MLB DFS Picks: HRs, Stacks, Ownership DraftKings + FanDuel: August 30

It has been a fun slate so far for a small Saturday of MLB DFS. The Giants connected for some early runs, some of the Red Sox power came through and the Dodgers are winning with seven on the board so far. With a bit too much Brett Anderson in some lineups but some good overall entries, it’s shaping up like a decent night across the board. And I can’t express how annoyed I am that I missed Jo Adell day when it finally landed. The prospect slugger appears to have connected for two home runs so far, and it’s only the bottom of the sixth right now. I have none of him in my limited set of lineups.

With an early afternoon start tomorrow at 1:05 p.m. EST on DraftKings and 1:10 on FanDuel, there will be a lot to catch up on through the morning. We’ll have a combined Strategy Show and Live Before Lock up with EMac and Greg, so make sure to tune in and check out the Live News Blog. The slate looks interesting with a few good pitchers going and some very high-end stacks. The FanDuel slate leaves out the first Mets – Yankees game but includes all of the late afternoon games for a big 13-game affair. DraftKings starts five minutes early to include what I think is a seven-inning game in New York but cuts short in the afternoon for just a 10-game slate. Either way, we’ll have plenty of good options once again.

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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

Arizona Diamondbacks: Starling Marte – 7.26

Atlanta Braves: n/a

Baltimore Orioles: Anthony Santander – 10.91

Boston Red Sox: Mitch Moreland – 10.29

Chicago Cubs: Kyle Schwarber – 2.25

Chicago White Sox: Yasmani Grandal – 9.01

Cincinnati Reds: Mike Moustakas – 7.11

Cleveland Indians: Franmil Reyes – 6.08

Colorado Rockies: Charlie Blackmon – 11.10

Detroit Tigers: Jonathan Schoop – 5.10

Houston Astros: George Springer – 8.83

Kansas City Royals: Jorge Soler – 15.19

Los Angeles Angels: Shohei Ohtani – 13.37

Los Angeles Dodgers: Cody Bellinger – 13.55

Miami Marlins: Jesus Aguilar – 10.83

Milwaukee Brewers: Keston Hiura – 10.03

Minnesota Twins: Nelson Cruz – 17.70

New York Mets: n/a

New York Yankees: n/a

Oakland Athletics: Matt Chapman – 3.81

Philadelphia Phillies: n/a

Pittsburgh Pirates: Gregory Polanco – 3.60

San Diego Padres: Manny Machado – 20.79

San Francisco Giants: Brandon Belt – 6.11

Seattle Mariners: Kyle Lewis – 7.46

St. Louis Cardinals: Paul Goldschmidt – 7.45

Tampa Bay Rays: Austin Meadows – 10.65

Texas Rangers: Shin-Soo Choo – 9.05

Toronto Blue Jays: Randal Grichuk – 6.58

Washington Nationals: Juan Soto – 13.95

Check out the AwesemoOdds home page for sports betting content, including more picks and predictions.

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.

Chicago White Sox – 2-3-5-6-7 – Moncada – Grandal – Jimenez – Encarnacion – Robert

One of our favorite stacks all year long, the White Sox look fantastic again tomorrow. The suggested stack is a salary-savings approach. Do not read that to mean I don’t want Jose Abreu or Tim Anderson in lineups. This team just has a better lineup top to bottom than most of the other franchises in the league, and they’re very expensive to get to. Among the 26 teams on the FanDuel slate, the White Sox rank first in team slugging percentage, second in team ISO and first in team WRC+. This is just a spectacular offense.

They’ll be facing rookie Kris Bubic at home in the Windy City. Bubic has a 4.88 xFIP and an 18.5% strikeout rate through 22 innings in his five starts. The pitcher has a basic three-pitch mix, four if we’re counting the 1% sinkers he’s thrown. He’s in the 53rd percentile in hard hit rate but just the 33rd in xwOBA, 26th in strikeout rate and 19th in whiff rate. He is armed with a 92-mph fastball, an 80-mph changeup that generates below 30% swings and misses, and a 79-mph curveball with a reasonable amount of spin that has yielded just a 5.3% whiff rate so far. This is a pitcher without an out pitch who we can target with these deadly bats.

I expect the White Sox to be a popular option tomorrow, but I’m hoping they will get slightly overlooked with the Coors game on the slate and a few other high-end spots. Keep an eye on the top stacks tool through the day to keep up with the latest. With that in mind, always make sure to check the individual player ownership as well to get a feel for which players within the stack are popular. It’s not always the best bats.

