MLB DFS Slate Breakdown - July 31
Extensive look at the Friday night MLB DFS slate on DraftKings
Slate preview posts are for all paid subs, but access to the daily projections plus all of the DFS and betting tools is limited to PRO subscribers. Become an MLB DW Pro member today to get the full access to some of the best daily MLB tools on the market!
RUN PURE SPORTS PROMO
RPS is one of the premier sites on the Internet for MLB DFS. Projections, tons of tools, and an unmatched Discord community that is active for every slate. Sign up today at runpuresports.com to get an even sharper edge, and use code “PGH25” at checkout for 25% off your first payment.
Weather
All systems GO for this 13-game slate. Temperatures are normal, no big wind spots from what I can see. We can play this as if the weather isn’t an influence.
Game Info
It’s a massive 13-game slate with only one true ace pitcher on the board (Cease). Maybe I’m slighting Hunter Brown there, but the point is that we have a bunch of hittable pitchers going tonight. Here’s the top of the SP board by salary:
Only seven of 26 teams are implied below four runs. We have to narrow in on some spots for stacking, though. We can’t use a third of the slate if we want a real chance at the big prizes.
TOP IMPLIED RUN TOTALS
Four stand above the rest:
Tigers vs. Springs in SAC (6.51)
Brewers vs. Johnson in LAA (5.8)
Rockies vs. Wacha in COL (5.79)
Royals vs. Sugano in COL (5.71)
Sacramento and Coors both in play tonight. It’s Casey Mize going for the Tigers, and he’s been really good this year. Plus the Athletics lineup is beaten up, so they don’t project super well even at home.
The Tigers and Royals are the visiting teams in these hitter-friendly parks. That’s usually where the DFS value lies because they don’t always jack the prices up appropriately.
UPDATE: CASEY MIZE was supposed to start for the Tigers but has been scratched, so this is a better spot for the Athletics than we previously thought.
A LOOK AT THE TIGERS
Springs splits:
Big home run issue to righties with a sub-20% K% and a .340 xwOBA. Here’s the Tigers projected lineup:
The righties will be the guys we like the most. The prices on first look to me look fair enough. Gleyber Torres is up to $4500; that’s still a good play, but the price hike takes away the must-play element of it. Eduardo Valencia might get some ownership after he blasted a couple of homers the other day. And Hao-Yu Lee might hit 3rd for $3000, that will be a popular pick. That guy has a 9.4% Brl% and six homers this year, so he can do a lot of good things and the Tigers are liking him more and more.
A LOOK AT THE ROYALS
Sugano at home this year has given up just seven homers (13 on the road) and has somehow kept the ERA to 4.15. But a 14% K% and 6% BB% are exactly what we want for DFS. Plus the Rockies bullpen remains very bad.
So the Royals look good.
There’s no Witt or Pasquantino in the lineup right now. That’s bad for their overall run-scoring chances, but good because we get a lot of cheap players in the lineup. Sal Perez, Nick Loftin, Isaac Collins, Josh Rojas, Tyler Tolbert. All Coors bats below $4K. But there’s a reason they’re cheap - they all pretty much suck with the bat in hand. I find it best to use the top three there and more or less leave the rest of the lineup alone.
TOP IMPLIED RUN TOTALS ABOVE AVERAGE
Tigers vs. Jeffrey Springs +2.2
Royals vs. Tomoyuki Sugano +1.5
Mariners vs. Zebby Matthews +1.3
Rockies vs. Michael Wacha +0.99
Padres vs. Carson Whisenhunt +0.96
Guardians vs. Mitch Bratt +0.94
Brewers vs. Ryan Johnson +0.87
Blue Jays vs. Kyle Leahy +0.86
Rays vs. Erick Fedde +0.83
Mets vs. Janson Junk +0.75
So repeat of DET/KC, but the Mariners sneak in here with the big +1.3 over season average. The projections hate Zebby Matthews, and there’s good reason for that.
