MLB DFS Picks: HRs, Stacks, Ownership DraftKings + FanDuel: August 11

What a bonkers slate of MLB DFS action we’re getting on Monday. The point totals won’t stop racking up. I figured everything was going to be written in ink once the Nationals went off early with their huge game, but the Rays and Red Sox played an 8-7 game. Then late-night hammers started coming down hard and heavy for the as well as for both sides of Arizona-Colorado and the A’s-Angels game. Lance McCullers had a no-hitter rolling through six in the night’s strongest pitching performance.

Tomorrow brings us a 12-game main slate with several good-looking spots. We have a Coors game to target as well as a few bad starters going against good lineups. It should turn into another high-scoring night across the MLB DFS industry. If you didn’t catch it, EMac and I ran through some of the killer individual value plays available on Yahoo as a sidebar for tonight’s Early Bird pod. I tend to focus analysis more toward the two bigger sites, but the Yahoo game offers a lot of appeal right now between how player pricing is handled and the fact that they offer no-management-fee contests.

That’s not even a sponsor plug, I’m just legitimately excited about checking it out after what I heard on the Early Bird. There’s a promo code (it’s: Awesemo) in there to use when you sign up at Yahoo to get some matching YSRPs on your deposit too, just listen to what EMac tells you to do in the podcast.

Quick Hits: Top HR Options, Stacks and Pitchers

Home Run Ratings

Home runs are our holy grail when making MLB DFS picks. Finding the right combination of sluggers who will knock one, or better two, out of the park to drive in the teammates you stack with them is critical to winning GPPs. Identifying the likely home run hitters is trickier than just looking at the big names. Using a model of my own design, based on a blend of several predictive statistics for the batter-pitcher matchup, I’m going to give one of the top choices from each team.

Scale: 5-10 Average; 10-20 Good; 20-25 Very Good; 25+ Great

Arizona Diamondbacks: Christian Walker – 11.65

Atlanta Braves: Ronald Acuna Jr. – 16.80

Baltimore Orioles: Renato Nunez – 5.67

Boston Red Sox: J.D. Martinez – 13.04

Chicago Cubs: Kyle Schwarber – 15.10

Chicago White Sox: Jose Abreu – 9.87

Cincinnati Reds: n/a

Cleveland Indians: Franmil Reyes – 9.29

Colorado Rockies: Trevor Story – 6.79

Detroit Tigers: Jonathan Schoop – 6.52

Houston Astros: Alex Bregman – 18.58

Kansas City Royals: n/a

Los Angeles Angels: Anthony Rendon – 13.08

Los Angeles Dodgers: Joc Pederson – 11.96 (same matchup vs. Richards)

Miami Marlins: n/a

Milwaukee Brewers: Justin Smoak – 9.63

Minnesota Twins: Eddie Rosario – 10.27

New York Mets: Pete Alonso – 6.53

New York Yankees: Aaron Judge – 8.01

Oakland Athletics: Matt Olson – 12.61

Philadelphia Phillies: Jay Bruce – 16.74

Pittsburgh Pirates: n/a

San Diego Padres: Manny Machado – 8.88

San Francisco Giants: Pablo Sandoval – 8.24

Seattle Mariners: Kyle Lewis – 5.06

St. Louis Cardinals: n/a

Tampa Bay Rays: Hunter Renfroe – 7.17

Texas Rangers: Todd Frazier – 5.14

Toronto Blue Jays: n/a

Washington Nationals: Eric Thames – 7.49

Stacks & Ownership Plays

(Quick note: if it says 1-5 it means hitters 1-2-3-4-5, otherwise I’ll specify spots)

We’re picking a few standout spots and teams to look at for potential plays here. Make sure to check out the ownership projections for critical updates and monitor the top stacks tool throughout the day for changes.

San Francisco Giants at Houston Astros – Astros – 3-7 – Bregman – Brantley – Gurriel – Correa – Tucker

Well, the concern about Logan Webb‘s ability to harness his ground-ball-inducing stuff to rein in this Astros lineup for a night didn’t come to pass, although they didn’t fully explode on a night loaded with offense either. For tomorrow night’s slate, that’s exactly what I expect them to do. This team is drawing some fantastic-looking power marks in my home run model in the matchup against lefty Tyler Anderson. For his career, Anderson has struck out 21% of hitters while yielding a 1.5 HR/9, and he’s been equally bad on both sides of his splits. Basically, if you find yourself hitting in the Astros lineup through some cosmic mishap where your life becomes a bad sports movie, just know that I’ll have some of you in my lineups, and I’ll be expecting a lot.

