Today’s features on the MLB menu include a 2 game early slate, this MAIN 4PM 9 game slate and then a 4 game pass out Saturday night slate. TBD on doing an article for that late 4 game slate.   WEATHER Every thing on this 4PM slate will play and all games are actually starting at 4:05 or 4:10, there’s no 5pm or 6pm games included here.   TOP ARM(S) Logan Gilbert (DK: $10,300) This has been a very weird season for Gilbert.  He’s either been rolling out and giving up lots of hits and some early inning struggles or cruising along with decent results.  And of late he has been more bad then good allowing 6 HR over his last 5 starts combined and some low strikeout rates in that span too. The White Sox could just be the cure he needs.  They are 18th vs four-seamers and 27th in xWOBA vs Sliders on the season, a potential advantage for Gilbert to get going early and cruise through with a nice 6 inning clean bounce back game.   SECONDARY ARMS Hunter Greene (DK: $9000, FD: $10.2k) The ‘cheap’ options today leave a lot to be desired, but so do the mid range guys as well.  The upside of Greene is the obvious fact that his velo could negate Houston’s strength of not striking out. Jake Irvin (DK) Jake’s best pitch so far has been his breaking-ball, which coincidentally is the Marlins worst pitch as an entire lineup.  Sometimes we’ll over analyze pitch type metrics because there’s a lot more variables which go into that type of information, but we also should have some strong winds blowing in from LF in Nats Park today and I would suspect the Marlins are a chalky ‘value’ team too with tons of cheap bats throughout the lineup.  If you want a leverage play for cheap, Irvin is my favorite choice.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Don’t ‘pay up’ for pitching to try and get stud performances.  You would pay up on this slate simply to avoid getting negative or less than 6 points total. I don’t like Braxton Garrett because he relies on opponents chasing a ton, something the Nationals don’t do.     RANGERS Corey Seager, Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Jung Please let me know when Seager’s homer lands.  Toronto turning to Trevor Richards against this lineup, even if he is slated to only […]

Coming back to the perfect Friday MLB DFS configuration is peak joy.  A 2:20 PM Cubs/Orioles game should be well underway by now on the Friday drinking before technically a 3 day holiday weekend + Fathers Day + US Open on TV coming up and ladies and gentlemen.  We have a 14 game MAIN slate tonight.   WEATHER Marlins at Nationals – Rain chances with storms around gametime, but I expect this one … ah, you know what, I am not gonna predict Nationals games.  Nope.  Not gonna do it. Cardinals at Mets – We are monitoring this one VERY closely.  Big PPD risk but if they do PPD it I would assume its before lock time. Roof closed in Arizona   TOP ARM(S) Joe Ryan (DK: $10,600) Almost a 100% full slate and Joe Ryan could still wind up being a 40% chalk pitcher despite three straight games where he has not put up elite numbers.  Ignore the game log reading though because the Tigers are 25th and 28th respectively in splits against his primary pitch usage this season.  Their inability to take walks is also going to help him here tonight and he has to easily be the most sure thing safe option. Zac Gallen (DK: $10,200, FD: $10,800) Love Smash Gallen today.  The Guardians lefties won’t phase him, he has been great vs LHH this season and really for a good part of his career.  Cleveland’s recent power surge in San Diego also does not phase me here as I trust the larger sample size of what we know the offense is.   Gallen is great at home, he should be great tonight as long as Jose Ramirez stays quiet.   SECONDARY ARMS Patrick Sandoval (DK: $7300, FD: $8100) He is the clear cut #1 value for me if Salvador Perez is out.  If Salvy is in though I would still use him just don’t think he is as clean as we want, but the price for someone I am extremely confident wins today at 7300 here on DraftKings makes him the no doubt SP2 for me.  He will beat Rich Hill folks.   OTHER PITCHING NOTES Everyone will use Rich Hill for $6700 vs the Brewers because they’ve been dog poop against LHP.  I hate the spot for Hill who is coming off throwing 119 pitches on June 9th vs the Mets and last I checked he […]

Top Pitchers Sonny Gray (MIN), $9,300 Sonny comes in after a bounceback effort in his last start against the Blue Jays. Prior to that, he had been roughed up in two consecutive starts but tonight he gets a great matchup against the Detroit Tigers. Detroit has the eighth-highest K-rate in baseball at 24 percent. They […]