When you’re looking at these pitcher tables, you want to look for:
K-BB%
In Zebby’s case, it’s 11%, which is awful (15%+ is decent, 20%+ is elite)
GB%
We want home runs in DFS, anything below a 43% (or so) GB% means you’re looking at a fly ball pitcher
Brl%
This doesn’t stick like GB% does, but it still gives you an idea of how often they’ve given up hard hit fly balls. Zebby’s a disaster at 12% right now.
xwOBA
.320 is about average, so he’s not awful in this regard
And you should drop down and check the splits as well:
Pretty even there, with 8 of the 15 homers coming from right-handed bats.
Here’s the Mariners projected lineup:
Very, very cheap. This might be the stack of the night. People probably won’t go there with Sacremento and Coors on the board, and you can get a pretty high-upside lineup (JRod-Canzone-Arozarena-Naylor-Raleigh) for way too cheap against the perfect type of pitcher to stack against (low K, low BB, high FB%).
Some quick thoughts on the rest of these options:
Padres vs. Whisenhunt: I don’t like it at all. Whisenhunt is kind of good. Emphasis on kind of there. He has a nasty changeup, and this game’s in a bad place to hit.
Guardians vs. Bratt: The markets might be underrating Bratt a little bit, too. Giving the Guardians a big implication against him. But maybe not, because Bratt has 11 walks and ten strikeouts in his short time spent in MLB so far. Not looking good at all. I just think that his minor league numbers look worse than deserved because of pitching where he pitched.
Brewers vs. Johnson: Milwaukee’s on a west coast road trip and they just aren’t the best offense. Johnson has had some moments, but just got beat up last time out and overall just doesn’t look like a capable MLB pitcher. The Brewers just aren’t that stackable, though. They hit very few homers, and they aren’t in that friendly home park for this one.
Blue Jays vs. Leahy: Yeah, Leahy stinks - but so do the Blue Jays. They don’t have big games and they’re dead last in the league in DraftKings scoring.
Rays vs. Fedde: Fedde has been opened for a lot and has been kept under 70 points since the White Sox got a little bit serious about winning games.
So they won’t see him more than twice per player, I don’t think. The White Sox bullpen is nothing special, but it takes some of the attractiveness off of the Fedde target away.
Mets vs. Janson Junk: The Mets are still capable of scoring some runs, and they’re cheap. So I don’t hate it. ItsEwing/Lindor/Bichette/Benge is fine.
Pitchers
There are five clear options for us at the top of the board:
Dylan Cease ($10,700) vs. STL
You would think we’d have Cease’s prices up to the $12K range by now. He’s behind Misiorowski in average scoring by four points, which is a lot, but still:
The #2 pitcher in baseball for $10,700 in a fine matchup? I’m not saying he’s a MUST play everywhere, but that prices works just fine for cash on a slate where there’s going to be a ton of hitting value.
Shane Drohan ($7,700) vs. LAA
If you’ve been using my projections, you know what happens when pitchers face the Angels. And I like Drohan, even aside from the projections.
A 17% K-BB% with a 3.27 JA SIERA. The matchup is awesome, and Drohan has been above 90 pitches in his last two. Seems like a too-low price. I guess he hasn’t fully earned cash lock consideration, but the projections would tell you that he’s the top play on the board tonight at the #2 projection and #1 value.
Bryce Miller ($9,500) vs. MIN
No Buxton, and Miller is at home.
That’s a damn 30.4% K-BB% at home this year. It doesn’t get much better for Miller than this. It should still be noted that he’s not throwing as hard as he was at the beginning and his K% is down to 17% in his last four starts. But this matchup is too good to ignore.
Hunter Brown ($9,000) vs. TEX
Brown finally got it together last time out. It had been since June 16th that he had scored 20+ fantasy points, but he put up 33 last night.
The Rangers are a fine matchup, but less so when they aren’t in Globe Life. I think Brown is a useful tourney play, but the other three are better plays in my book, so I wouldn’t be using Brown if building 1-2 lineups.
Nathan Eovaldi ($9,300) vs. HOU
On the other side of Brown is Eovaldi. Miller (-190), Drohan (-180) and Cease (-170) are all big favorites, but with these two good righties matching up in Houston, the line is at -130 in favor of the Astros. So even more reason to not pick your cash SP from this game.
