MLB DFS Tournament Strategy: Leverage, Home Runs, Optimal Picks | Today, 5/17/21

A new week of daily fantasy baseball action kicks off with some great-looking GPP action across the industry as baseball jumps into the spotlight, at least for a day. With big tournaments and prize pools open on both major sites, there should be plenty of soft competition jumping the fence from other sports, making the edge provided by using tools like those linked below all the more of an edge for daily fantasy baseball. Looking at the eight-game slate, there are some extremely strong pitching options, with two of the league’s absolute best starters taking the hill for the Yankees and Padres and a few strong options from the top end of the next tier. Hunting for offense on a relatively strong pitching slate will be more challenging, as we need not only identify the most likely spots, but also figure out how to roster them in unique combinations from the field. This has all the makings of a fun and interesting MLB DFS slate, making it a perfect pairing with today’s contest sizes on DraftKings and FanDuel.

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Tracking the top MLB DFS pitchers will be key, as will monitoring the public ownership distributions on stacks via the Top Stacks Tool. Let’s get into the MLB DFS picks for DraftKings and FanDuel, as well as some home run candidates for each team.

MLB DFS Tournament Strategy: Top HR Options

Home Run Ratings

Home runs are the 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 will give one of the top choices from each team. However, it won’t always be the absolute top-ranked player, particularly when there is an obvious star who would be in that spot every day.

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Scale: 5-10 Average; 10-20 Good; 20-25 Very Good; 25+ Great

Arizona Diamondbacks: Eduardo Escobar — 9.33

Atlanta Braves: Ronald Acuna Jr. — 12.23

Chicago Cubs: Kris Bryant — 9.87

Chicago White Sox: Jose Abreu — 11.81

Cleveland Indians: Franmil Reyes — 19.76

Colorado Rockies: Trevor Story — 4.84

Detroit Tigers: Jonathan Schoop — 3.91

Los Angeles Angels: Taylor Ward — 8.47

Los Angeles Dodgers: Justin Turner — 14.41

Minnesota Twins: Miguel Sano — 2.24

New York Mets: Francisco Lindor — 2.62

New York Yankees: Clint Frazier — 10.26

San Diego Padres: Trent Grisham — 7.39

Seattle Mariners: Kyle Seager — 12.07

Texas Rangers: Nate Lowe — 11.32

Washington Nationals: Juan Soto — 3.91

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Power Index

This is intended to capture the full range of home runs-upside for each team. It is not meant as a stack ranking and does not account for pricing or popularity — only home run potential. The first column is the average rating for the full projected lineup (pitcher bats not included in non-DH games), and the second is for the top six hitters in the projected lineup.

DraftKings & FanDUel MLB DFS Picks strategy, advice, projections, ownership, daily fantasy baseball rankings

MLB DFS Pitchers, Optimal Stacks & Leverage Plays

This section will feature a few standout MLB DFS spots and teams to look at for potential plays on DraftKings and FanDuel. Make sure to check out the ownership projections for critical updates and monitor the top stacks tool throughout the day for changes.


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On the Hill

Monday’s MLB DFS slate has two premium arms and a strong offering of top-end starters backing them up. Gerrit Cole and Yu Darvish are the top starters on both sites, essentially regardless of pricing and popularity. The two aces are in fantastic matchups, with Cole in Texas to take on the Rangers and Darvish at home facing the weak Rockies lineup. Just a minor step down from those two is Walker Buehler, arguably an ace in his own right. Meanwhile, Yusei Kikuchi of the Mariners is ascending into previously unseen salary territory in his strong matchup against the hapless Tigers lineup, while Braves starter Max Fried seems inexpensive and under-owned in his matchup against the Mets.

Of all the starters, Cole is the most likely to put up a ceiling score. He stands atop the Top Pitchers Tool on both sites by a significant margin, but he will be extremely popular for it. He has been electric to start the season, completing 52.2 frames over eight starts. Cole has struck out a spectacular 40.8% of hitters that have faced him this season, while walking only an astonishing 1.6%. His 1.96 xFIP is second only to crosstown rival Jacob deGrom among qualified starters. Cole is in an extremely favorable matchup today, facing a Rangers team that strikes out 27.1% of the time against right-handed pitching, third worst in baseball. There is monstrous upside, and he is worth every penny of salary and every bit of negative leverage it takes to get to him.

Yu Darvish is not quite on Cole’s heels in the model or in the probability of being the top starter but still is easily the next-best option on this slate. Darvish is at home facing a Rockies team that strikes out only 22.4% of the time against right-handed pitching, which ranks them fifth in the league in the category, but they create runs 26% worse than average in the split and have just a .151 team ISO. While the Rockies potentially could give a minor haircut to Darvish’s upside, there is every reason to believe he is in an extremely safe spot and likely to go deep into this game, covering any differential in the raw strikeout projection by added volume. Darvish has made eight starts and gotten through 47.2 innings. He has a 31.2% strikeout rate that is excellent unless you’re comparing only to Cole’s mark from the previous paragraph. Darvish has a 3.74 xFIP and a 0.92 WHIP on the season.

