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One of my favorite slates of the year, maybe my single favorite. Four games on the board today and tomorrow, and possibly another four-game slate on Thursday if all of these series split the first two games. That is pretty unlikely to happen, but we can dream.
Let’s break it all down from a DFS perspective, but we’ll give lots of insight and thoughts for people just more generally interested in the wild card rounds.
Game Info
PHI at ATL: 6.5 O/U, ATL -205
CWS at HOU: 8.0 O/U, HOU -126
BOS at NYY: 6.5 O/U, NYY -145
CHC at SD: 7.0 O/U, SD -130
Low totals. The offense projects to come from CWS/HOU and CHC/SD. Most of the ace pitching comes from BOS/NYY/PHI/ATL in these early series. So the general lean will be to the games in San Diego and Houston for bats.
It’s the postseason. Teams do everything possible to limit every last run. If a game gets entirely out of hand in the middle of it, that’s when you see some of the weaker bullpen arms as they try to preserve the good guys for the next day (if there is one). But we won’t be seeing too many bad pitchers toeing the rubber this week.
The implied totals:
The Astros and Braves stand out above the rest. The Phillies are sending Jesus Luzardo as the opener. He came back from the IL to throw one inning to get back in the swing of things two days ago. I think there’s a max of three innings here, and the pitch count projection reflects that. They will use Andre Painter in “long relief”, but that could be a brief outing as well. So the Braves are in the best spot that they will be in this series with Wheeler and Sanchez taking the subsequent games.
Pitchers
CWS/HOU is a bullpen game on both sides. It’s Hagen Smith vs. AJ Blubaugh. Plus the Luzardo opener situation, and we’re down to just five pitchers making true starts. The projections:
Chris Sale ($10,000): 21.2
Cam Schlittler ($9,600): 19.7
Payton Tolle ($8,800): 16.2
Michael King ($7,500): 11.1
Matthew Boyd ($7,000): 9.3
Jesus Luzardo ($7,700): 6.7
Hagen Smith ($4,000): 5.0
AJ Blubaugh ($6,200): 4.6
It’s not impossible that Luzardo could end up optimal. If he cruises through the first and second inning, maybe he gets the third inning and ends up with double-digit points. That could be optimal if the top of the board duds out.
But for “cash” lineups, Sale is a lock, and the SP2 is your pick of the two guys battling it out in the BOS/NYY game. My preference would be Schlittler, but Tolle is $800 cheaper and has as much ceiling as anybody.
Michael King and Matthew Boyd are much, much worse than those three big horses. But it’s a one-game postseason slate, things can get weird.
For tournaments, I’d mix in those top five guys with heavy exposure on Sale, Schlittler, and Tolle.
The contrarian play is probably Michael King at home. That’s a great park to pitch in, and King has had a very strong year with a 3.16 ERA and 1.18 WHIP in 185 innings. The Padres will be looking to use their bullpen heavily this postseason, but that doesn’t mean they’re limiting King to three innings if he’s gotten through those three cleanly.
Matthew Boyd just hasn’t had the strikeouts going, and he has to deal with Tatis/Machado/Merrill here. King has 3, 4, and 3 strikeouts in his last three outings. They can’t feel super confident in him. If he’s cruising and putting guys away with the changeup, they’ll extend him. It’s not like the Cubs have a great bullpen behind him. But if the game is close, I think they’ll be happy to go to the bullpen to play the optimal matchups.
A super contrarian play would be Andrew Painter ($5,700). He shouldn’t be viewed much differently than Hagen Smith, but who knows - maybe the Phillies put a crooked number or two up on Sale and get ahead big and see Painter pitch very well behind Luzardo. That could give you four innings from Painter and the win bonus. He’s very cheap and should be expected to throw more pitches than Smith + Blubaugh. The downside is that he might not pitch at all. It sounds like their plan is to use him, but there are potential scripts in that game that leave him out of the mix. It’s also quite possible that he’s in there for 1-2 innings max; that might actually be the most likely thing. If he comes in and has any trouble at all, they won’t leave him in there.
Ownerships:
Sale 48%
Schlittler 46%
Tolle 35%
King 27%
Boyd 14%
Luzardo 8%
Smith 5%
Blubaugh 1%
CASH/SINGLE LINEUP: SALE + SCHLITTLER
TOURNEY COMBO: SALE + TOLLE
Chris Sale is the guy I want to lean heavily. He is a lock candidate to get ahead of the big ownership. The Phillies don’t have many weapons against left handed pitching. Sale’s been here before, he’s had an awesome season, and the Braves will want as many innings from him as they can get this postseason as he’s their only truly confident starting pitcher.
If we’re playing the projections and just letting other people get weird with the sub-optimal plays, you could rotate your lineups entirely around those top three. I think there’s value in that. If the slate goes the way it’s most likely to go, you’ll be way ahead having all of your ownership on the three best guys while a ton of other lineups don’t use two of those big three.
But the way to win a huge tournament in DFS is typically to go against ownership at all costs and be one of the few lineups that played an outlier outcome. Maybe that means a Schlittler + Andrew Painter lineup.
Hitters
First let’s check out the bullpen ranks. The numbers mean a little bit less since they survey every available reliever rather than just the top guys who are more likely to be used in these postseason games. But it’s telling to some degree:
Astros
Red Sox
Padres
White Sox
Braves
Yankees
Cubs
Phillies
The Phillies have Jhoan Duran, but not much else, and they have more innings to cover with the bullpen than usual, unless they actually do get 6+ innings from Luzardo + Painter. Do you trust in Andrew Painter to deliver 3-4 good innings as a rookie in his playoff debut? I can’t say I do.