Tuesday keeps the week rolling with a 12-game featured slate that locks at 7:05 p.m. ET on DraftKings, FanDuel and Yahoo. As always, we will use Stokastic’s tools to help in identifying today’s MLB DFS top stacks, key pitchers and MLB DFS picks. Tonight brings ample pitching options, with Blake Snell, Luis Castillo and Zac Gallen all having favorable matchups. San Diego stacks will be popular, but Atlanta stacks will be under the radar.
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MLB DFS Picks: Spotlight Pitchers and Top Stacks | Sept. 19
MLB DFS Picks: Spotlight Pitchers
Main Slate Primary Pitching Target: LHP Blake Snell vs. Colorado Rockies — 3.7 implied runs
First Pitch: 9:40 p.m. ET
- DFS Salary: DraftKings $10,600 | FanDuel $11,300 | Yahoo $50
Tonight pitching is pretty straightforward with several top-shelf options. The Stokastic Top Pitchers Tool has rated LHP Blake Snell as the best of the best, so who are we to argue? Per OddsShopper.com, Snell (-715) is the presumptive favorite to take the National League Cy Young Award with around three starts remaining on the season.
Snell has allowed more than three runs only twice across 30 starts, with the last one coming in mid-May. He leads the league with a 2.43 ERA, a 168 ERA+ and, in an ironic twist, a hefty 93 walks. Colorado does not have a lot of power against southpaws, with the projected lineup combining for a .144 ISO over the last two seasons — and this does include Coors Field games.
The Rockies also strike out at a below-average rate of 20.6% versus lefties in this same timeframe. However, that is a little misleading because they also have five projected hitters with a 28% strikeout rate or higher, which is being masked by the likes of more disciplined players such as Charlie Blackmon and Kris Bryant. Snell has a 31.3% strikeout rate since the beginning of last year, and he should be able to find plenty in this matchup tonight. In his two prior matchups with this squad in the early portion of the season, he had 21 strikeouts across 11.1 innings. Obviously, that was a different group of hitters more than three months ago, but it is still good to see.
Main Slate Secondary Pitching Target: RHP Luis Castillo at Oakland Athletics — 3.1 implied runs
First Pitch: 9:40 p.m. ET
- DFS Salary: DraftKings $11,300 | FanDuel $10,900 | Yahoo $53
Over in the American League, RHP Luis Castillo (+1200) has the second-best odds of earning the Cy Young Award, though he is well behind Gerrit Cole (-2000). This season Castillo has made 30 starts, allowing no runs nine times, one run three times and two runs on six occasions. He also has at least half a dozen strikeouts in half of his appearances, which gives him a solid fantasy baseline and attainable upside.
Oakland has lost five consecutive games, plating a total of eight runners, with only one run in the last 21 innings. Just play Castillo and find differentiation elsewhere.
Main Slate Differentiation Pitching Target: RHP Zac Gallen vs. San Francisco Giants — 3.7 implied runs
First Pitch: 9:40 p.m. ET
- DFS Salary: DraftKings $9,800 | FanDuel $10,600 | Yahoo $49
There are no real wild card pitching options tonight, mostly because RHP Taj Bradley against the Angels in Tropicana Field just misses the main-slate cut-off with a 6:40 p.m. ET start. So instead we can look at RHP Zac Gallen as a pivot away from Snell and Castillo. The 27-year-old is having yet another stellar season, though he has surpassed his previous career high for innings pitched and has scuffled a bit over the last three weeks.
Three starts ago, the Orioles got him for five runs, and in his last outing the Mets took him to task for seven runs in New York. Sandwiched between those tilts was a pristine complete-game shutout of the Cubs in Wrigley Field.
The Giants will be rolling out as many hitters swinging the stick from the left side of the plate as possible. Fortunately, that should not be an issue for Gallen since he has a 26.1% strikeout rate against opposite-handed batsmen and a 25.3% rate against fellow righties.
MLB DFS Picks: Top Stacks
Main Slate Primary Target: San Diego Padres vs. RHP Ryan Feltner — 4.8 implied runs
First Pitch: 9:40 p.m. ET
This will be the first start in The Show for RHP Ryan Feltner since taking a comebacker off his head, which resulted in a fracture on the right side of his skull back on May 13. He has made three rehabilitation starts in MiLB and should be good for around 70 pitches tonight. Prior to his injury, Feltner was a below-average pitcher with a 6.09 ERA and a 4.90 FIP, allowing 1.53 baserunners per inning over 139 career frames. This combined with a below-average strikeout rate and an above-average walk rate makes him someone to target with above-average offenses.
Focusing on the power trio of Juan Soto, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. is usually a solid strategy, and Trent Grisham and catcher Luis Campusano can be considered for full stacks and as discounted differentiation options. Jurickson Profar and Xander Bogaerts will be more popular, but aside from name recognition and being higher in the batter order, they do not project for significantly more fantasy points.
Main Slate Secondary Target: Atlanta Braves vs. LHP Cristopher Sanchez — 5.5 implied runs
First Pitch: 7:20 p.m. ET
The Stokastic Top Stacks Tool likes Atlanta tonight, and since it has been around two weeks since this veritable All-Star squad was covered in this section, why not take a look at the Braves? DraftKings and Yahoo have done a tremendous job boosting the salaries for Ronald Acuna Jr., Austin Riley, Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies. Heck, even FanDuel has made an effort, with Acuna shockingly at $5,000 and Olson at $4,500 as the two most expensive hitters in the player pool on the blue site.
With all of the top-tier pitchers tonight, it is going to be a challenge for most gamers to build out Atlanta stacks and still feel good about their lineups. That in turn has the Braves projected to be underrepresented in tournaments, which, of course, presents an intriguing situation for the savvy gamer.
In his last start, RHP Cristopher Sanchez faced Atlanta in his home park, and while he allowed four runs, he did have a whopping 10 strikeouts. Sanchez is going to be a mainstay in the Philly rotation for years to come, but this Atlanta squad has too many good hitters and, having just seen Sanchez, should be able to make some adjustments.
Other DFS and Sports Wagering Opportunities
Even if we do not get to RHP Zac Gallen in the DFS arena, we can look to him in the sports wagering market. The True Odds feature on OddsShopper shows that Gallen has -156 “true odds” of surpassing his 4.5 strikeouts prop, but the books currently have a slightly inefficient line of -140 posted. Gallen is projected for 6.17 strikeouts tonight, which gives him a solid cushion when considering he needs to fan just five Giants to claim the over on this prop.
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Final Thoughts for Tuesday, September 19 | MLB DFS Picks
There are sprinkles in the Midwest, with Chicago and Kansas City having a slight chance of precipitation during the games, though nothing more than a delay is likely.
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