Anyone else find it weird that MLB has almost no day games this week?  I realize they are scared of warmer weather but it’s just weird still.  There are a ton of series which will go into tomorrow still and speaking of tomorrow, I will be off from writing an article as Rob Geriak steps in for the MAIN slate tomorrow night to provide his MLB thoughts to help you out.  And if you aren’t reading his NASCAR stuff each weekend you should be to pick up some winners there as well. Tonight we have 12 games.   WEATHER Blue Jays at Orioles – The balls should be flying out of Camden tonight (Baseball’s that is). Rockies at Red Sox – Expect this game to have a chance of a delay at the start.  It is possible that they PPD it but I doubt it.  Don’t wanna touch either pitcher, so it’s a matter of waiting it out for hitters or not. Yankees at Mets – Similar deal here, but I believe this one plays Roof closed in Arizona   After a very rough start on the week with pitching we have a loaded group today, including Gerrit Cole vs Justin Verlander as the marquee game of the night.  Not only is there weather issues there, but we do not want to touch that with a 50 foot pole….  And it’s not a 10 foot pole because of inflation, duh. TOP ARM Tyler Glasnow (DK: $9400, FD: $10.1k) Will the fans come back out to Oakland tonight after creating a pretty cool environment last night in their protest of the Ownership?  The team has won 7 in a row after all and has done it against some quality teams.  Tonight though Glasnow could thrive off a little bit of a let down and more so in MLB a team who is a little too aggressive/full of themselves at the plate.  High fastballs and lots of whiffs on the slider from Glasnow tonight should get the job done. Clayton Kershaw (DK: $10.8k, FD: $11.1k) So my pick last night of Yasmani Grandal actually fits into a theory tonight because he has caught Kershaw before, but it was definitely a while ago.  That one little bat is why I move Kershaw down to the #2 spot behind Glasnow – similar to Max being #2 last night because of Stanton.  Unlike Max though, […]

Broken down by pricing tiers, Mark Farris outlines his favorite PGA DFS plays on DraftKings

We almost have perfection today as School is out around most of the country and teams have removed the silly 6:10, 6:40 local start times on the East coast.  Except for Detroit, where they still want people to show up before 7pm to watch the lowly Tigers play Baseball.  I really don’t think it helps the ticket sales Detroit but hey, do whatever you gotta do.  The DFS sites of course just cannot live without that extra 30 minutes of lock time to get more entries into contests as they have opted to say no thanks on the Braves/Tigers tonight and give us just a 14 game slate.  One away from the perfection of 15 on a Tuesday. Lots of new series starting up today and by new I mean spots which you haven’t seen all season like the Jays in Camden, that annual Subway Series, Brewers making their annual trip to Minnesota, Pirates at Wrigley, 2019 World Series re-match in Houston, the “we both got rid of Franmil Reyes” series in PETCO and White Sox at Dodgers.  Oh, and yes, the Reds and Royals are playing again, sorry in advance…   Although with the Reds winning last night they are one step closer to winning the NL Central and with the Athletics winning last night, the Royals are one step closer to having a chance at the #1 pick in next years MLB Draft.  So, that’s kinda nice I guess, except MLB of course now has a lottery system so I’m sure the Royals will screw it up somehow.   WEATHER Pirates at Cubs – Wrigley could have trouble draining today which could lead them to decide to PPD this one.  Again, no pitcher consideration in this game, but either the game is PPD before it locks or they play Rockies at Red Sox – Should not be as ugly as it got in extra innings last night (cash that Rockies win though), but chance for an in game delay does loom here.  No impact on using pitchers though, so move right along. Roof closed in Arizona. Roof should be closed in Texas.   There’s no Zach Eflin tonight folks, it’s a bunch of bums obviously according to the comical pricing algorithm on DraftKings.  By comical I mean, we have nobody who is 11k but the slate includes Zack Wheeler, Corbin Burnes, Max Scherzer and George Kirby — of which […]

