MLB DFS Tournament Strategy: Leverage, Home Runs, Optimal Picks

Today’s awkward split slate of afternoon and evening games lands the same on both MLB DFS sites tonight, with a three-game afternoon affair starting in the 3 p.m. ET hour followed by a six-game main slate. I pushed the team-by-team home run picks out in time for the early slate, to be followed by an update with analysis for the main slate.

Both slates have some interesting decision points. The early slate features precisely one good starting pitcher, the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler. He is joined by pitchers who are either reclamation projects or well past their expiration dates, in some cases both — also, Austin Gomber. There is simply not much to love on the early slate for pitching, so getting to the right bats will be critical. The Dodgers are the top team in my power index for the early slate, while the Yankees come up with a surprisingly flat number in what looks like a solid matchup against Rich Hill. There are more options for both offense and pitching on the main slate, with several standout options available on the mound and at least a few quality stacks with power upside.

The main slate kicks off at 7:07 p.m. ET on both sites, a perfectly normal time at which events frequently start. The Awesemo team will be here for all of it, providing updates to tools and data throughout, including the Strategy Show which you can find on YouTube or your favorite podcast network and Live Before Lock which will be on at 3:55pm ET. Speaking of tools, if you aren’t visiting the Top Stacks Tool on a regular basis, you’re just making your MLB DFS picks incorrectly. The Top Starters Tool is every bit as important in deciding who takes the hill for your daily fantasy baseball lineup. The home run model picks below include the early slate games, if players listed do not end up in their starting lineups, I will try to provide an update.

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MLB DFS Tournament Strategy: Top HR Options

Home Run Ratings

Home runs are the 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 am going to give one of the top choices from each team, though it won’t always be the absolute top-ranked player, particularly when there is an obvious star who would be in that spot every day.

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

Arizona Diamondbacks: Christian Walker — 6.57

Atlanta Braves: Marcell Ozuna — 2.73

Cincinnati Reds: Jesse Winker (Q) — 14.07

Cleveland Indians: Eddie Rosario — 20.94

Colorado Rockies: Ryan McMahon — 7.36

Detroit Tigers: Jonathan Schoop — 8.30

Houston Astros: Carlos Correa — 7.32

Los Angeles Angels: Shohei Ohtani — 6.19

Los Angeles Dodgers: Max Muncy — 11.35

New York Yankees: Gleyber Torres — 5.33

Oakland Athletics: Matt Chapman — 6.01

Philadelphia Phillies: Didi Gregorius — 4.81

San Diego Padres: Tommy Pham — 9.12

San Francisco Giants: Darin Ruf — 1.44

Tampa Bay Rays: Austin Meadows — 10.22

Texas Rangers: Joey Gallo — 9.76

Toronto Blue Jays: Randal Grichuk — 7.23

Washington Nationals: Juan Soto — 15.46

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MLB DFS Optimal Stacks & Leverage Plays

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

This section will feature a few standout MLB DFS 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.

Down the Line Chalk

There are several extremely popular teams in excellent spots on tonight’s slate. The Indians and Angels will both be rostered frequently by the public, and rightfully so in their respective matchups against Julio Teheran and T.J. Zeuch. Both spots should be dynamite opportunities for offense, and the prices are right on FanDuel and DraftKings to build stacks with both teams. The public will be there frequently, though the Angels are still pulling in a positive leverage number as the top ranked stack on Awesemo’s board.

One easy way to get different in an Angels stack is by including their excellent leadoff hitter David Fletcher, who is projected for less than two percent ownership on both sites. Fletcher lacks power, which makes him someone MLB DFS players tend to skip, despite his outstanding hit tool and ability to get on base ahead of the thumpers in the Angels lineup. In 2020, Fletcher saw 230 plate appearances and put up a .319/.376/.425 slash, though he had just a .106 ISO and hit only three home runs. We are rostering Fletcher to get different, and for the fact that despite that lack of power he still created runs at a pace 25% above average last season. Fletcher is a productive member of this lineup and will be scoring the runs that are driven in by the likes of the more popular Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon and Jared Walsh.

The Indians offer a player with the ability to differentiate lineups on some slates in a manner similar to what Fletcher does, but on this slate Cesar Hernandez is projected for more than 15% ownership on FanDuel and 10% on DraftKings. The Indians are less popular in general on DraftKings, where some of their prices are up enough to keep the public at bay. The two top bats, Jose Ramirez and Eddie Rosario, will be explosively popular despite the pricing, but rostering Franmil Reyes and Josh Naylor will be a less popular build overall, and replacing one of the more popular players could be the key pivot.

CIN 1-5: Winker — Castellanos — Votto — Suarez — Moustakas

The Reds look to be in a strong spot against rookie right-hander Taylor Widener. In a 20-inning cup of coffee last season, Widener put up a 25.0% strikeout rate but also walked 13.6% of hitters, which is completely untenable. He put up a 5.65 xFIP and a 1.30 WHIP in the small sample, while yielding five home runs. In his first start this season, Widener went for six clean innings, striking out five hitters, flashing a bit of potential growth that may disappear in a hurry against a fairly loaded Reds lineup tonight.

