The MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner: Round 14

Welcome to the MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner! This free-to-enter, single-entry contest consists of 27 rounds where the top 1,075 overall entries and the top 70 entries per round share $10,000, with $1,000 to first and $50 to first per round. Scoring will be cumulative across all rounds, with your seven lowest scores dropped at the end. You may join this multi-round MLB DFS contest at any point, but enter today to give yourself the best chance to take home the title. Click here to begin the chase!

Let’s focus on three players — one pitcher, one infielder and one outfielder — to be MLB DFS picks for tonight’s MLB Yahoo Cup contest.

MLB DFS Pitcher: Mike Minor — $37

Carlos Rodon will rightfully be the most-owned pitcher tonight’s slate over on Yahoo, as his $49 tag salary is affordable and his matchup with the Mariners is sublime. It would be a waste of time to write him up, as there is no doubt he should be a part of your MLB Yahoo Cup lineup if trying to make the best lineup every single week. So the question becomes who to prioritize in the SP2 spot, as there are a number of paths to go based on the preferred on this slate. And while options such as Framber Valdez ($43) and Pablo Lopez ($41) look solid, there is a cheaper play in Royals southpaw Mike Minor ($37) that could carry just as much upside at a fraction of the cost.

Minor doesn’t look like much on the surface, with his pedestrian 4.48 ERA and 91 mph average fastball velocity, but his underlying metrics show he can be a fantasy-relevant pitcher. He has an above-average 25.8% strikeout rate, limits hard contact with a 36.1% hard-hit rate and can pitch deep into games, as he’s proved with two outings of 106-plus pitches in his past three starts. Add in that the roof is closed against a Rangers team with a woeful 83 wRC+ versus lefties, and Minor checks just about every box in this spot. Make him the pitching priority in the MLB Yahoo Cup tonight, and use those savings to spend up on bats elsewhere.

MLB DFS Infielder: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — $30

The Blue Jays were one of the most rostered stacks across the industry yesterday, but the inflated salaries of their hitters on Yahoo tonight will make the task of rostering them much more difficult. According to Awesemo’s Top Stacks tool, the Blue Jays have a 12.7% chance of being the top stack of the evening (best on the slate) while being rostered at only a 6.3% clip. That makes finding ways to fit a few of them at their extreme salaries a contrarian way to go.

Of course, the conversation of best Blue Jays bat starts and ends with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He is torching baseballs to the tune of a 54.8% hard-hit rate and a 15.2% barrel rate this season, which has yielded some outrageous results in the form of 24 home runs and a 1.110 OPS. While some might frown at his exorbitant $30 salary, it should make it extremely difficult for the public to roster him at the sort of clip he warrants with his current level of production. That makes Guerrero an incredible target for Yahoo lineups tonight.

MLB DFS Outfielder: Aaron Judge — $13

For whatever reason, Yahoo wanted to help out today by providing an extremely affordable power hitter and an extremely affordable salary. To make up ground in the MLB Yahoo Cup, fading Judge in hopes he fails is a very viable strategy. But if trying to make the best lineup possible every evening in hopes of putting up enough massive scores to win, Judge needs to be the first bat in your lineup.

Judge gets a home matchup versus lefty Martin Perez, so the platoon advantage goes to Judge. He is also slashing .286/.384/.514, so he’s not just a homer-or-bust hitter either — although 16 home runs on the season is a decent enough number. That means the floor/ceiling combination jumps off the page at only $13 for a player who is top 2% in all of Major League Baseball in barrel percentage (19.4%), hard-hit rate (58.9%) and average exit velocity (96.6 mph). Again, he’s the first batter in MLB Yahoo Cup lineups if trying to make the best lineup possible, as he may be the most undervalued bat on Yahoo this entire season.

Eric Lindquist hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota (yes, that’s the one with Mount Rushmore). A steady diet of three SportsCenters a day at an early age led to his obsession with sports, one that 30 years later is paying dividends for him as a successful DFS player and sports bettor. Despite over half a million dollars in net career earnings, he’s most passionate about helping others achieve their financial goals, an energy you can witness on the daily in his current role as a host and analyst at Stokastic. He’s a former Division I golfer at Iowa State, wishes he was a former Minnesota sports fan, and is a proud father to a 100-pound Bernese Mountain dog named Duke that wishes he could just eat people food instead of the crap he and his wife feed him on the daily.

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