A fun looking nine-game Monday slate is dripping with high-quality MLB DFS lineup picks today. There are several excellent pitching options, though a few are in tricky spots and some high-quality bats are up against some terrible arms. If the words “Matt” and “Harvey” just popped into your head, that’s because he is the target pitcher of the day, with the gradually awakening Yankees bats facing him. There are other interesting spots on deck, including the Astros and Athletics, with positive leverage as of the early afternoon. Digging into the slate will be a fun exercise today; the sites are yet to fully catch up to pricing, leaving extremely interesting combinations of MLB DFS lineup picks on DraftKings and FanDuel.
The Awesemo team will be here for all the action with daily fantasy baseball advice on the morning Strategy Show – which you can find on YouTube or your favorite podcast network and The Deeper Dive at 3pm, taking you through the main slate. We will constantly be updating all the tools and content. Speaking of tools, if you aren’t visiting the Top Stacks Tool regularly, 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.
Be sure to find all of our MLB FanDuel picks today, including cheat sheets, articles and expert data.
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 will give one of the top choices from each team. However, 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.
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Scale: 5-10 Average; 10-20 Good; 20-25 Very Good; 25+ Great
Atlanta Braves: Austin Riley — 7.74
Baltimore Orioles: D.J. Stewart — 9.20
Chicago Cubs: Ian Happ — 6.34
Cincinnati Reds: Nick Senzel — 3.65
Colorado Rockies: Trevor Story — 13.17
Houston Astros: Yordan Alvarez — 2.98
Los Angeles Angels: Jared Walsh — 12.05
Los Angeles Dodgers: Max Muncy — 7.54
Miami Marlins: Jesus Aguilar — 2.00
Milwaukee Brewers: Keston Hiura — 9.99
New York Yankees: Giancarlo Stanton — 28.35
Oakland Athletics: Matt Olson — 6.55
Philadelphia Phillies: J.T. Realmuto — 6.74
San Francisco Giants: Darin Ruf — 1.52
Seattle Mariners: Kyle Seager — 8.11
St. Louis Cardinals: Paul DeJong — 2.18
Tampa Bay Rays: Mike Brosseau — 5.50
Texas Rangers: Willie Calhoun — 10.82
Power Index
This is intended to capture the full range of home runs upside for each team. It is not meant as a stack ranking and does not account for pricing or popularity — only home run potential. The first column is the average rating for the full projected lineup (pitcher bats not included in non-DH games), and the second is for the top six hitters in the projected lineup.
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MLB DFS Optimal Stacks & Leverage Plays
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.
If you need more fantasy baseball picks today, check out our DraftKings and FanDuel cheat sheets, Spotlight Pitchers and Spotlight Hitters & Stacks for Monday, April 26.
On the Hill
Tonight’s slate of MLB DFS pitching picks has one clear option at the top of the board on both sites. If not going to Corbin Burnes in his excellent matchup against the Marlins, the rest of the board begins to look somewhat flat in terms of the probability of success when weighted against ownership. There are several good starters in tough spots and several question marks in matchups where they could put up a strong performance.
Burnes of the Brewers is the leading option on the slate by a fairly wide margin on the Top Pitchers Tool. He is taking on a Miami lineup that ranks 21st in baseball so far this season, with a 25.7% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching. The Marlins are tied for last in the league with a .104 team ISO in the split this season. They create runs 20% worse than the average against righties and have hit just nine home runs, second-to-last in MLB. Meanwhile, Burnes has dominated. He is striking out hitters at an eye-popping 47.1% over his first 24 innings and four starts this season, putting up a 1.24 xFIP along the way. Astonishingly, Burnes is yet to walk a hitter this season, and his WHIP stands at 0.33. These are numbers that absolutely will regress toward norms, but Burnes struck out 36.7% of hitters across his 59 innings last season, so the performance is not a complete surprise. He is expensive, but this is by far the best pitching spot on the board on both sites despite heavy ownership.
Phillies starter Zack Wheeler is at an affordable $8,300 on FanDuel and $9,000 on DraftKings, and he projects well in both my personal model and the site’s rankings. That he is going slightly under-owned for his value on both sites adds to the appeal in an interesting matchup against the St. Louis Cardinals. While Wheeler is not a dominant strikeout pitcher, he has a strong 26.3% rate in 23 innings so far this season, and has been reliably a bit above average at worst in his career. The Cardinals active roster is striking out at a 26% rate against righties this season, good for 23rd in baseball. The team has a .169 ISO in the split and has hit 23 home runs, ranking eighth and third respectively, but Wheeler is good at limiting power. Outside of the pop they have shown, the Cardinals are actually below average in the split, creating runs at a pace 12% behind the average. This could be a sneaky-good spot for Wheeler, assuming he returns to form. Home runs are a noisy stat for pitchers, but Wheeler has already yielded four in his 23.2 innings this season, a 1.52 HR/9 mark. In 2020 he was at just 0.38 HR/9, in 2019 it was 1.01 and in 2018 he had a 0.69 mark. The 2018 sample is over 182.1 innings, while the 2019 data is from a 195.1 inning season, we can safely say that Wheeler is good at preventing home runs in a fair sample.