Cincinnati boasts a lot of power and skill in their lineup, particularly when Jesse Winker is healthy and in the leadoff spot. The team is hoping to have Winker back tonight, after the outfielder missed the last few games nursing an injury. Winker has explosive upside; he hit 12 home runs in 183 plate appearances in 2020, putting up a .289 ISO and a ridiculous 49% hard hit rate that ranked him fourth in the league among players with at least 150 plate appearances last year. The names immediately ahead of him on that list are Fernando Tatis Jr., Corey Seager and Ronald Acuna Jr.; Winker is a star in waiting; if he is in the Reds lineup, he should be in your stacks, particularly at a $3,900 price on DraftKings and $3,100 bargain on FanDuel.

Nicholas Castellanos has been an MLB DFS mainstay since his time-served days in Detroit. He has delivered for the Reds, putting up a 14 home run season last year in his 242 plate appearances, though his triple slash took a dip to .225/.298/.486. The year before, those marks were .289/.337/.525 in Castellanos’ 664 plate appearances, which is more indicative of the hitter he has been through his career. At reduced popularity compared to his teammates, Castellanos is a solid but expensive option on both DraftKings and FanDuel and is someone we can spend up to in order to help differentiate a stack while rostering one of the team’s best bats.

Joey Votto should be hitting third in this lineup. He is not the hitter he once was, last season he plummeted to a .226/.354/.446 slash, but the on-base skills are still there and Votto flashed power with his 11 home runs in just 223 plate appearances. That mark is impressive when compared to the 15 he hit in 608 opportunities the year before and likely indicative of a changing approach at the plate. Votto will be less popular than he deserves to be, particularly on FanDuel, where he costs just $2,700 at first base, but is garnering only 15.1% ownership in a popular stack. On DraftKings, he is similarly unpopular, but costs us $4,300, just $100 short of his more popular teammate at shortstop.

Eugenio Suarez won’t cost us with his defense at shortstop, though it remains to be seen how disastrous an experiment that might be for the Reds over the course of the season. He is in an excellent spot for power and ranks second on the squad in my home run model. Suarez hit 15 long balls in 231 plate appearances in 2020, following up the 49 he hit in 662 chances the year before. Suarez’ slash line dropped like most of his teammates last year. He put up an ugly .202/.312/.470 mark, though his ISO was a stellar .268, down from 2019’s ridiculous .301. Suarez hit .271/.358/.572 that year. The truth about his hit tool probably lies in the middle, but the power is extreme and very real.

The team leader in the home run model also has very real power and a shaky hit tool. In this case. Mike Moustakas is the hitter that his .230/.331/.468 slash last year and .254/.329/.516 slash the year before say he is. Moustakas has power for days. He hit eight home runs in 163 plate appearances last year, 35 in 584 chances the year before. Moustakas will have a great opportunity to go deep against a rookie who has shown a propensity for giving up home runs. He will be popular at over 20% ownership on FanDuel but far more manageable for a reasonable $4,100 and at under 15% ownership on DraftKings.

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Nick Senzel is a strong multi-category contributor when he is going right. Most of that talent has been flashed at the minor league level so far, but Senzel had a good spring to seize a regular role with the big club and the former apex prospect can prove himself in the long-term with a good season. Last year Senzel saw just 78 plate appearances between injury and roster issues, and he had a miserable year going just .186/.247/.357. The year before he put up a far better .256/.315/.427 slash with 12 home runs in 414 plate appearances, adding 14 stolen bases to the tally, though he had just a .171 ISO and created runs 10% less than average. Senzel makes a good low-owned inexpensive bolt-on option from the six spot in the Reds projected lineup.

Jonathan India and Tucker Barnhart are afterthoughts at the end of the batting order. Barnhart fills out the catcher spot inexpensively for $2,600 on both DraftKings and FanDuel and has some infrequent pop. Barnhart hit five home runs in 110 plate appearances last year and 11 in 364 chances in 2019. India is seeing his first action above the AA level and did not do much to impress across his minor league career, maxing out at 11 home runs with 11 stolen bases across high A and AA in 2019.

One-Off Island

We could go for an entire section on the Blue Jays and the value in stacking them at essentially even leverage today. The team offers several significant right-handed power bats against Andrew Heaney, a capable lefty strikeout pitcher who has a habit of allowing hard contact and some home runs. The reason to pivot off the Blue Jays as the recommended full stack in the section above — they were a strong contender and should be rostered as such — is the high strikeout volatility in the projected lineup against a pitcher who had a reasonably good 25.1% strikeout rate last season and a strong 28.9% mark the year before.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a player that everyone is waiting to fully arrive. He has all the tools of his father and massive long-term upside. In 243 plate appearances last season, Guerrero flashed potential at times, hitting nine home runs and putting up a .262/.329/.462 slash with a .199 ISO, while creating runs 15% better than average. There is room for much more, and Guerrero stands out with a strong power mark in my home run model tonight. He is one of the better bets from the Blue Jays lineup but will not be very popular at around 10% ownership on FanDuel and even less on DraftKings. Rostering Guerrero on his own as a one-off is a viable play, as is combining him in stacks with teammates such as Teoscar Hernandez, Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio, Marcus Semien, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Randal Grichuk.

HR Call: Mike Moustakas — Cincinnati Reds

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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.