WBC DFS Slate Breakdown, March 6
DFS season begins with a look at a three-game WBC slate
It’s World Baseball Classic time, and that gives me a half-decent excuse to bust into DFS mode. There are three games on this slate DraftKings is running, and it starts at 6pm eastern time. Let’s look at these games and find some plays. I’m going to run ten lineups into a $10 tournament with a $1,000 grand prize and see what we can come out with.
The Slate
Puerto Rico vs. Colombia (6pm eastern)
Puerto Rico -2.5
O/U 9.5
Seth Lugo (PR) vs. Jose Quintana (COL)
Nicaragua vs. Dominican Republic (7pm eastern)
DR -4.5
O/U 10
Ronald Medrano (NIC) vs. Cristopher Sanchez (DR)
USA vs. Brazil (8pm eastern)
USA -9.5
O/U 14
Logan Webb (USA) vs. Bo Takahashi (BRA)
Not too often you see a -9.5 in a baseball game, or an O/U 14 for that matter. So we’ll want to do some team USA stacking.
The implied run totals:
USA 11.75
Dominican Republic 7.25
Puerto Rico 6.0
Colombia 3.5
Nicaragua 2.75
Brazil 2.25
I think I’m just going to load up on perceived chalk. There’s no good reason to go contrarian and stack a team implied to score three runs on a slate where you have access to three team totals above six runs.
Let’s go game-by-game and see what we can find.
Puerto Rico vs. Colombia
Puerto Rico -2.5
O/U 9.5
Pitchers
Seth Lugo ($7,700) vs. Jose Quintana ($7,500)
Two names we’re familiar with to start it off. Lugo has made two outings in spring, recently throwing 45 pitches against the Rockies on February 28th. Quintana threw just 13 pitches back on February 25th for his only action of the spring.
Here’s the full pitcher pool to set the stage with:
Logan Webb and Cristopher Sanchez are obviously in a tier way above the dudes. And immediately, we scratch off the two no-names taking on MLB All-Star lineups.
Pricing doesn’t seem to matter much here. Everybody is cheap, so you can more or less pick whoever you want.
I’m building ten lineups, so that’s 20 SPs to pick. I think I’ll play a good bit of Lugo. And I could use Quintana a time or two, but we’ll see. He is on an MLB team and just getting ramped up, so maybe there will be a pitch count limit here, which could be pretty low. But it’s Quintana, and he’s on the Rockies, so he might actually be looking at this as the biggest game of his 2026 year.
Offenses
We’re eight hours from game time as I write this, so we don’t have any lineups.
Here’s what Colombia used in their first exhibition:
Michael Arroyo
Reynaldo Rodriguez
Harold Ramirez (MLB)
Gio Urshela (MLB)
Donovan Solano (MLB)
Gustavo Campero (MLB)
Carlos Martinez (not the old Cards pitcher)
Dayan Frias
Brayan Buelvas
And their second exhibition:
Michael Arroyo
Donovan Solano (MLB)
Reynaldo Rodriguez
Jordan Diaz
Gio Urshela (MLB)
Jesus Marriaga
Harold Ramirez (MLB)
Daniel Vellojin
Carlos Arroyo
Only four guys have big league experience in these last two seasons, and none of them have been good hitters. Solano is the best of the bunch with his .707 OPS the last two seasons.
Lugo, as an MLB pitcher, shouldn’t have a ton of trouble here.
The Puerto Rico team is much better:
Willi Castro (MLB)
Heliot Ramos (MLB)
Nolan Arenado (MLB)
Carlos Cortes (MLB)
Darell Hernaiz (MLB)
MJ Melendez (MLB)
Emmanuel Rivera (MLB)
Bryan Torres
Martin Maldonado (MLB)
They have played two games, and it’s been Castro-Raamos-Arenado-Cortes as the top four each time. I’m targeting all four of those guys in my lineups tonight. And I’ll want some MJ Melendez action as well with his big power.
Not an all-star team, but eight of nine players have played in the Majors in these last couple of seasons.
So yeah, Puerto Rico -2.5 feels like a smash. And you can do some Puerto Rico stacking on this DFS slate.
TARGETS
Nicaragua vs. Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic -4.5
O/U 10
Pitchers
Ronald Medrano vs. Cristopher Sanchez
Medrano threw 36 innings in A+ and AA for the Royals back in 2023. Last year, he played in Independent ball and the Mexican Pacific Winter League. So he’s not a plumber. He had a 5.42 ERA in those leagues with 64 strikeouts in 98 innings. And now he faces a legit MLB All Star lineup. He might decide to be a plumber after tonight.