The Mariners are at home in Seattle with Kikuchi on the mound in a plus matchup against the Tigers. He has been a completely different pitcher over his last 91 innings between 2020 and this season. Over a 161.2 inning sample in 2019, his first season in the Majors after coming over from Japan, Kikuchi had just a 16.1% strikeout rate with a 5.71 xFIP and 1.52 WHIP. Between 2019 and 2020 he added a cutter to his arsenal, and it has been transformational. Kikuchi leapt to a 24.2% strikeout rate in his 47.0 innings in 2020 while putting up a 3.78 xFIP and a 1.30 WHIP while inducing groundballs at a 52.0% clip, up from just 44.0% the year before. He has been even better this season, throwing 44.0 innings in seven starts and posting a 25.6% strikeout rate to go with a 3.25 xFIP and a 1.09 WHIP with a similar groundball rate at 51.7%. Kikuchi is an excellent option to take the top off an opposing offense’s power upside, and he is facing a Tigers lineup that is already struggling against lefties this season. Detroit’s active roster has been atrocious in the split this season. They rank dead last in baseball with a 33.4% strikeout rate. The second-worst team in the split is Tampa Bay at 31.8%, so they are worse by a significant margin. Detroit is also league-worst with a 0.068 team ISO against lefties, worst with a WRC+ 44% below average in the split and worst once again with a hilarious two home runs against lefties this season. The Tigers have a collective 341 plate appearances in the sample. The league average is 415, so there is a slight sample bias in the total home runs. That said, the other measurements are reliable, and the Tigers are legitimately awful in the split this year. Kikuchi makes for a hammer of an SP2 on the DraftKings slate, where he costs just $7,800. On FanDuel he is priced up to $9,000 but seems well worth it, particularly if the high-for-him price tag keeps public ownership low.

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Atlanta’s Max Fried has had a bumpy start to his 2021 season, coming off a strong 2020 campaign. Fried put up a 22.3% strikeout rate and a 4.05 xFIP with a 1.09 WHIP through 56.0 innings last season, following up his 24.6% strikeout rate as a rookie in 2019. He has a 4.23 xFIP and an ugly 1.73 WHIP this season and is striking out just 23.1% of hitters over his 22 innings in five starts. He was hampered by some ugly early outings but appears to be rounding into form for the season over his last two turns. Last time out, Fried got through six innings against a quality Blue Jays lineup, striking out just four and walking three but allowing only two hits and one run. The start prior, Fried struck out six Nationals in five innings, walking one and allowing one run on four hits. If Fried’s return to form continues, he could be a sneaky option against the Mets who are just league average against left-handed pitching. The Mets have a 23.4% strikeout rate in the split and an exactly average 100 team WRC+. They have hit just eight home runs against lefties and have a team ISO of only .116, so the power has been out for most of the season facing southpaws. Fried has allowed four home runs in his 22.0 innings this season but yielded only two last seasons for a 0.32 HR/9 and he had a 1.14 mark in the category the year before. He sits in the 60th percentile of hard hit rate allowed and the 91st percentile of average exit velocity allowed. His groundball rate has plummeted from 53.0% last season to 37.9% this year, but that is almost definitely just the result of the extremely small sample. Fried has reliably been above 50.0% groundballs induced for his entire pro career at every level. At worst, he looks like he will be in play to limit the Mets offense, but there is upside for more as a low-owned tournament play.

Los Angeles Angels

The Angels are looking like a strong contender in the Top Stacks Tool by probability of success. They are drawing about the appropriate amount of ownership for that probability on DraftKings and they are trending toward being under-owned on FanDuel. Peeling the onion on the Angels stack, it becomes clear that most of the public ownership projections are concentrated around the obvious plays on the team, while some of their quality options are at less public exposure. Los Angeles is taking on Indians rookie starter Sam Hentges, a lefty who has 13.2 innings pitched with one start on his ledger thus far in his career. Hentges has put up a 4.66 xFIP and a 1.76 WHIP in the sample, while striking out 22.2% of opposing batters. He has a plus fastball in his arsenal but struggles significantly with control and command. He sits in the 26th percentile in hard hit rate allowed and the 27th in average exit velocity allowed, and he has already yielded four home runs in the small sample. The Angels are a plus-plus option for power today.

(Incidentally, the Cleveland Indians on the other side of this game are also profiling well for power and would have been the second choice for this space. Jordan Luplow, Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes are three righties who are getting excellent home run marks, and the Indians have a number of quality movable pieces in their lineup, including Cesar Hernandez, Eddie Rosario, Amed Rosario and Josh Naylor. Getting to shares of both under-owned teams seems a strong play on this slate.)