The top seven hitters in the Astros lineup are over 10 in my home run model tomorrow. The entire lineup projects well for me on FanDuel, and I’ll have as much as I can get to. The pricing on the blue site is somewhat broken on these bats, with no Astros hitter priced above $3,900. The Astros can throw a ton of high-end right-handed power at this bad lefty, and all three lefties in the projected lineup look great here as well.

This stack will probably be a popular pick tomorrow, so it will be tough to get away with starting at Jose Altuve and building straight down, although that would be a nice approach. Altuve had three home runs and two stolen bases coming into Monday night’s action but is actually off to a bit of a slow start. We know the obvious quality here. If people are off of him because of short sample numbers, take advantage. The obvious power of Alex Bregman is bound to be the most popular play on this team on both sites, and he’s difficult to skip. If they were projecting for equal ownership and I could only take one of the two, I would lean toward Bregman. The righty masher of a third baseman is one of my highest overall projected players on the slate and has a great home run mark in my model. At $5,800, he’s a tall order on DraftKings, so it might make sense to pick Altuve in a one or the other scenario on that site.

The rest of this lineup is by no means filler. Yuli Gurriel and Carlos Correa are two critical right-handed bats from later in this lineup who tend to go undervalued on slates. Correa in particular is still one of the better options for offense at shortstop on most slates. He came into the year with a .250 ISO projection from Steamer, and through his 63 plate appearances, he has a .345/.429/.527 slash with a pair of home runs. Michael Brantley and Josh Reddick are the two veteran lefties and the two more well known options, but keep an eye on where Kyle Tucker is hitting as well. In his extremely limited 59 plate appearances in same-handed matchups, the young lefty slugger is at .315/.373/.500 with two home runs and a WRC+ 42% above average. I’m going to be mixing and matching the Astros bats a lot tomorrow.

Minnesota Twins at Milwaukee Brewers – Brewers – 2-6 – Hiura – Yelich – Smoak – Garcia – Gamel

The Brewers look to be in a good spot tomorrow with an opener leading into bulk reliever Devin Smeltzer. The opener will get the first few hitters and could go two full innings, but the target here is Smeltzer. The lefty is just bad at keeping the ball in the yard, owning a career 1.55 HR/9 and a HR/9 of 1.74 against right-handed hitters. This should play right into the Brewer’s quality even without Ryan Braun and Lorenzo Cain in the lineup.

Christian Yelich. Now that I’ve named one of the five best players in baseball, we can move on. We both know you know to play him. Keston Hiura has gotten more popular quickly in MLB DFS circles, with good reason. The right-handed second baseman came into last season as a very highly regarded hitting prospect and didn’t disappoint a bit in his 343 plate appearances, posting a .303/.368/.570 line with 19 home runs, a .268 ISO and a WRC+ 39% above league average. The sophomore slugger is technically off to a slower start in 2020, although that means he’s at .250/.322/.442 with three home runs so far in his 59 plate appearances. At just $3,200 on FanDuel, I expect Hiura to be very popular in this spot, but I think I want to be over the field.

Justin Smoak hits from both sides of the plate and gets more of his power on the other side as a lefty against right-handed pitching, but he makes for a fine play as part of Brewers stacks against this pitching matchup. Avisail Garcia has been better against lefties through his entire career, posting a WRC+ 19% above league average in the split. At the bottom of this lineup, Orlando Arcia quietly hit 15 home runs in 2019, though he mostly offers us differentiation possibilities. Eric Sogard is inexpensive at the top of this lineup and puts the ball in play while limiting the strikeouts. He’s not my favorite play, but he doesn’t have to be as long as he’s in the right spot. Ben Gamel is another lefty bat from later in this lineup that will probably land in some Brewers builds. For his career, Gamel has a WRC+ 5% above league average along with a .282/.349/.409 slash against same-handed pitching. It’s not a great spot, but it’s workable as a lower-owned part of this stack, in limited deployment of course.

HR Call: Jay Bruce (Phillies)

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Author

Terry McBride

Terry used to do other things, now he writes words on the internet. He hopes his more than 20 years’ experience in season-long and daily fantasy sports and his custom models for MLB, NBA, and NFL don't steer you too wrong when he writes columns and makes picks on Awesemo.com. A lifetime of experience keeping odd hours make Terry ideal to cover KBO baseball overnight until the world returns to normal. Most of those late night hours have been spent on the couch watching sports, T.V., and movies; just try to shut him up about any of the above. You can find his pop-culture ramblings and more on Sideaction.