Wednesday, Sept. 30, we get the first of two back-to-back eight-game slates at 12:08 p.m. ET on DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo and SuperDraft. Before you lock in your MLB DFS lineups and MLB DFS picks, make sure to check out check out Awesemo’s DFS baseball MLB rankings and projections.
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Main-Slate MLB DFS Picks
Cincinnati Reds at LHP Max Fried – 3.6 implied runs
Keep in mind there are not many weak links through the first two games any of the expanded playoff series. As we have seen the last two postseasons, managers are not afraid to go with a quick hook if their pitchers begin to struggle the second time through the order. This is made a whole lot easier with fully rested bullpens, plus the fourth and fifth rotation guys who generally do not project to make any starts.
Fried was on a nice run, going 55 innings without allowing a home run until his final start against Miami when he gave up two in an abbreviated outing cut short after he tweaked his ankle. While the youngster does a good job of keeping the ball in the park, when he does allowed fly balls (a low 24.0% of the time over his last 225.1 innings), they leave the part with a 16.1% home run/fly ball rate, which is evenly split between righties and lefties.
We don’t often see meltdowns in the postseason because managers can easily go to fresh arms, so going all in with a lot of full stacks the next two days is probably wishful thinking (unless you are the Yankees going against this year’s likely Cy Young winner). However, we can focus more on players who are adjacent in the lineup for the extra synergy, as we will likely be looking to capture the potential home runs from a couple different games.
Eugenio Suarez will be wildly popular on DraftKings, batting cleanup for just $3,500. He is at the same price on FanDuel and a reasonable $14 on Yahoo. The two righty options closest to him in the lineup will likely be Nicholas Castellanos, who is phenomenal against southpaws with a .255 ISO and 165 wRC+ in his last 336 righty/lefty matchups. Suarez has had a down seasons, but he still has a .287 ISO and a 149 wRC+ in his last 394 righty/lefty matchups. Nick Senzel is a boom/bust option, but we are looking for lightening in a bottle, and he has a .197 ISO against southpaws since the beginning of last season. Finally, for some differentiation, Mike Moustakas has a .199 ISO in his last 424 matchups against same-handed hurlers, and we know gamers are not thrilled to have lefties versus lefties if they can help it.
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Afternoon-Slate MLB DFS Picks
San Diego Padres vs. LHP Kwang Hyun Kim – 4.5 implied runs
Here we are with San Diego making the postseason and looking to knock out the Dodgers. Of course, they will have to go through the Cardinals and Kim first. This will be a 2:08 local start, and it is expected to be around 90 degrees in San Diego for first pitch, which is unseasonably warm. The 32-year-old lefty is a veteran of 12 KBO seasons, and this was his first season in The Show. He performed well over 39.0 innings with a low 0.69 HR/9, but the 5.54 K/9 rate is not going to get him out of many jams.
Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Wil Myers will be on everyone’s radar for good reason. Austin Nola is intriguing as a differentiation discount dandy on FanDuel at just $2,800, and we know gamers hate rostering a catcher. While he did not debut until last year for the Mariners as a 29-year old rookie, Nola has logged time at catcher, first base, second base, third base and right field. It also helps that he has solid pop against lefties with a .223 ISO and a 107 wRC+ in his 148 career plate appearances against southpaws.
Tommy Pham is good against lefties but great against fellow righties, and at the bottom of this order he is an intriguing one-off or even as part of a back-end stack with Jurickson Profar and Trent Grisham.
Late-Slate MLB DFS Picks
Los Angeles Dodgers vs. LHP Brent Suter – 4.6 implied runs
It looks like Lindblom will be drawing the Game 1 start, but we know that the Brewers are comfortable going to other options at the first sign of trouble. That trouble is going to come in the form of a loaded Dodger lineup that features Joc Pederson, Chris Taylor and A.J. Pollock as the bottom third of the order. They double as a nice contrarian group, particularly on DraftKings where their price is not discounted that much for the latter two as compared to the key cogs in the Dodgers. While Pederson is always a pinch-hit risk if a lefty reliever comes in, he also just needs one swing of the bat to make his backers happy. The top six of the lineup basically doubles as an All-Star team, and we really can’t go wrong with any of them, though they are spendy.
Update: The Brewers have announced that it will be Brent Suter as today’s starting pitcher in an effort to combat the lefty top half of the Dodgers lineup. He will likely last one time through the order. While this means it will likely be Kike Hernandez starting over Pederson, Taylor and Pollock are in an even better spot against a lefty. My expectation is that Milwaukee will go with a right-handed hurler after Suter in an effort to mix things up. That means we could see Dave Roberts use Pederson as a pinch hitter depending on the situation.
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