MLB DFS Picks, Top Stacks & Pitchers: Giants Stand Tall vs. Ryan Feltner + Shohei Ohtani as SP1 (September 29)

Thursday, September 29, brings split-slate action, with the various DFS sites diverging after an early four-game featured slate with a 1:10 p.m. ET first pitch. Let’s get into the top MLB DFS picks today for pitchers and stacks for DraftKings and FanDuel daily fantasy baseball lineups.


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DraftKings & FanDuel MLB DFS Picks Today (9/29)

The focus of today’s article is going to be a little bit different, as the main MLB DFS sites have all taken different approaches with Thursday Night Football casting a long shadow.

DraftKings has chosen to go with a 1:10 p.m. ET four-game main slate, with $300,000 in various larger-field contests. Then they are waiting until the NFL game kicks off to resume MLB with a four-game evening slate beginning at 9:40 p.m. ET.

FanDuel is also putting out contests for the 1:10 p.m. ET four-game slate, though their selection is to roll out a more traditional five-game main slate that includes the 7:40 p.m. ET matchup. This, of course, will still be fine for gamers looking to play both MLB and NFL, as the Amazon Prime Game does not kick off until 8:15 p.m. ET. That does not really conflict with baseball, which does not see the final four games of the FanDuel slate locking for another 85 minutes.

Yahoo is taking a third approach and electing to create a six-game featured slate starting at 6:10 p.m. ET with the Tampa Bay Rays at Cleveland Guardians matchup. This, of course, means that Jeffrey Springs as the Tampa Bay starter is a viable pitching option that will be overlooked since most DFS content today will not be covering this matchup in any form or fashion.

Early Slate Stack

Baltimore Orioles at RHP Nathan Eovaldi — 4.1 implied runs

The Stokastic Top Stack Tool indicates that gamers looking for differentiation from the field should flock to the Batters of Birdland in a matchup against Nathan Eovaldi. This has been a rough season for the 32-year-old, who is heading into free agency this offseason after completing his four-year, $68 million deal with Boston. The venerable veteran missed time in June, July, August and September with a variety of injuries. This has held him to just 18 outings, and his last start in The Show was six weeks ago. Friday he did throw 57 pitches for Triple-A Worcester, though it would be a surprise to see him go more than four innings tonight.

Eovaldi does a decent job locating his pitches, and he has a miniscule 4.7% across his last 1,200 batters faced. It is hard to believe he will be anything close to lights out in this matchup, and the Orioles are running out of chances to nab the final Wild Card berth. Expect them to roll out their best lineup after giving rookies Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson the game off yesterday, aside from pinch-hitting duty.

Anthony Santander, Ryan Mountcastle and recent veteran waiver claim Jesus Aguilar can be combined with the dynamic youngsters for a full Baltimore stack. The Red Sox bullpen has accounted for 16.2 innings over the last three days and is looking pretty ragged.

Baltimore is hanging onto postseason hopes by a very thin thread. Any combination of Seattle wins or Baltimore losses that combines for eight will end the Orioles’ dreams and send the Mariners to the playoffs for the first time since 2001.

Other Early Slate Hitting Options

  1. Jose Abreu at RHP Louie Varland
  2. Javier Baez vs. RHP Jonathan Heasley
  3. Kyle Schwarber at RHP Javier Assad

Main Slate Stack:

San Francisco Giants vs. RHP Ryan Feltner — 4.6 implied runs

Tonight, the San Francisco offense is well positioned to find success against Ryan Feltner. It is always worthwhile to look at the home and road splits for pitchers who call Coors Field home. This can help us determine how much the thin Denver air is influencing their results. In a fun twist, Feltner has logged 42.1 innings at home and 43.0 on the road. While this is a small sample size, the 26-year-old has allowed 28 earn runs at home and 28 on the road. Though he has five more strikeouts away from Colorado, he also has allowed four more home runs.

Looking at his splits versus both lefties and righties, he once again has an even 169 at-bats against each. Lefties have managed four more walks, while same-handed hitters have two more home runs. Batters from each side of the plate have accounted for 17 and 18 extra-base hits, respectively.

Joc Pederson and Mike Yastrzemski are the two best power hitters in the projected lineup tonight, and with there only being one southpaw in the Colorado bullpen, neither has a particularly high risk of being removed for a pinch-hitter.

Thairo Estrada has been locked in, with hits in six of his last eight games, including four for extra bases. The last two seasons, Estrada has been a flexible fielder for San Francisco seeing time at every position besides first base and catcher. This utility should keep him in action for the entire game, as long as he finds his name on the lineup card.

