The Major League Baseball season has reached the end of its first quarter, and it’s been an exciting first 40 games so far. The Chicago Cubs’ bats are hot. The Colorado Rockies’ are not.
DraftKings is offering a DFS contest for tonight’s action with a 10-game featured slate. Here are two pitchers, three infielders, and three outfielders I’m targeting.
Set your DraftKings fantasy baseball lineups here: MLB $200K Bat Flip [$50K to 1st]
PITCHER
Stud
Kodai Senga, New York Mets vs. Pittsburgh Pirates, $9,500 – The New York Yankees — along with the Knicks, up 3-1 in the Eastern Conference semifinals — have captured the hearts of the Big Apple. But the best baseball team in America’s biggest city this season has been the Mets, and Senga has been truly elite this season. He’s had four starts in which he’s given up zero earned runs, and although his 1.16 ERA is significantly better than his 3.03 FIP figure, his versatile pitch mix and devastating breaking stuff should continue to make him a top-level starter. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh has posted the league’s second-worst OPS so far this season.
Value
Jack Leiter, Texas Rangers vs. Colorado Rockies, $7,000 – Colorado fired Bud Black after starting the season 7-33, elevated Warren Schaeffer to the role, and immediately lost again. The Rockies can seemingly do no right these days, and those travails will probably continue tonight, as their inept offense will give Leiter — who’s had two rocky starts in a row, giving up 10 earned runs in 9.2 innings and totaling 0.9 fantasy points across that span — a chance to bounce back. His FIP figure of 4.24 is far better than his 5.09 ERA, indicating that he’s gotten fairly unlucky. He might not need luck against a Colorado team that has averaged just 2.15 runs per game away from home and posted a collective .189/.249/.286 slash line.
INFIELDER
Stud
Mookie Betts, Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Athletics, $5,400 – This is the lowest you’ll ever see Betts’ value, as he’s clearly taken on the role of third fiddle in Los Angeles’ offense behind Player of the Week Freddie Freeman ($6,100) and Player of All Time Shohei Ohtani ($6,500). As brilliant as those two players are, I like Betts’ value a lot more, and he’s turned it on in the last 10 games with a .333/.386/.513 slash line and four stolen bases (10.4 FPTS per game). Plus, while Jeffrey Springs ($7,300) shouldn’t strike fear in Ohtani’s heart, he has been significantly better against southpaws than right-handers so far this season. Springs is decent at inducing chases, but unfortunately for him, Betts has among the sharpest eyes in the league.
Stud
Austin Riley, Atlanta Braves vs. Washington Nationals, $5,000 – Washington’s pitching staff in general hasn’t been great this season, allowing the fifth-highest WHIP and the third-highest ERA so far. That’s especially true when Michael Soroka ($5,600), a former Brave, is on the mound. The former Rookie of the Year runner-up hasn’t been the same since tearing his right Achilles tendon twice and missing two full seasons. Last season, he went 0-10 with the Chicago White Sox, and he’s 0-2 so far this season with a 7.20 ERA after missing more than a month with a biceps strain. The 28-year-old Riley has been a bit boom-or-bust, but he can slug it with the best of them, and he’s slashed .300/.364/.475 (9.4 FPTS per game) over his past 10 games.
Value
Jonathan Aranda, Tampa Bay Rays at Toronto Blue Jays, $3,900 – Aranda can absolutely rake; this season, he’s slashing .342/.429/.553, and he’s in extremely hot form, posting a 1.018 OPS over his last 10 games (7.5 FPTS per game). And though his fantasy value is limited by the fact that he usually sits against left-handed pitchers — against whom he’s slashing just .208/.367/.208 this season — Toronto’s starter, José Berríos ($7,800), isn’t a southpaw, and he isn’t a particularly elite pitcher, either. Berríos has given up at least one homer in half of his starts and ranks below the median in every Statcast category bar three. Aranda is elite at finding the sweet spot and he can hit it to all areas of the field.
OUTFIELDER
Stud
Fernando Tatís Jr., San Diego Padres vs. Los Angeles Angels, $6,200 – Tatís is starting to slow down a little bit after an incredibly hot start to the season, but his numbers are still impressive overall and despite only going one-for-five in last night’s 9-5 loss to the Angels, he did manage to hit a homer (14 FPTS), which was his second in three games. The Dominican has scored a run in each of his last five games, so he’s still finding a way to put up fantasy production even if he’s not hitting for quite as high an average. Los Angeles starter José Soriano ($6,300) gave up three runs in five innings (10.1 FPTS) in his most recent outing and ranks in just the 14th percentile in average exit velocity, a category in which Tatís ranks in the 95th percentile.
Stud
Cody Bellinger, New York Yankees at Seattle Mariners, $4,400 – The 2019 NL MVP hasn’t yet found his groove in the Bronx in his first season, slashing just .230/.303/.385, but his bat has shown some signs of life in the last 10 games. Across that span, he’s slashed .289/.357/.447, hitting two homers (8.4 FPTS per game). Mariners starter Bryan Woo ($9,300), meanwhile, struggled mightily in his last outing, giving up five runs on eight hits in six innings (10.1 FPTS) in a 6-5 win over the Athletics, a blemish in what has otherwise been a pretty good season. Woo throws some variety of a fastball on 69% of his pitches, and Bellinger has a .372 wOBA against fastballs this season.
Value
Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Arizona Diamondbacks at San Francisco Giants, $3,200 – Gurriel broke the game wide open in one of the wildest games of the season so far against the Dodgers on May 9, taking Roki Sasaki deep for a grand slam as part of a 22-FPT performance. The 31-year-old Cuban (who I actually got to see in person with Industriales in 2015 prior to his defection) has had a rough start to the season, but has slashed .300/.333/.650 with three homers and 10 RBI’s (10.1 FPTS per game) over his last 10 games. Robbie Ray ($9,000), meanwhile, has given up just five earned runs across his last four starts (22.7 FPTS per game), but his 4.06 FIP is significantly worse than his 2.84 ERA, so he’s bound for a bad start eventually. He ranks in just the fourth percentile in average exit velocity, and Gurriel tends to hit a lot of pulled fly balls, a recipe for producing homers at a higher rate.
