Welcome to the MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner! This free-to-enter, single-entry fantasy baseball 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!
We will focus on three players — one pitcher, one infielder and one outfielder — to be MLB DFS picks for tonight’s MLB Yahoo Cup contest.
MLB Yahoo Cup Fantasy Baseball Picks | Round 24
MLB DFS Pitcher: Nestor Cortes — $37
The MLB Yahoo Cup is coming down the home stretch, with just four rounds left before a winner is determined. If currently sitting near the top of the standings, jamming in top arms with as many Coors Field bats as possible feels like the optimal route to take on this slate. And if trying to make up some ground on the leaders, finding some less popular stacks with cheaper pitching could help players make up some major ground if the chalk were to fail.
Ironically enough, Nestor Cortes could be a fundamental piece to accomplish either style of lineup. At just $37, he provides perhaps the best combination of savings and upside on the entire slate. Awesemo’s Top Pitchers tool gives him a 13% chance of finishing as a top-two scorer on the slate, the fourth-best odds of the day, and there is no doubt he is capable of an enormous outing against the Orioles in this spot.
While it is a bit surprising to see a team as woeful as Baltimore carrying a 103 wRC+ and a middle-of-the-road 22.4% strikeout rate against left-handed pitching for the season, Cortes’ arm talent is still capable of overcoming any matchup (despite what his last outing against the Athletics demonstrated). His 25.6% strikeout rate, .200 xBA, .310 xSLG and 34.5% hard-hit rate are all elite numbers that should lead to some monster outings. And for those who have had pitch count concerns with Cortes in the past, he saw 104 pitches two starts ago against the Twins, so that is no longer a thing. Put all of this together, and Cortes stands out as an outstanding pitching option for all formats and lineup constructions on Yahoo tonight.
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If trying to find offenses capable of keeping up with Coors, rostering almost any American League East team seems to be a solid way to go. And among all the potent offenses from that division, the Tampa Bay Rays seem to be getting the least amount of traction tonight. The Awesemo Top Stacks tool gives them a 4.8% chance of being the top scoring team of the night, yet are being rostered at only a 4% clip, leading to a little positive leverage that could go a long way in taking down a tournament on Yahoo today.
And if stacking up the Rays, there is no way it should not include presumed leadoff man Brandon Lowe, who should feast on righty gas can Randy Dobnak. Lowe is now up to 31 homers on the season, and although he still has a propensity to swing and miss based on his 28.7% strikeout rate, that risk should be mitigated by Dobnak’s absurdly low 12.5% strikeout rate. So despite a brutal home ballpark for hitters, Lowe and the Rays have more than enough firepower to render that fact irrelevant, making them one of the top teams to target on tonight’s Yahoo slate.
MLB DFS Outfielder: Charlie Blackmon — $13
Fading Coors field in a large-field tournament such as the MLB Yahoo Cup is probably the route to take if trying to make up ground, but that does not mean to write off the game entirely. Specifically, Charlie Blackmon has a $13 salary that may be too good to pass up on. Even on a 14-game slate, there is no equal to his game environment and matchup, making him perhaps the single best point-per-dollar play of the day.
Blackmon has had a rough go of it for a player of his stature in 2020, hitting a measly .267 with just 11 homers in 485 plate appearances. But against righty Huascar Ynoa, a promising young pitcher that has never pitched in Coors before, Blackmon could have a few opportunities to do some damage with the platoon advantage. He is a priority for all games and formats on Yahoo tonight, especially the Yahoo Cup.