Wilmer Flores also plays multiple infield positions and he typically is in the top half of the order, which gives him a strong chance for an extra at-bat. Finally, J.D. Davis and the ageless Brandon Crawford can be used to round out full stacks tonight.

San Francisco has secured eight victories in their last nine games, though they are still 6.5 games behind Philadelphia for the final National League wild card berth. Essentially, they need to win their remaining games while the Phillies lose out. Even in that implausible scenario, Milwaukee is six games ahead of the Giants, so they too would need to falter in all but one of their remaining games.

Other Main Slate Hitting Options

  1. Mike Trout vs. LHP Cole Irvin
  2. Corey Seager at LHP Marco Gonzales
  3. Manny Machado vs. LHP Andrew Heaney

Best MLB DFS Pitchers

Early Slate Pitching Targets:

RHP Lucas Giolito at Minnesota Twins — 4.0 implied runs
  • DFS Salary: DraftKings $9,000 | FanDuel $9,500

This has been an up-and-down season for Lucas Giolito. who started off the season like gangbusters, only to have a dreadful summer. Between Memorial Day and up to Labor Day Weekend, the 28-year-old made 17 starts, with a 6.38 ERA, 4.53 FIP and 16 home runs over 90.1 innings. To his credit, the FIP indicates he was rather unlucky, mostly with the home runs. The rest of his underlying metrics, pitch mix and velocity were relatively consistent, and he still struck out a batter per inning.

September has seen things slide back in favor of the erstwhile ace. In four starts, he has allowed only two home runs, posted a solid 3.74 ERA and 3.26 FIP while recording 25 whiffs in 21.2 innings. The Twins are down to the bare bones of what they started with this season, as injuries have ravaged their squad. Brandon Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Max Kepler, Kyle Garlick, Miguel Sano, Alex Kirilloff and Trevor Larnach are among the regular position players that are currently on the shelf.

Minnesota was eliminated from the postseason last night, so we could see a watered-down lineup today. They have scored more than five runs only twice in their last 17 games, and this is a team to target with reckless abandon for the final week of the season.

Other Early Pitching Options

  1. RHP Jonathan Heasley at Detroit Tigers
  2. LHP Ranger Suarez at Chicago Cubs

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Main Slate Pitching Targets:

RHP Shohei Ohtani vs. Oakland Athletics — 2.8 implied runs
  • DFS Salary: DraftKings $10,500 | FanDuel $11,100

Shohei Ohtani is having a remarkable season at the plate and on the mound. Though he falls a couple of starts short of logging enough innings to be on the ratio leaderboards, he still has the seventh-most strikeouts in the league. In his 26 starts, he has posted a 2.47 ERA, a 1.07 WHIP and 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings. Oh, and he has more home runs and RBIs than the rest of the pitchers in the league combined — yes, the universal designated hitter rule makes that a reality, but come on, with 34 round-trippers and 93 RBIs that would darn near be a true statement before the rule change. Oakland has scored more than five runs only six times in their last 24 tilts.


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Other Main Slate Pitching Options

  1. LHP Carlos Rodon vs. Colorado Rockies
  2. LHP Andrew Heaney at San Diego Padres
  3. RHP Jon Gray at Seattle Mariners

Additional Opportunities

Cole Irvin is a decent pitcher, though strikeouts are not part of his portfolio. Tonight, he will be battling the Angels, and we need to look at the 4.5 over/under on his strikeout prop. Currently the Stokastic MLB DFS projections are forecasting 4.1 strikeouts and a 58% that he falls under the 4.5 milestone. While this is likely to be a nip-and-tuck race down to the wire, Irvin has recorded only 3, 1, 5 and 4 strikeouts in his four September appearances. Though there are plenty of strikeouts in the back half of the Los Angeles batting order, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Luis Rengifo, Taylor Ward and Matt Duffy could easily have Irvin burning through his typical 85-ish pitch workload in the first four innings.

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Final MLB DFS Thoughts & MLB Weather Notes

Thursday the weather looks to be a non-factor, from a precipitation standpoint.

Thanks for reading to the end of this article! If you appreciate this free content and want to see more of it every day, you can help us out by sharing this article on social media!

Eric "EMac" MacPherson won the 2007 Fantasy Baseball grand prize (trip for two to the MLB All-Star game) in the Roto format on ESPN. He won again in 2008, this time in the H2H format. As one of the early adopters of daily fantasy sports, EMac has been providing content for baseball and basketball as well as both professional and college football since 2012 for a variety of websites including DraftKings Playbook, FanVice, RotoWorld, Daily Fantasy Bootcamp, and RotoGrinders. He is well into his third decade of fantasy sports and has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Follow him on Twitter @EMacDFS or contact EMac by emailing [email protected].

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