Welcome to the MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner! This free-to-enter, single-entry contest consists of 27 rounds where the top 1,075 overall entries and the top 70 entries per round share $10,000, with $1,000 to first and $50 to first per round. Scoring will be cumulative across all rounds, with your seven lowest scores dropped at the end. You may join this multi-round MLB DFS contest at any point, but enter today to give yourself the best chance to take home the title. Click here to begin the chase!
Let’s focus on three players — one pitcher, one infielder and one outfielder — to be MLB DFS picks for tonight’s MLB Yahoo Cup contest.
MLB DFS Pitcher: Luis Garcia — $44
Tonight’s 15-game slate has a number of elite arms to pay up for, although each comes loaded with their own question marks. Corbin Burnes, with the salary drop to $48, is sure to make him the most popular arm on Yahoo, although the decrease came because he’s pitching in Coors Field. Trevor Bauer has been one of the poster children for the sticky-substance crackdown, so any sort of strikeout regression would make his $56 salary unwarranted. And as good as Robbie Ray has been this season, the Orioles are striking out at only a 21.2% clip versus southpaws, the third-best mark in the majors.
So with enough doubt surrounding the pitching studs, consider getting off the board with Astros righty Luis Garcia. He has been impressive in his second season, sporting a 2.98 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and stellar 28.1% strikeout rate. The White Sox are a pretty neutral matchup against righties, with a 103 wRC+ and 23.4% strikeout rate, but they will be rolling out a bunch of right-handed bats against Garcia, who has only given up 19 hits in 147 righty batters faced, which comes out to a cool .146 average. And according to the Awesemo Top Pitchers tool — which is free on the website today — Garcia has a 9.7% chance of finishing as a top-two pitcher on this slate despite being rostered at only a 1.0% clip. That makes him an incredible leverage play for Round 13 of the MLB Yahoo Cup.
MLB DFS Infielder: Freddie Freeman — $23
The Braves stand out as one of the better teams to stack up today, as the days of Carlos Martinez being an elite pitcher have seemingly come and gone. He is generating no swings and misses anymore while giving up loads of hard contact, an awful combination when about to face a potent lineup on the road in 90-degree weather. While the Braves only have a 3.7% chance of finishing as the highest-scoring stack of the night on Yahoo according to Awesemo’s Top Stacks tool, they are still being rostered at half that rate.
And if leaning on the Braves as the core stack in the MLB Yahoo Cup, make sure it has first baseman Freddie Freeman in it. Freeman is back to smoking baseballs in 2021, with a 51.8% hard hit and an average 92.2 mph exit velocity. However, his .835 OPS is a far cry from his ridiculous 1.102 OPS from last season, which means he could be getting a bit unlucky up until this point. That is a scary thought for opposing pitchers, but it is worth taking advantage of in lineups, as he won’t be rostered nearly as much as he would be if a few more of his screaming line drives dropped for hits.
MLB DFS Outfielder: Christian Yelich — $21
There is really no other way to slice it: Christian Yelich has been bad again this season. His disappointing slash line of .248/.407/.381 looks eerily similar to 2020’s .205/.356/.430, which should be cause for concern. It is also a bit worrisome to see only a 1.5-degree launch angle average in an era where hitting up on the ball to the tune of 15-20 degrees is the main objective.
But the salary now reflects this decline at $21, and a date in Coors Field can quickly fix the flaws of any major league hitters. Yelich is bound to be one of the most popular bats on this slate at this tag, so if going relatively chalky with the lineup and want to get different, this can be an easy stay away. But if trying to create the highest-projected lineup every week in an effort to win the year-long MLB Yahoo Cup, Yelich at $21 should be the first hitter in tonight.
