This content will be dedicated to providing you with an easy-to-follow breakdown of the elite cash plays, GPP plays, and leverage stacks.

 

Vegas Overview – Below is an excerpt from our sister site, Bet Karma. It has daily player props, live trends, (below), and much more! Access all odds, trends, and line movement for all sports here: BetKarma Live MLB Trends

 

 

 

Projections will be updated throughout the day. You can stay up to date on all of our latest projections by utilizing our FREE projections portal at DFS Karma.

NOTE: Tables are embedded in the breakdown and update LIVE. The various tables will update with starting lineups confirmation, when projections are edited in the projections portal(s), and every hour. If a table is showing an error message or is blank, please wait a moment and refresh the page and it should re-populate correctly. Thanks!

Pitching

MLB DK Pitcher Table

Freddy Peralta

Peralta has fully broken out for the Brew Crew this season, finally delivering on the upside that we always knew was there. “Fastball Freddy” was his known moniker prior to this season. While he is still a fastball dominant pitcher (it’s one of the best in baseball” he has mixed in his slider enough to increase his results. He’s pitched to a 3.70 xFIP this season with over 37% strikeouts. The walks are still an issue, the concern is minimized for me when you have such good strikeout ability. The Cubs projected lineup is striking out over a quarter of the time this season against right-handed pitching. This is a match-up he’s had success in, and Peralta is my top overall option on Monday night.

Lucas Giolito

This slate is extremely straightforward to me at SP, and it’s spending up for a double-ace build. We are gifted with Peralta, Giolito, and Trevor Bauer on this slate and a bunch of low-strikeout options after those three. Gio has been inconsistent this season, but he’s really turned it on as of late with a sub-3.00 SIERA over the last month. This Twins lineup doesn’t strike out a ton (21%), but neither do the Giants who Bauer is facing. I tend to weight team K% less when we are talking about elite pitchers, like Gio, who can mow down any lineup if their stuff is working. I prefer him to Bauer to due the savings and I view him as playable in all formats tonight.

Eli Morgan

Morgan is not a name I thought I’d be writing up this season, but here we are. As I noted above, this is a tough pitching slate after the top-tier aces and I would prefer to skip the mid-tier and drop all the way down to Morgan if searching for a cheap SP2 on DK. Yes, he’s coming off a nine strikeout game against the Cubs. While I’m not expecting another nine strikeouts, his swinging strike rate is at 14% and he draws the Detroit Tigers. Detroit is one of the highest strikeout teams in baseball against righties this season, and their projected lineup owns just a .297 wOBA. At Morgan’s price, he can allow a few runs and still make up for it in the K department. He is my top value option on this slate.

Other GPP Targets: Trevor Bauer, Dylan Bundy

Top DraftKings Batters

MLB Top Batters

Top FanDuel Batters

FD MLB Top Batters

Batters

C

We are loaded with C options tonight, but my favorite and a priority play for me is Gary Sanchez. Sanchez has gotten a lot of flack over the last two seasons (from me as well), but I believe now is the time to ride him in DFS. He has been locked in at the plate recently, and it shows in the data. Over the last 14 days, he’s making hard contact at a 39% rate with a well above-average 42% fly ball rate. If looking for pivots, I like Salvy Perez for a spend-up, or Max Stassi as a cheap play.

1B

Shohei Ohtani

Ohtani has been the most electric player in baseball this season, and is maybe my top overall play tonight against Michael King. Ohtani’s .429 wOBA vs right-handed pitching ranks fifth-best in baseball among qualifiers, and we know that it comes with massive power potential as well. King has not looked great, and is allowing a .342 wOBA to opposite-hand batters. Furthermore, King’s most used pitch to both sides of the plate is his sinker — a pitch that Ohtani demolishes to the tune of a .544 wOBA and .517 ISO.

Hunter Dozier

Garrett Richards is one of the worst pitchers on this slate, sporting a 5.31 xFIP with 12% walks this season. Dozier is typically someone we want against left-handed pitching, but his batted ball numbers are among the better overall on this Royals team. He has big power to both sides of the plate, and the R/R match-up will do nothing but lower his ownership even further. Richards is mainly fastball/slider to righties, and that’s good news for Dozier. His .312 ISO vs fastballs is second-best in this lineup since the start of 2017.

2B

Whit Merrifield

Moving from Dozier to his teammate, you can tell I like the Royals tonight. I know their offense hasn’t been as good as the start of the season, but I truly don’t believe in Richards one bit at this point and Merrifield is never high-owned due to his aggressive price tag. He provides the power/speed combo we love to target for DFS. His numbers look below-average against RHP this season, but they come with a near 25% line drive rate and he can make up for a lack of power with his speed.