[osBestBetsSingleGameOdds league=”mlb” date=”05/17/2021″ team=”angels”]

Taylor Ward has been leading off for the Angels in recent games. Ward has 338 Major League plate appearances in his brief career, going just .212/.282/.356 with a .144 ISO and hitting nine home runs with four stolen bases in the sample. Ward has several minor league seasons of double digit home runs and steals on his resume. He profiles as potentially a 15-10 threat in the Majors given a full season and has hit two home runs in his 41 opportunities already this year. Ward is off to a .200/.275/.400 start with a .200 ISO. He makes a quality option off the top at just $2,100 on FanDuel, where he is a third baseman and $2,300 on DraftKings as an outfielder.

Shohei Ohtani needs no introduction to MLB DFS fans. The only thing between Ohtani and full-time stardom is health; he is simply one of the best players in the league when he is able to take the field. He has hit 12 home runs already this season, tying Aaron Judge and Mitch Haniger for the American League lead. Ohtani adds major fantasy baseball upside with his legs; he has already stolen six bases in his 158 plate appearances despite getting on base at just a .304 clip. Ohtani has a .262/.304/.597 slash and an outrageous .336 ISO to start the season; he is a top-end option and is under-owned by the field on both sites.

Mike Trout is Mike Trout. He is also under-owned on DraftKings given his $6,100 salary. Gamers should pay it.

Anthony Rendon is back in action after multiple trips to the injured list. He has made just 79 plate appearances through the early part of the season, about half of what he should have at this point. He has hit three home runs but is at just a .246/.329/.406 slash with a .159 ISO. Rendon has still created runs 10% better than average and simply needs time to round into form. He is one of the best third basemen in the league and deserves better than a $3,700 salary on FanDuel. He is currently projecting for under 10.0% ownership on both FanDuel and DraftKings, he should be rostered in Angels stacks with far more regularity than that.

Lefty masher Jared Walsh is another Angels bat who is drawing only limited public attention. Walsh has hit seven home runs already this season and he has a terrific .338/.411/.571 slash over his first 151 plate appearances. He costs just $3,200 on the FanDuel slate and $4,600 on DraftKings, slotting in at first base on both sites. Walsh loses popularity given the lefty-lefty matchup, but this is likely an overreaction. Walsh has made 258 plate appearances against right-handed pitching in his career, hitting 15 home runs with a .281 ISO, a mark that drops to just .145 against fellow southpaws, but that is in an 88 plate appearance sample in which Walsh has hit just two home runs. He has struck out less against fellow lefties but walks about half as frequently. Walsh’s run creation drops from 53% above to six percent below average historically in the split, but this is a miniscule sample for a developing hitter with clear power. If Walsh is in the Angels lineup, he should not be skipped completely; after all, Hentges should get chased from this contest fairly quickly.

Jose Iglesias is an inexpensive and unpopular option at shortstop on both sites. Iglesias has quietly been ok for offense in his limited time over the past few seasons. Last year he went .373/.400/.556 with three home runs and a .183 ISO in 150 plate appearances. In 2019, Iglesias made 530 plate appearances and put up a .288/.317/.407 slash with 11 home runs but just a .119 ISO. This season so far, Iglesias has a .273/.294/.348 slash in 136 opportunities, with two home runs and a stolen base, but just a .076 ISO while creating runs 18% worse than average. He is, at best, a mix-in option.

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Outfielder Justin Upton is not going to win the batting title. He is off to a .195/.270/.398 start to his season, and he is coming off a .204/289/.422 year that followed a .215/.309/.416 season. Upton is paid to do one thing, hit home runs. He has seven of them this year, in just 126 plate appearances, good for a .204 ISO. As a mix-and-match option to offset some salary and popularity, Upton serves his purpose in the back end of the Angels lineup. He likely will not be on base ahead of other hitters, but he could certainly clear the bases of bats ahead of him, making him much more an end-cap to a stack than a wraparound option.

Catcher Kurt Suzuki is fine for use on DraftKings if you are stacking the Angels. He has been a quality option for power in the past, he hit 17 home runs in just 309 plate appearances for the Nationals in 2019, but he has struggled to get rolling this year and had a down season in just 129 plate appearances last year. Suzuki gets more of his home run upside against lefties, so this is a good spot for him. He could be a sneaky low-cost play in a small number of Angels shares.

David Fletcher is bringing up the end of the Angels projected lineup. He has not lived up to that moniker this season, putting together just a .250/.271/.275 slash in his first 168 plate appearances. He hits for no power whatsoever, so if he is not getting on base and not hitting for average, there is little utility. He is risky as an MLB DFS option given that using him sacrifices a plate appearance, and he is not even overly cheap on DraftKings at $3,900. On the blue site, Fletcher costs just $2,600, putting him more in play as a potentially risky wraparound. Fletcher was a .319/.376/.425 hitter who created runs 25% better than average just last season, but he is not one of the go-to options.

HR Call: Franmil Reyes — Cleveland Indians

To get even more action down on tonight’s MLB slate, check out the betting markets and Awesemo’s expert MLB betting locks for today.


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Author
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.

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