MLB DW Slate Preview - August 22
Thoughts, stats, DFS, player props, and more for today's slate of MLB action
I almost sort of have a normal work life now. I am doing volunteer IT work at the Christian school my kids go to, so I set up a little office for myself and I’ve been working here at least a few days a week. So I have the feel, for the first time since early 2020, of driving to work and driving home from work. And that makes this feel like a true Friday to me. My first true Friday feel in a really long time.
Going to the office all week, wearing pants, small talking about the weather. You know, really wearing myself down. Really putting my body to work. And that makes this Friday night slate of baseball feel different to me too. It will be like a real weekend kick off, or something. I still can’t say I long for the weekend or anything like that. I really like the jobs I have and doing the stuff I do. And Saturdays can be really long and boring sometimes. But I don’t know, this is a different feel.
So I want to create for myself some things to pay attention to tonight. Let’s hit some MLB spots.
Baggy Eyes
I am not sure that Blake Snell can keep getting away with the things he’s getting away with right now. He has a 1.80 ERA on the year and has not given up a run in his last 11 innings. He’s given up just three since his return from the IL with a pretty nice 21:5 K:BB.
He’s been very good for your fantasy teams since returning. That is not a surprise. Snell has this way about him. Every year he’ll just light the world on fire for a month or more, being one of the most valuable SPs in the game. But it’s never without hiccups. I’m not saying that the hiccup will definitely happen tonight. There’s no way to actually predict the hiccups (although carbonated drinks do it for some people), but it is a safe bet that one will happen.
The problem with me working at this school today is that I don’t have cell service in this closet I’m in and then obviously they’re going to have the sports book websites blocked. So I can’t go in there and cook up bets and find lines and stuff. As the IT administrator, I suppose I could unblock DraftKings. Maybe that’s what I should do. Unblock it, and then just monitor for kids trying to get on it. And if I find any trying to get on, shake their hand and take them under my wing.
I can see the player prop comparison tool, though. We have walk lines:
But those all seem super fair. Nobody ever thinks Snell won’t walk guys. It’s not about that. What we want to bet on when hoping for a hiccup would be a really short outing. Except these friggin’ books don’t even let you bet unders hardly at all anymore because they’re all snakes.
We do have under 15.5 outs for -105, and that’s fine. I like that. But what I’m really thinking about with betting on a Snell hiccup would be something like under 13.5 outs for like a +250 return or something like that. Really taking the longer shot bet that he just has absolutely no command of the baseball whatsoever and ends up throwing 60 pitches in the first two innings or something like that. So however that is possible, that’s what I’d tell you.
Again, this has nothing to do with the matchup or any advanced analytics or anything like that. It’s just coming from a fantasy baseball veteran who knows who Blake Baggy Eyes is. The outing where he completely blows it is coming at some point, and the string of good starts he puts together before it does make these prices pretty advantageous if you can predict it correctly.