The baseball gods have blessed the MLB DFS community with at least one more day of two-game slate action, and we should see some explosive upside once again. Yesterday’s ridiculous outburst by the Dodgers put the slate to bed somewhat early, the team scored 11 runs in the first inning, the most ever scored in a single post-season inning. For a sport that has more than 100 years of history, baseball is astounding for its ability to regularly show you things that have never happened before. The game is amazing. With the matchup the Dodgers have tonight and the numbers I’m seeing for them in my home run model and projections, they could top that inning in the first tonight. Overall, the slate has just one good pitcher going. We could see Clayton Kershaw trend toward 100% ownership on DraftKings. It’s going to be a weird slate.
MLB DFS Quick Hits: Top HR Options, Stacks and Pitchers
Home Run Ratings
Home runs are our holy grail when making MLB DFS picks. Finding the right combination of sluggers who will knock one, or better two, out of the park to drive in the teammates you stack with them is critical to winning GPPs. Identifying the likely home run hitters is trickier than just looking at the big names. Using a model of my own design, based on a blend of several predictive statistics for the batter-pitcher matchup, I’m going to give one of the top choices from each team.
Scale: 5-10 Average; 10-20 Good; 20-25 Very Good; 25+ Great
Atlanta Braves: Austin Riley – 8.29
Houston Astros: George Springer – 13.26
Los Angeles Dodgers: Corey Seager – 19.11
Tampa Bay Rays: Brandon Lowe – 9.45
MLB DFS Stacks & Ownership Plays
(Quick note: if it says 1-5 it means hitters 1-2-3-4-5, otherwise I’ll specify spots)
We’re picking a few standout MLB DFS spots and teams to look at for potential plays here. Make sure to check out the ownership projections for critical updates and monitor the top stacks tool throughout the day for changes.
Rays – Manuel Margot – OF – $3,100 / $2,900
This series already saw a massive Margot game, and there could be more to come from the dynamic outfielder. Margot has been a quality option, if not a standout, for MLB DFS purposes since coming into the league. While he has perhaps not reached some of the peaks projected for him with his combination of power and speed, Margot is a highly useful player who is inexpensive and he’ll be hitting in a reasonably good spot, sixth in the Rays lineup again. In his 159 plate appearances in 2020, Margot hit just one home run but he stole 12 bases. The outfielder has power upside, in 2017 he hit 13 home runs in 529 plate appearances and he hit 12 in 441 opportunities just last season. There is also quality in his career 18.6% strikeout rate, combined with his speed that is a helpful tool for creating runs, although Margot has never fully translated it into a reliable on-base percentage.
Margot is not one of the premiere options on the slate. He’s a hopefully different angle into the Rays lineup that won’t be many people’s first click. There is upside in his bat and legs, and the spot against Astros’ pitcher Luis Garcia is pretty prime across the board. The Rays should be a popular selection tonight against a right-handed hurler who had just a 5.22 xFIP in his first 12.1 innings above High-A ball this year.
Astros – George Springer – OF – $4,500 / $4,200
Springer is the Astros star leadoff hitter, and he’s one of the bigger bargains on the slate considering his overall talent level. He’s not drawing enough ownership for the discount. While popular, he has not cracked the 30% mark on either site. For a two-game slate, that’s probably too low. Springer saw 222 plate appearances in 2020, putting up a .265/.359/.540 slash with 14 home runs and a .275 ISO with a WRC+ 46% above average. This is one of the best leadoff men in baseball hitting atop an excellent lineup.
Springer is drawing one of the day’s better marks in my home run model for anyone on a team that isn’t the Dodgers. The Rays are handing this game to John Curtiss as an opener, followed by a series of question marks with high-end arsenals of pitches coming out of the Tampa bullpen. Curtiss threw 25 innings in 2020, putting up a tidy 3.57 xFIP to his 1.80 ERA, while striking out 25.3% of hitters he faces. The Astros have enough quality in the lineup to get to the vaunted Rays bullpen in a do-or-die situation. If they do, I like the odds of Springer being a key cog in their scoring.
Dodgers – Chris Taylor – 2B – $4,500 / $2,700
On a team that is loaded for bear with power tonight, we’re turning to one of the lower home run marks on my board for some value and some popularity savings tonight. Taylor is carrying a quality projection overall and is an important piece of the back-end of this Dodgers lineup. His price on DraftKings is slightly inflated. He’s going to need to beat his projection to pay it off, but Taylor is drawing just 18% ownership on DraftKings, compared to 30% or more for almost all of his teammates.
In 214 plate appearances in 2020, Taylor put up a .270/.366/.476 slash with a .205 ISO and a WRC+ 32% above average, excellent numbers at the position. The Dodgers are drawing extreme popularity because they look spectacular with the slate’s highest run total and a cakewalk of a matchup against Braves’ punching bag starter Bryse Wilson. In 15.2 innings in 2020, Wilson had a 5.28 xFIP and gave up two home runs. For his career, the right-hander has a 5.56 xFIP to a 5.91 ERA across 42.2 innings and he’s yielded seven home runs. This is an arm we can target for MLB DFS purposes with some of the big bats on the Dodgers. Taylor’s spot in the lineup and his ability to get on base puts him in play as both an endcap to mid-lineup stacks and potentially as a wrap-around option to the top of the lineup and the best bats on the slate.
Braves – Austin Riley – 3B – $3,600 / $2,900
The Braves are in a tough spot against Dodgers’ ace Clayton Kershaw, which is rendering them somewhat low-owned for a two-game slate. If you’re willing to swallow the risk going up against the slate’s best pitcher by far, then this is your spot. With Kershaw’s explosive ownership, playing some Braves bats gets you out ahead of the field by a wide margin if they connect and light him up. We’ve seen this team explode over and over again throughout 2020. They have upside even against a pitcher this good.
Riley could make for a somewhat sneaky bat from later in the Braves lineup. At just 14% ownership and a low price for someone at the hot corner, Riley has upside for us in his bat. In 206 plate appearances this year, Riley hit eight home runs and had a .176 ISO with a WRC+ 11% below average, numbers that need improvement. Overall for his career, however, Riley has 26 home runs in 503 plate appearances, still less than a full season’s worth. His career ISO is .216, when he makes contact the ball travels, though contact is an issue at times, given his 31.2% career strikeout rate.
The most intriguing thing Riley offers is in the platoon splits. While not all lefties are created equal, and few are created Kershaw, Riley has immense upside in the split. In his 120 plate appearances against southpaws in his young career, Riley has nine home runs, a .255/.325/.585 slash with a ridiculous .330 ISO and a WRC+ 21% above average. The kid shines against lefties and is going under-owned at a good price on a two-game MLB DFS slate. Fire away.
HR Call: Corey Seager (Dodgers)
Follow us on all of our social channels! Check out our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for more great Awesemo content.
Looking for more MLB DFS picks content? We have loads of articles, data, cheatsheets and more on the Awesemo MLB home page. Just click HERE.
