he’s tough for me to get to. I’d probably be more likely to pay up to be different with Jose Miguel Fernandez ($17/$5,900) again here, and look to put him together with a couple similarly under-valued bats like Kyoung-min Hur ($8/$2,200), Jae-ho Kim ($9/$2,800), and Se-hyuk Park ($7/$3,100), before swinging around for the more popular guys, all of whom are carrying better numbers in Awesemo’s projections. By now you should know this approach has the usual warnings about opportunity cost from the bottom of a lineup. Most of your production is coming up top, you just need a bat or two among the other guys to shake loose of the field and win a big tournament.

Solid KBO veteran starter Hui-kwan Yu should have little issues getting through the Wyverns lineup here. The implied total well under five looks like Vegas agrees, and the Wyverns are drawing a bit too much popularity on both sites for their near-bottom ranking in the stack tool. Ji-hoon Choi ($5/$2,500) is not particularly good, but if he’s hitting second at that price you could do worse as a strange point of differentiation. Assuming you’re already playing Wyverns that is, not as a reason to do so. He’s the lowest projected hitter among the top seven in this order, but he’ll see plate appearances batting second. If he’s at the bottom of the order just cross him off. Any of the bats in the middle make sense to fill this stack out. None of them are popular, Jamie Romak ($13/$4,600) and Jeong Choi ($15/$5,100) are both fine and both draw average ratings in my home run model, as is Kang-min Kim ($7/$3,000).

Kiwoom Heroes @ LG Twins 9.5 run total (4.61/5.09) – Suggested Stack: Twins 2-3-5

Not much breaking on this one. The line is almost identical to where we were last night, and the pitching matchup remains the same. The Heroes rank third on DraftKings, fourth on FanDuel. On the smaller DraftKings slate they will be slightly more popular than their probability of being the top stack, but on the five-game FanDuel slate there could be a decent angle for enterprising KBO DFS owners there. On that site Jung-hoo Lee ($14/$4,400) deserves consideration as a way to differentiate your builds. All Heroes bats will be popular on DraftKings. The Twins look basically the same on both sites as they did last night, though the DraftKings ownership does come up with the smaller slate, closing the gap on most opportunity in this lineup. Keep an eye on Ji-hwan Oh ($9/$3,100) who could be frisky for you at shortstop depending on where he lands in the lineup.

The Heroes put up the other critical game of the night for KBO DFS owners last night, pounding the Twins first round rookie starter for five runs and picking up another three off the bullpen in an 8-3 victory. Byung-ho Park showed that he’s back in a big way with a two-home run night, and Dong-won Park and Ha-seong Kim added homers of their own.

Tonight’s totals are reduced with the game coming in under 10 runs. The Heroes have to figure out impressive import starter Tyler Wilson, so this is a dramatically different spot for bats than it was yesterday. With an implied total of just 4.53, the night’s second lowest and more than 1.5 off the highest, the Heroes just don’t look like a sharp play for anything other than ownership on FanDuel. There’s a low chance of them going off as the highest scoring stack, but it is about double their projected ownership. We’re still talking about a six percent mark there, so temper expectations accordingly. Dong-won Park ($10/$5,300) has a big price discrepancy from site to site, probably due more to DraftKings catcher requirement than his performance, but there’s opportunity there on either site if you’re paying the Heroes. Keon-chang Seo ($11/$4,100) and Hye-sung Kim ($9/$2,700) are bats on either end of the more obvious popular names that make reasonable bolt-ons to a bigger stack, Seo being better than Kim in Awesemo’s projections.

The Twins are officially struggling over their last week or so. After the weekend sweep at the hands of the Bears they dropped the opener last night in ugly fashion. They hope to get things in gear tonight but don’t look strong in the stack tool and are a bit too popular. We all know Roberto Ramos can hit the long ball, and he’s pulling a much better number in my home run model today, but he’s still just way too popular. This ownership made sense when he was underpriced by 40%, but now that we’re dealing with him at an appropriate number it just makes sense to get away from that much exposure. Kang-nam Yoo ($10/$4,000) is a valuable guy to stick in at catcher on a lot of nights. Keep an eye on the status of Y.T. Park ($8/$2,000) going into this one, he took a bump last night and is day-to-day. Hyun-soo Kim ($15/$5,300) is a good look again here, drawing fewer shares than he should be from KBO DFS owners.