Eovaldi has been mostly good this year and he’s had six of seven 20+ performances lately:
Big one last time for 31 points. He’s a perfectly fine play, but not a guy I’m going way out of my way to make sure I get.
So those are the five. You could certainly just build your 20 lineups with mixtures of that group. They are far and away the best pitchers on the board and the prices are all at least “fine”.
Let’s look at the values:
The Bat X gives Drohan just 12 points, by the way. So my model is kind of insane on him, but I think the Bat X is way too low. But for my projections, Drohan is the biggest value by a mile.
Mitch Bratt ($5,300) comes in with 15 fantasy points scored in four outings total:
15.2 innings, 10 strikeouts, 11 walks, 4 homers. Not good signs at all. This will be his first truly soft matchup, but I don’t see much reason to pull the trigger here besides needing some $5.3K punt as pitcher while hoping for 13 points or something like that for a 2.25x return.
Ignore Brian Keller there, that’s just a guess on who will pitch for the Phillies.
Ryan Johnson ($6,100) is a deep GPP lotto shot play. He does have half-decent stuff and has shown 20+ points twice this year:
You’d take 15 from him for $6,100, and the Brewers are a team you can kinda do that against. They aren’t a great offense; they win their games with pitching. So it’s fine to have 5%-10% Johnson if you’re playing 150 lineups.
Here’s your next wave of projections after the big top five:
There’s just nothing to love about any of them. Freddy Peralta ($7,300) getting 15 points would work with this price, as you see the nice 1.97x value there. Foster Griffin ($8,800) doesn’t get the credit he probably deserves in my model, but $8,800 against the Braves with Acuna back? Doesn’t seem great. You could.
Tanner Bibee ($7,000) projects for 11 points with a 1.6x value against the Diamondbacks. But he’s at least a competent (sometimes) MLB pitcher on a slate with a lot of really awful pitching on it.
Look at the garbage on this slate:
So I think we can narrow our player pool down here. Why not just load up on the top five guys?
Hitters
My favorite stacks trying to get away from high ownership:
Mariners vs. Matthews
Marlins vs. Peralta
Mets bullpen got worse last night with the AJ Minter trade, and Devin Williams is marked as unavailable in my report
Nationals vs. Elder
Guardians vs. Bratt
Mets vs. Junk
Catchers
Everybody about an 8-point projection:
Top values:
I’m going to do the coloring thing again.
Green = $4500K+
Yellow = $3500-$4500
Red = $3500 or below
Only one man is on both lists, Cal Raleigh ($4000). He’s certainly going to be a part of my Mariners stacks. For one-off plays, it’s a lot tougher because he’s been so bad. But he still has been barreling the ball when he’s made contact, and it’s a great matchup with Zebby.
The two top plays by projection are Carter Jensen ($5,300) in Coors and Dillon Dingler ($5,800) in Sacramento. Good hitters, bad pitchers, great parks.
Eduardo Valencia ($3,400) is probably the right choice for cash. We don’t know if he’ll make the lineup, I guess, but he’s made his case with the bat. Four homers in 24 PAs with a 1.330 OPS. And he’s a right-hander in Sacramento against Jeffrey Springs.
I like Dingler or Valencia for cash/single entry.
First Base
Projected above nine points:
Nick Kurtz ($5,200) is pretty cheap relatively to his normal, and this is no longer a matchup against Casey Mize. So that’s a good play. I’d imagine his projection goes up when we get the new starter’s name in there.
Salvador Perez ($3,700) gets the spot in Coors. He’s been better in the second half (.371 xwOBA, .869 OPS), and the matchup doesn’t get much better.
We like Josh Naylor ($3,700) at the same price as a part of our Mariners attack. He’s been kinda rough at home though (.249/.305/.324).
Bryce Harper ($4,900) is fine against Young. That’s a fine spot for the Phillies, but I’d rather pay $300 more for Kurtz.
Big values:
Perez and Naylor again - so if we’re playing based on the projections, we should be liking both of those names as top projections and top values at the same time.