Anthony DeSclafani is not someone to be confused with an ace. That is, of course, why he is priced at just $6,800 on FanDuel and $7,900 on DraftKings. He has a 3.43 xFIP and a 1.19 WHIP through his 21 innings over four starts so far this season. He is striking out hitters at a 23.6% clip, which is a return to his 2019 form after a 33-inning blip at just 15.8% last season. DeSclafani is in an excellent matchup, pitching in San Francisco against a Rockies team that historically struggles both on the road and against right-handed pitching. So far this season, the Rockies have done well against righties for power and have been around league average striking out at a 24.8% rate. Their .191 team ISO in the split ranks third and the 21 home runs rank fifth. Still, the Rockies create runs at a pace 25% behind the league average in the split and if we extend the sample to the start of the 2019 season. The active roster ranks third-worst in baseball with a 25.2% strikeout rate, last creating runs 20% worse than average, fifth-worst with 148 home runs and just 20th with a .175 team ISO against right-handed pitching. All of those stats include their home marks, where they are significantly better. On the road against both hands, the team strikes out 28.8% of the time and creates runs 49% worse than average. This is quietly an excellent spot for a very inexpensive DeSclafani on FanDuel. He makes an excellent SP2 option on DraftKings.
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New York Yankees
This is not our focus stack, but the Yankees must be mentioned here for their standout power marks on this slate. They are matched up against what remains of Matt Harvey and they have explosive upside in the matchup. The team is priced far too cheaply on FanDuel and they are going to be extremely popular on both sites, so be careful with constructions and bear in mind that we need to at least attempt to avoid lineups that will likely be duplicated.
Houston Astros
The Astros are in a solid matchup against lefty Justus Sheffield and the team is a different play across sites. On FanDuel, they are highly ranked but are currently trending for negative leverage as a stack. There is still good reason to get to shares of the team, but the public is on the play given their ridiculously low pricing on the blue site. Across the industry at DraftKings, the pricing algorithm is at worst functional and at best aggressive. The Astros remain one of the top plays on the slate, but their ownership is not where it should be. There is positive leverage on the play from atop the stacks rankings today.
Chicago Cubs
The Cubs are an interesting stack on both sites tonight. They are taking on Charlie Morton on the road in Atlanta. Morton has pitched well so far this season and ranks as a strong option on the pitching side of things. He will be popular on both sites given a fair price, but he is not suppressing projections on the other side of the game.
The Cubs stack ranks well in both my personal model and on the site’s Top Stacks Tool. They have a lineup of high-quality hitters but they are very much a boom or bust option that could have issues against a strikeout pitcher like Morton. The Cubs active roster has a 27.6% strikeout rate against righties this season and just a .167 team ISO while hitting 18 home runs. There is upside, however. The same active roster is fifth best in baseball with 254 home runs against righties back to the start of the 2019 season. They struck out at just a 23.4% clip in the sample and had an excellent .198 team ISO while creating runs seven percent better than average in the extended split. This is an excellent team against righties and they are going underappreciated and under-owned.
Ian Happ hits from both sides of the plate and is an excellent option for hard contact and extra base hits. Happ had a .247 ISO across his 231 plate appearances in 2020, hitting 12 home runs along the way. So far this year Happ – a $2,500 second-baseman or outfielder on FanDuel and $3,700 outfielder on DraftKings – has just a .154/.321/.200 slash with a .046 ISO and only one home run. We know there is plenty of upside and the price is right. With far more of the public on the opposing pitcher, this is appeal in getting to the top end of the Cubs lineup.
Willson Contreras is one of the best options for offense from behind the plate. He has a .242/.354/.530 slash to start the season, putting up an excellent .288 ISO. That mark is largely derived from the six home runs Contreras has already hit in just 79 plate appearances. The power is real, we saw him hit 24 home runs in just 409 chances in 2019, and Contreras is at a playable price on both sites. He is not gaining significant ownership on DraftKings, despite the catcher requirement. Contreras makes an excellent option in both stacks and as a catcher one-off on that site.
Anthony Rizzo is underpriced at $3,300 on FanDuel and $4,100 on DraftKings. Rizzo is an excellent hitter, in 2019 he made 613 plate appearances and had a .293/.405/.520 slash, hitting 27 home runs along the way. He dropped to just .222/.342/.414 last season, struggling along with seemingly the entire Cubs lineup. This year Rizzo has hit for power, with a .250 ISO and four home runs in just 86 plate appearances, but the front-end of the slash has not yet caught up to previous production. He is still an excellent option for our MLB DFS lineup picks.
Third baseman Kris Bryant is a mainstay in Cubs stacks. He is off to a strong start in 2021, making 83 plate appearances so far and going .292/.373/.597 with a .306 ISO and five home runs so far. Bryant also struggled last season, but he has multiple seasons of more than 30 home runs on his resume and is a proven star at discounted salary and ownership on this slate.
The Cubs lineup rolls on with options, delivering Javier Baez‘ lethal bat from the five spot. Baez hit eight home runs and stole three bases in his 235 chances last season, a year after hitting 29 home runs and stealing 11 bags in 561 plate appearances. Baez struggled with contact last year, putting up just a .203/.238/.360 slash, but he is trending back toward his previous marks which were around a .270/.320 front-end. Baez has hit six home runs already this year and has an excellent .260 ISO, at a premium position he is a sneaky-good option on this slate.
The back-end of the Cubs lineup will likely be comprised of Jason Heyward, David Bote, and Eric Sogard, who are viable as mix-in options, depending on the order in which they appear. Hitting sixth, Heyward would be the top option from the trio at his $2,700 price on FanDuel and $3,300 on DraftKings. These are all simply differentiation and salary options in an already affordable and low-owned stack, however, so we do not have to go out of our way for them.
HR Call: Gleyber Torres — New York Yankees
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