While you’re watching your early slate teams (hopefully) rise up the leaderboards, don’t forget about the 5-game night slate. The pricing on both sites seems incredibly soft, as you can fit in a lot of the top bats on the slate with the top arms fairly easily. With that being said, we’re keeping it simple tonight with our spotlights. If you want some news and notes on each pitcher, checkout the MLB Strategy Show from this morning. Awesemo will weigh in first, then I (Tommienation1) will throw some more numbers an analysis at you.
Jon Gray ($8,500 DK/$8,000 FD)
“Gray has a lot of things going for him tonight, including an opposing team total of 3.8, a lot of K upside, and an affordable price on both sites.”
This is one of my (and probably most DFSer’s) favorite plays on the night, as Gray is underpriced on both sites and getting a “B” points grade in Awesemo’s rankings. The projected Padres lineup has 4 righties (Myers, Renfroe, Hedges, Villanueva) that strikeout over 27% of the time against right-handed pitching, and Gray has shown dominance against against righties over the last year and change, posting a 31.0% K-rate and 29.8 hard-contact. He’s going to be chalky, but the strikeout upside alone puts him at or near the top of our list today for starting pitchers.
Carlos Martinez ($10,200 DK/$7,900 FD)
“Martinez, like Gray, has a pretty good strikeout matchup tonight, and even though he will face a tough Brewers’ team, it’s going to be tough to get away from him because of his raw points upside.”
This isn’t a great value on DraftKings, but with the pricing being so soft, it’s hard not to default to playing some Carlos Martinez tonight because of his game-to-game upside. There are some scary bats such as Shaw, Thames, and Yelich, but if he’s able to limit the walks here, Car-Mart should face at least 5 righties (including Chacin) tonight, giving him some real K-upside. The Brewers’ total of 4.8 may scare some people off of Martinez, but it’s hard to argue against him having great chance to lead all pitchers in points tonight.