Speaking of not the best bats, let’s start by talking about Danny Mendick. Outside of having a last name that’s would be hard to bear in any middle school in the country, the second baseman really doesn’t offer much more than savings and differentiation. But he ends up in a lot of lineups when running unmodified crunches because of his low price and the rest of these hitters pulling him into stacks. Players like this are important to be aware of when you crunch. The nature of the optimizer will tend to lead it to using a very cheap play to pay up for three others and a higher overall total without considering the middle-ground approach in the correct amount of lineups unless you intervene with tools like ownership caps and randomness in Fantasy Cruncher.

Mendick has three home runs this year and is OK to mix and match in some of these lineups, but overall we don’t want too much. I want to be over the top on most of the other hitters in this lineup, though. We also have Nick Madrigal back this weekend, and he might well be hitting in this spot at the bottom of the order tomorrow.

Anderson has been leading the way with a .337/.378/.620 slash in his 98 plate appearances coming into action on Saturday. The shortstop is a power and speed threat who is ideal for MLB DFS and typically comes at a discount in both salary and ownership at the position.

Yoan Moncada should probably be over $5,000 on DraftKings, so call the spare $100 a savings and roll him out with confidence. The switch-hitting third baseman is at just .261/.338/.443 in his 130 plate appearances in 2002, but he has five home runs and a WRC+ 15% above league average despite a low-for-him ISO of just .183. At $3,200 on FanDuel he’s a no-brainer.

Abreu, Yasmani Grandal and Edwin Encarnacion are a daily conundrum on FanDuel with two of the three being in play in any lineup between the first base/catcher and utility spots. On DraftKings Grandal and the Encarnacion/Abreu decision both become individual binary spots, given that you can only play Grandal at catcher and only play one of the first basemen. In every combination I love this trio tomorrow. Grandal costs just $2,900 on FanDuel because they made this season’s pricing while everyone was drunk at the holiday party two years ago and never updated it.

Abreu is at a more reasonable $4,100 on FanDuel and an expensive $5,400 on DraftKings. I’m hopeful that the salary on that site keeps ownership suppressed. The trio has an average ISO of .257, though Abreu’s monstrous .349 is bolstering that to some degree. He’s having by far the best season with 12 home runs and a .318/.362/.667 slash. Encarnacion might be the less popular approach and he has mostly the same power upside. The slugging right-handed first baseman costs just $3,800 on DraftKings and $2,800 on FanDuel and is carrying a strong mark in my home run model and a good point projection on both sites. He’s at just .177/.261/.418 this season, so hopefully the surface numbers suppress public ownership.

Speaking of the home run model, Eloy Jimenez is right there with Abreu with 11 home runs and a .330 ISO coming into action on Saturday. The outfielder’s WRC+ 68% above average is second only to Abreu’s, and he offers a nice savings on both sites. I would be sure to deploy some Jimenez when I get to Encarnacion at first base. Superstar rookie Luis Robert offers the same sort of upside, although he’s cooled slightly off his blazing start. The outfielder is now just $3,200 on FanDuel and $4,700 on DraftKings. He’s still at .284/.331/.569 with eight home runs and 19 RBIs on the season, and nothing about what he was doing earlier in the year was surprising other than how immediately upon his arrival his upside became real. This is the player we were expecting him to be. Fire away.

Nomar Mazara‘s lefty bat is in play here as well. He’s only $2,700 on DraftKings, so I expect him to be a very popular option within the stack if the team ownership is among the higher marks on the slate. The more the public goes to a team with high pricing, the more a value guy like this will spike. We saw it with Matt Kemp in Colorado at his low price on today’s slate. Mazara has done basically nothing in the power department with just three doubles and no home runs, which is not what he’s being paid for. Like with MLB DFS, the White Sox are looking to him for his 64 of 79 career home runs against right-handed pitchers. Keep an eye on the ownership and act accordingly, Mazara is a good mix and match but not if he’s at explosive ownership.

