The MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner: Round 20

Welcome to the MLB Yahoo Cup Hot Corner! This free-to-enter, single-entry fantasy baseball 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 Yahoo Cup Fantasy Baseball Picks | Round 20

MLB DFS Pitcher: Kyle Muller – $35

Corbin Burnes ($53) and Chris Bassett ($49) grade out as the best pitching options on this slate on Yahoo, and it is not remotely close. The Awesemo MLB Top Pitchers tool gives them each over a 20% chance of finishing with a top-two fantasy score tonight, with Burnes pushing nearly a 30% chance of breaking the slate. There is no problem with locking them both in for the MLB Yahoo Cup, although doing so will severely limit the bats and stacks that a lineup is capable of getting to. So if looking for an alternative SP2 to get access to the best offenses on the board without sacrificing a ton of upside, Kyle Muller is the arm to roll the dice on.

Muller has exceeded all expectations in his rookie season. His 2.43 ERA and 1.15 WHIP through seven big league starts are elite numbers, and his 27% strikeout rate is one of the best marks on the slate. He gave up 1.31 HR/9 in his nine Triple-A starts before being called up in June, but his 0.30 HR/9 in the bigs shows that even that slight concern may have been solved. And considering the state of this Nationals lineup with Trae Turner gone and Juan Soto banged up and possibly out for tonight, the matchup could not get a lot better. Look no further than Muller to save some salary for premium bats.

MLB DFS Infielder: D.J. LeMahieu — $12

The Yankees were obvious buyers at the trade deadline, picking up Joey Gallo and Anthony Rizzo to further bolster their already-dangerous lineup. There is no question this team will be a popular one on almost every slate they appear from here on out, and it is hard to find any fault with that. But in terms of selecting individual hitters, only Rizzo and D.J. LeMahieu bat at the top of the order at a position other than outfield. And considering Rizzo is already up to $19, LeMahieu’s $12 salary feels like a priority as a one-off or a stack.

LeMahieu has had a disappointing 2021 season up to this point, hitting just .267 with only seven home runs in 408 at-bats. But considering his career .302 mark — including an eye-popping .364 in 2020 – positive regression should be in store soon. Plus, it is impossible to have more protection for a lead-off hitter than the newly assembled Murderers’ Row behind him. Add in that Mariners lefty Marco Gonzales is the opposing pitcher with his 1st-percentile .396 xwOBA, and there is no doubt LeMahieu could find the base paths early and often in this spot.

MLB DFS Outfielder: Yordan Alvarez — $16

The Astros are rarely an under-represented team on any given slate, but it looks like that could be the case this evening on Yahoo. Due to expensive tags on Jose Altuve ($20), Aledmys Diaz ($19) and especially Kyle Tucker ($22), the Astros are difficult to fit as a stack if paying up for pitching. And according to the Awesemo Top Stacks tool, they only have a 4.4% chance of finishing as the highest-scoring stack of the night, so the urgency may not be there for the field to fit this team into lineups.

But considering there are 28 teams in play this evening and none sport better than an 8.4% shot of winning the slate, a team with 4.4% top-stack potential does not appear nearly as far off base. Plus, there is a massive bat in Yordan Alvarez with only a $16 salary that brings down the cost of doing business with the Astros. His 51.4% hard-hit rate and .525 xSLG are exceptional numbers for any sub-$20 player, making him a great one-off option as well. And considering he draws a matchup with Twins righty Bailey Ober, who has something of a home run problem in his brief MLB tenure (2.09 HR/9), expect Alvarez to do some damage tonight.

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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