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 our MLB DFS picks for tonight’s MLB Yahoo Cup contest.
MLB DFS Pitcher: Tyler Glasnow — $57
There are four aces that stick out far above the rest on tonight’s 13-game MLB slate on Yahoo: Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Joe Musgrove and Tyler Glasnow. Mixing-and-matching two of the four together is made extremely difficult by their price points, as you’d really have to go cheap on bats to make it work. With so many potent offenses in the mix to break the slate, we’ll most likely have to pick our favorite of the bunch from this grouping and live with the result. And while Glasnow is the most expensive of the four, he’s also expected to be the least popular with roster construction, meaning there could be some massive leverage to be had by going his direction.
According to Awesemo’s Top Pitcher Tool, Glasnow has a 22.5% chance to finish as one of the two highest-scoring pitchers of the night, yet is only being rostered in 14.6% of lineups. That is, by far, the most leverage available amongst the four top aces, making him appealing from that standpoint alone. Glasnow sports a four-pitch mix primarily consisting of a four-seamer that spins at an above-average rate. He couples that with a slider and curveball with tons of vertical movement, which generates a lot of swings and misses (56.7% whiff rate on the curveball). While the Mets are generally a terrible matchup since they strike out at the league’s third-lowest rate (22.1%), Glasnow’s arm talent can make up the difference in this outing, making him my preferred contrarian pitching option on Yahoo this evening.
MLB DFS Infielder: Mitch Moreland — $17
One of the longest-running debates in the fantasy baseball community is whether or not batter-versus-pitcher (“BvP” for short) statistics matter. I’m of the mind that it’s very noisy, as good hitters are going to hit well and good pitchers are going to pitch well over any long-term sample. But once in a while, you get an outlier that makes you at least acknowledge that there may be something to the spike in stats, even if you don’t want to admit it.
That’s the curious case we have with Athletics first baseman Mitch Moreland today, who has some truly eye-popping numbers against Twins starting pitcher Matt Shoemaker. In 14 plate appearances against the righty, the left-handed Moreland has seven hits, with five homers and two doubles. That’s a .500 batting average with a comically-high 1.714 slugging and .898 wOBA. Regardless of where you fall on the BvP debate, the fact remains that Moreland has enough pop to be viable against any average righty, so let’s fire him up as a super low-owned one-off in our MLB Yahoo Cup lineups tonight.
MLB DFS Outfielder: Kyle Schwarber — $12
With the Rockies playing the Reds at home in Coors Field, plus the Blue Jays hosting the Phillies in their temporary bandbox, any stack that is not one of those four teams will be contrarian. However, Awesemo’s Top Stacks Tool currently gives the Nationals an 7.3% chance of finishing as the top-scoring team of the night, good for the fifth-highest odds on the board. Against a subpar righty in the Diamondbacks’ Reilly Smith, any and all lefties in the Nationals lineup look like elite plays on this slate, in particular Kyle Schwarber. At just $12, it’s hard to find a better bargain with his kind of power upside near the top of the order, making him a priority for any and all Yahoo MLB DFS lineups.
