DraftKings contributor Garion Thorne and RotoWire’s Erik Halterman join The Sweat to give their favorite DraftKings value plays for today’s MLB slate.
Watch today’s entire episode of The Sweat below!
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Video Transcript
Garion Thorne:
I’m going to go back to that Blue Jays lineup, someone who might go a little overlooked in this game—Santiago Espinal, who has hit very, very well at Rogers Centre so far this season. He’s got a 128 wRC+, an OPS up above .800, and depending on whether or not George Springer plays in this game—he’s missed the last two contests due to an illness—Espinal is either going to hit leadoff, and even if Springer is back, he might still be slotted into the No. 2 spot in the Jays’ lineup. He started hitting second, they’ve won eight consecutive games, managers tend to be a little superstitious, so I would imagine Espinal remains in the top third of the Jays’ lineup regardless of who’s playing tonight. And considering that they have the highest implied team total of any non-Coors teams on this slate, I think you want to stick as many bats in there as you can, and if one of them’s $3,600, that’s even better.
Erik Halterman:
I was pretty worried we’d be on the same guy again, because I am going with the cheap guy on the Jays, but I’ll go with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at $2800. He is also having a down year, but there’s reasons to believe he’s picking things up lately. In his last eight games, he has a 170 wRC+, but what I really like is seven walks against just four strikeouts—shows me he’s at least seeing the ball far better. On the season, the .655 OPS isn’t very good, but he does have a career-best strikeout rate of 17.6 percent. He’s hitting the ball still fairly hard, in the 77th percentile. Not generating a ton of barrels, but that seems like that means a few too many of his hard hits are staying on the ground. It doesn’t look like somebody who’s very off to me and it’s somebody who’s had plenty of success in the past, so to see him sub $3000 against Chi Chi Gonzalez, who we’ve hit on a couple of times—I think career 5.64 ERA—yes, a lot of that was at Coors, but that doesn’t look good anywhere. He doesn’t strike out anybody, 13.4% strikeout rate for his career, and wasn’t even all that much in the minors this season. So give me a guy who’s had success in the past, doesn’t look all that bad this season and costs less than $3,000.
Garion’s Pick: Santiago Espinal ($3,600)
Erik’s Pick: Lourdes Gurriel Jr. ($2,800)
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