Minnesota Twins – 1-2-3-4-7 – Kepler – Polanco – Cruz – Rosario – Sano

I know we’ve hit the Twins, but I feel like it’s been a while. They’re getting a matchup against extremely high-end rookie prospect Casey Mize, who hasn’t gotten out of the fifth inning in either of his two starts, while yielding six earned runs and two home runs so far. Mize was drafted first overall and is getting a chance at some experience in a developmental year for the Tigers as they rebuild their franchise. The starter has a ton of promise and a tantalizing arsenal of pitches that includes a 94-mph fastball and a devastating splitter. The splitter comes in at just 84 mph and dives off the table, generating 34% whiff so far in the very limited major league sample. I’m hopeful that the pedigree keeps ownership on the Twins low. I’m happy to roll out a high-end lineup like this at what looks like discounted pricing against a rookie hurler and a bullpen like Detroit’s. The Tiger’s bullpen ranks 27th in the league in strikeout rate, although their 14th overall 4.42 xFIP has to be regarded as “fine” in context.

The Twins can throw plenty of bats at this spot, and several of them handle Mize’s arsenal pretty well. Primarily among them, Miguel Sano seems to have a particular acumen for taking the splitter deep. For the year Sano is at .247/.346/.559 with six home runs and a .312 ISO over 107 plate appearances. He hits around seventh in this lineup, which burns a plate appearance or so for him, but he brings two-home-run upside to every game. At just $3,400 I can get a lot of Sano in my Twins stacks.

With Luis Arraez hitting sixth in front of him, Sano has someone who gets on base a fair amount without clearing the base runners ahead of him with extra-base hits. That creates an interesting dynamic between these two hitters, given the $2,100 price on Arraez on FanDuel and $3,500 on DraftKings. Arraez has just a .037 ISO on the season, and his strikeouts are spiking “all the way up to” 12.2%. That mark is actually high for this hitter but still excellent. His career mark is just 8.8% in his 456 plate appearances. He’s actually walked at a better clip than he’s struck out with a 9.6% rate drawing the free pass. Arraez relies on putting the ball in play and has ridden a career .348 BABIP to a .388 on-base percentage and .324 average to date.

At the top of the lineup, Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco cost as a pair on FanDuel what Nelson Cruz costs on DraftKings. The discount on both players is borderline laughable. The pair combined for 58 home runs in 2019 and they aren’t truly struggling in 2020. Kepler was at .238/.352/.486 with seven home runs, a .248 ISO and a WRC+ 26% above average for the season. The average is low, but if Kepler is being paid to hit for average, I can assure you no one has informed him. This is a power hitter, and 81 of his 99 career home runs have come against right-handed pitching. I like his chances to pick up number 100 tomorrow.

At .275/.315/.367 with just two home runs and a .092 ISO, Polanco is somewhat disappointing so far this year. I’m happy to get ahead of the curve on the regression to the norm on a hitter that I believe in. The shortstop is relatively cheap on DraftKings at just $4,600 and makes a solid option at what might be low ownership. In 2019 Polanco saw a career-high 704 plate appearances, hit 22 home runs and drove in 79 while scoring 107 times. His previous career high in opportunities was 544 plate appearances in 2017 when he hit 13 home runs and stole 13 bases. The speed has since disappeared, but the bat is still a high-end option in this stack.

Cruz is Cruz. You can play him against anyone. He’s at $5,900 on DraftKings and $4,100 on FanDuel and is carrying one of the highest home run marks in my model on the entire slate. With slugging outfielder Eddie Rosario backing him up on the left side of the plate in the cleanup spot, Cruz is likely to see a few meaty pitches from the rookie. Nelson never met a fastball he couldn’t handle, and he hits the splitter for power relatively well just like most pitches. Rosario is also drawing a heavy home run projection and has also shown a good track record hitting Mize’s primary pitches for power. The kid could be in trouble in this matchup.

Marwin Gonzalez is a better mix-and-match option than Jake Cave given the likely spot in the batting order, but both are workable. With catcher Mitch Garver on the injured list, the Twins have their sixth-ranked prospect Ryan Jeffers handling the tools of ignorance. The 23-year-old hit 14 home runs between high A and AA over 414 plate appearances in 2019 and could be a slightly sneaky catcher option tomorrow. Just don’t go haywire on the exposure.

HR Call: Miguel Sano (Twins)

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Author

Terry McBride

Terry used to do other things, now he writes words on the internet. He hopes his more than 20 years’ experience in season-long and daily fantasy sports and his custom models for MLB, NBA, and NFL don't steer you too wrong when he writes columns and makes picks on Awesemo.com. A lifetime of experience keeping odd hours make Terry ideal to cover KBO baseball overnight until the world returns to normal. Most of those late night hours have been spent on the couch watching sports, T.V., and movies; just try to shut him up about any of the above. You can find his pop-culture ramblings and more on Sideaction.