A typical Monday with just seven DFS games to satisfy your thirst tonight and only one team who was home yesterday is also home tonight (St. Louis)   WEATHER No concerns. The roof will be OPEN at Chase Field.   This slate is void of high strikeout arms.  Of the 14 options today, only three of them are coming in off a start where they had over 30% CSW rate and 7 of them were below 20%.  On the season there are only three who average over 30% total.  Not a ton of consistency on the board today. Meanwhile, Zack Eflin is $11,000 versus Oakland tonight.  Zack Eflin. Yes, that Zack Eflin. TOP ARM(S) Jesus Luzardo (DK: $9600) I am not in love with Luzardo today, but then I am not in love with any pitcher tonight.  He has the one thing nobody else has and that’s high end strike-out rates vs a team who strikes out a ton.  He also has what everyone else has and that’s major red flags. The Mariners smash fastballs from southpaws, he has always been a horrible west coast pitcher as well and Ty France/Teoscar Hernandez come in hot.  But, 7 strikeouts over 5 innings should negate the damage enough.   SECONDARY ARMS Luke Weaver (DK: $7500, FD: $) There’s Good teams, and then there are Bad teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap.  Then there’s the Royals.  It’s not one specific thing with the team and the offense certainly isn’t the main culprit here, but you can just tell when you look at a team when the hitters are in sync.  Baseball is often misunderstood in that regard because everyone thinks of it as an individual game, however momentum or “streaks” in Baseball come from when you can tell that a lineup is taking their approaches at the plate with a team mentality and not “hey cool, I’m new to the big leagues, let me see what I can do here”.  It’s a winning culture thing and right now the Royals just don’t have it.  So maybe there’s a Pratto long double tonight or more likely Melendez has a 2-2 night off Weaver who is horrible vs LHH, but the Royals aren’t posting a 5 spot on Luke and they’ll run themselves out of any big innings tonight allowing Luke to do just fine. Connor Seabold (DK: $5400) On a normal slate we […]

If you woke up just now and didn’t look at FD or DK earlier then congrats, you missed out on some drama.  Let me catch you up real quick here. The Astros and Guardians game is moved up to 12:40 due to big storms coming in later in the day.  So thus the slate locks at 12:40 now on both sites and will include that game. The Diamondbacks and Tigers are playing the Sunday Brunch game, I am sure it will be very entertaining. The Padres and Rockies game is included on FanDuel main.   WEATHER HOU at CLE – As mentioned above, they have bad weather coming in and thus want to get this game going faster and over with. WSH at ATL – Storms throughout the day.  I really dont like this game. CIN at STL – This will be delayed for sure, but they should be able to wait and play MIA at CWS – Similar here, likely delay and then play without issue.   TOP ARM(S) There’s a high contrarian route which I will outline below, but really your MAIN lineup should be focused around these two guys, with the first one being the #1 overall play on the board today. Freddy Peralta (DK: $8800, FD: $10.2k) Winners of four in a row, the Oakland Athletics have dreams of replicating Moneyball or replicating the Major League film script, but alas that should come to an end and one of these days very soon you’ll see that no hitter notification that Oakland is being no hit.  Today could be the day we get that along with a 12 strikeout performance from Peralta.  Oakland lacks talent and they cannot hit quality fastballs, which they should see over and over and over again today. Hunter Greene (DK: $8000, FD: $9600) – Slight weather concern I am taking a calculated risk that the Reds and Cardinals simply take the smart approach and wait for the rain to clear and then get the game played.  St Louis is off tomorrow and Cincinnati just has to go to Kansas City, so very limited travel if they wait until 4 or 5pm to start this game.  Once they do start it, Greene is going to mow through the Cardinals.   SUNDAY SLEEPERS Normally your Sunday sleeper is someone like Taijuan Walker in the 5500-8000 price range who is going to pitch a nice […]

Overview Sonoma Sunday should be exciting just like the XFINITY race was on Saturday night. The drivers will go 110 laps on the 12-turn road course and with qualifying set we know where to look for drivers. Most comparable tracks: Watkins Glen International, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Circuit of the Americas *Note: all pricing is DraftKings […]

Overview Saturday night road course racing at Sonoma is on the menu as the drivers will handle the 12-turn 2.520-mile road course. With a mix of road course ringers and Cup drivers among the field, this is sure to be a fun and exciting race. Qualifying is set so let’s dig into who we’re looking […]