Jeff McNeil

I expect McNeil to be one of the higher-owned plays on DK tonight, and he is tough to get away from in cash game or optimal builds. None of McNeil’s numbers stand out this season, but this is historically a good hitter who is way underpriced in a plus match-up. I am 100% comfortable eating the chalk here in cash games, but due to nothing overly standing out to me, this is the type of play I like to fade in GPP formats.

3B

Anthony Rendon

I already discussed my love for Ohtani above, but I think we can consider Rendon at a discount as well. His surface numbers look horrifying this season, but they come with well over 40% hard hits and fly balls even against righties. Given the batted ball data, I’m going to keep trusting that this is a great hitter. Rendon is another member of this lineup that crushes sinkers — owning a .490 wOBA against the pitch since 2017.

Starlin Castro

Castro was a go-to value play earlier this season, and I think now is a good time to get back on the train for under $3,000 on DK. Eickhoff is not someone I’m scared of targeting at all, and he’s given up over a .200 ISO to both sides of the plate since 2019. Castro has seen the ball extremely well all season, and owns a respectable 41% hard hit rate over the last two weeks of play.

SS

I’ve went back-and-forth all day about who to highlight at this position, and I still haven’t made any firm decisions. There are a number of great spend-up options here, but if going with a double-ace pitcher build it isn’t likely that we will have the salary needed to afford one of them. This need for savings has me looking at Paul DeJong for sub-3K on DraftKings. He’s been pretty bad when healthy this season, but he still boasts a 41% hard-contact rate against right-handed pitching. He is too cheap for someone with his power, and fits into my optimal build nicely on Monday.

If looking at stud options, I like Trea Turner, followed by Carlos Correa.

OF

JD Martinez

JD is always a staple for me against left-handed pitching, and he draws a southpaw tonight in Danny Duffy. Over the last three seasons, Martinez is fifth in baseball with a .298 ISO in the split. Duffy is a fly-ball pitcher that will allow power, and he’s surrendering a 43% fly ball rate to righties over that same span. He is my favorite spend-up at his position tonight.

Yordan Alvarez + Kyle Tucker

The Astros have been a common theme of this breakdown in recent weeks, and that won’t stop against Tom Eshelman tonight. We have a limited sample size of Eshelman with the big league club this season, but the results are scary with a near 10.00 (yes, 10.00) xFIP. He’s also a sinker baller, who throws the pitch nearly 50% of the time. Alvarez is the best hitter in this lineup vs the pitch (.489 wOBA) while Tucker owns the third-highest xwOBA (.423).

Cody Bellinger

Belly has homered in two straight games, and is somehow priced at just $3,900 on DraftKings against Anthony DeSclafani. Attacking DeSclafani with lefties has been a go-to for DFS players over the last few seasons. He’s actually been really good this season to both sides of the plate, but the hard-contact is still up (44%) to left-handed batters. I don’t love the match-up, but the price is way too low and I can’t ignore Bellinger because of it.

Stacks

“Team Batting Score” – A metric that quickly highlights overall team batting based on Runs Created (RC+) by team and comparing it to the average and standard deviation of all other MLB Teams

“Opp. Pitcher SP Score” – A weighted metric that evaluates today’s starting pitchers based on xFIP and Games Started (currently using partial end of 2020 data blended with the 2021 season)

“Opp. BP Score” – Similar to SP Score but weights the xFIP for the team’s bullpen

Team Batting vs. Opp. Pitch

DraftKings Team Stacks

DK MLB Stacks

FanDuel Team Stacks

FD MLB Stacks

“T2” (and T3/T4/T5) represents the Top 2 projected hitters for the team on the left (not necessarily the top 2 hitters in the batting order)

Stacking is an extremely important element to MLB DFS. In MLB, all of your players are correlated to each other. Outside of solo home runs, they need each other to succeed. If you look at the top of all of the big GPPs every night you will see stacks dominating the leaderboard.

When using our stacks chart, we want to identify teams that are projecting well but the ownership does not reflect their chance of success.

DraftKings 5-Man Stack Ideas

Altuve-Correa-Alvarez-Tucker-Brantley

Hernandez-Devers-Bogaerts-Martinez-Renfroe

Merrifield-Santana-O’hearn-Soler-Perez

Carlson-O’Neill-Goldy-Arenado-DeJong

Ohtani-Rendon-Walsh-Schebler-Fletcher

DraftKings 3-Man Stack Ideas

Schwarber-Turner-Soto

Altuve-Alvarez-Tucker

Merrifield-Perez-Soler

O’Neill-Goldy-Arenado

Ohtani-Rendon-Walsh (my fav)

Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)