Spencer Torkelson ($3,800) is certainly, certainly in play. He’s a fly ball hitter against a fly ball pitcher, he has the platoon advantage, and it’s an easy park to homer in. Doesn’t get much better for Torkelson than this.
Second Base
Projections above 8:
Hao-Yu Lee ($3,000) with a massive 9.6-point projection. He’s been red hot, he’s projected to hit third, he can hit for some power, and the Tigers are in the best spot on the board. So that makes a lot of sense at the price. He’s the top projection and the top value.
Gleyber Torres ($4,500) is right up there too. Should be leading off against the lefty. Since you can use Lee at 3B too, you could play both of these guys. Torres is a bit expensive though, isn’t he? I guess not, he’s been fine.
But I like the cheaper Tigers more than Torres here with his lower Brl% and no speed.
Cole Young ($3,500) is the Mariners play if he’s hitting leadoff. Brice Turang ($5,200) is still expensive, but I could see using a Brewers mini-stack to take advantage of the blow-up potential of Ryan Johnson and that Angels bullpen.
Top values (lots over 2.5x tonight):
I don’t like Rojas/Smith/McNeil/Koss, there’s just no upside there. So Hao-Yu Lee is clearly the top play at the position tonight.
Third Base
Top projections:
Only one dinger for Junior Caminero ($6,100) since the break, but he’s hit for a good batting average and this is a good spot against Fedde & Company. I don’t think I’ll have the money in cash for him.
Manny Machado ($4,900) and the Padres aren’t the worst plays on the slate. Whisenhunt doesn’t have much other than that change, but I just don’t think it’s good enough to play Padres in if we’re not building a bunch of lineups.
Yandy Diaz ($4,800) never makes my lineups, but there he is again with a good projection.
The top play is Lee, but do we want to use him at second or third?
Top values:
Basically the same situation as 2B. I’m thinking of going Torres at 2B and Lee at 3B for cash games.
Shortstop
Top projections:
These posts get kind of lame with Coors & Sacramento on the slate. It’s just repeating the same teams over and over again. And we have Kevin McGonigle ($5,000) at the top. 1.07 points clear of the second best guy. So it’s hard to say he’s not the best cash play!
I still like Francisco Lindor ($4,300) for these mid-4’s prices. Other than that, I don’t love the prices on anybody. The other good players are up against good pitchers, save CJ Abrams who is just so expensive that it’s tough to click on.
The values:
Not much to love here. Andres Gimenez ($2,800) is probably fine to use as a punt at a not-so-great position. Looks like Javier Baez ($2,800) is expected back. But I’m not going there. JP Crawford ($3,400) is in that good spot with Zebby.
I’m on McGonigle or Lindor as the best play.
Outfield
Here’s everybody above a 9.5-point projection:
The best plays I’m picking out from this screenshot:
James Wood $6600
Julio Rodriguez $4300
Jac Caglianone $4900
Dominic Canzone $3600
AJ Ewing $4000
Randy Arozarena $4600
Lane Thomas $4300
I can’t NOT play JRod at $4300 in this spot. Cags stands out, this park is really nice for the “problem” he has of just hitting too many line drives rather than fly balls to get the ball out of the yard. The price is up there, though, so it’s not an auto-smash play.
And I still like AJ Ewing $4000 a lot. He pairs well with Lindor.
Top values:
Will Dylan Beavers $2800 lead off again? If so, that’s a great play.
We have a repeat of Canzone here. So he’s an awesome play.
PROJECTION TOP PLAYS
There are five plays with values above 2.5x and projections above nine points.
i did 8.5 points and a 2.2x value and went through each position, and here it is, the PLAY THE BEST PLAYS LINEUP:
That is a thing of beauty. I love that lineup. It doesn’t use Shane Drohan, which is fine. Using him scares me a little bit because his projected ownership is really low. So if we use him in cash and he busts (possible), we’re kinda cooked. I usually like having some of the higher-owned pitchers in cash. That’s not true for tourneys, I’m going to have a ton of Drohan in tourneys.
But I feel great about this cash lineup.
There you have it, hope this helps you win some money tonight!