Cristopher Sanchez is certainly on a pitch count. He threw 32 pitches on the 28th. So we’re probably looking at 40-50 pitches for him. But it’s not like Logan Webb is going to throw 90, so we’ll take 40 pitches from Sanchez and the handful of strikeouts he’ll probably get from that.
I also like the over 10 in this one. I feel like the DR could drop a handful of runs in the first inning and get to that total all alone.
Lineups
We have Mark Vientos on this Nicaragua team. Our old buddy Jeter Downs is also on th team. But Vietnos is the only one with recent MLB action. The DR bullpen is stacked up behind Sanchez:
If we can focus all our hitter picks on USA and DR, that seems to be the way to go. But we’ll also include these MLB players on the lesser teams. Vientos could take Sanchez or somebody deep, and one home run is going to go a long way on this slate.
The two lineups the DR has used:
Fernando Tatis
Ketel Marte
Juan Soto
Vlad Guerrero Jr.
Manny Machado
Junior Caminero
Julio Rodriguez
Agustin Ramirez
Jeremy Pena (hurt now)
And then:
Fernando Tatis
Ketel Marte
Juan Soto
Vlad Guerrero Jr.
Manny Machado
Junior Caminero
Julio Rodriguez
Austin Wells
Geraldo Perdomo
So the lineup is pretty set. Perdomo plays at SS with the Pena fractured finger, and I’d assume they go to Agustin Ramirez at C? But we’ll see, that might be up to Cristopher Sanchez.
TARGETS:
USA vs. BRAZIL
USA -9.5
O/U 14
Pitchers
All eyes on Logan Webb here. He’s made two spring outings, throwing 26 and then 38 pitches. It’s iron man Webb, so he’s gotta be the huge favorite to throw the most pitches in this one. Maybe there’s a hard four-inning limit or something. It might be more about how many times guys cool down and then ramp up again rather than pitch counts this early. And Webb could be sitting on the bench for a long time between half innings as the boys just tee off on this Brazil pitching staff. But what are you going to do? Not play like 80% Logan Webb against Brazil? I don’t have projections for this slate, obviously, but clearly it’s Webb and Sanchez all the way.
On the other side, we have a Japanese guy playing for Brazil.
Takahashi was in the minors with the Reds back in 2021. Last year, he played in Japan with pretty poor numbers (38 strikeouts in 64 innings for a 1.44 WHIP and a 4.92 ERA).
Lineups
There are no MLB players on this Brazilian roster. It’s not their sport, man. They really didn’t even have to show up to this.
The USA lineup reveal will be the pivot point of a lot of this slate. We have seen a couple of different lineups from them.
First game:
Bobby Witt Jr.
Bryce Harper
Aaron Judge
Kyle Schwarber
Alex Bregman
Cal Raleigh
Roman Anthony
Byron Buxton
Brice Turang
Second game:
Bobby Witt Jr.
Bryce Harper
Aaron Judge
Kyle Schwarber
Alex Bregman
Gunnar Henderson
Will Smith
Ernie Clement
Pete Crow-Armstrong
I’m betting on that first one being what we see tonight. But maybe it will be some mixture of the two. And plenty of guys will see the field. I doubt any of these guys are cleared to play nine innings yet. That’s true with the DR team. So if you play a lineup with PCA in it and he’s not in the lineup, it’s fine to leave him (just using this as an example), because he’ll probably play half the game anyways.
The locks to be in there: Witt, Harper, Judge, Schwarber, Bregman, Raleigh
You’ll probably get a USA or DR reliever being in the top five scorers at SP. But it’s pretty foolish to start guessing with hopes of getting like 12 points max.
Player Pool
I’ll probably use CHATGPT to optimize ten lineups. But I need to go get some lunch right now and I’ll do the lineups later. Here’s the pool I’ve narrowed down through this:
Pitchers
Logan Webb $8,100
Cristopher Sanchez $7,900
Seth Lugo $7,700
Jose Quintana $7,500
Maybe 75% Webb, 75% Sanchez, 75% Lugo, 50% Quintana? It won’t be different than what the field is doing at all, but that’s okay.
Catchers
Cal Raleigh $5,000
Agustin Ramirez $2,900
Austin Wells $2,600
Martin Maldonado $2,400
Especially at catcher, it’s probably fine to use a non-starter. So I’ll throw Will Smith $4,000 into the pool as well, although I’m pretty much fine with just using those four.
First Base
Vlad Guerrero Jr. $5,400
Bryce Harper $5,300
Emmanuel Rivera $2,900
I always kinda liked Emmanuel Rivera when he was playing. Solid dude against lefties, and yeah, he’ll get at least one look at Jose Quintana tonight. So he’s a viable punt.
Second Base
I didn’t mark any 2Bs the first pass, whoops.
Ketel Marte $5,200
Michael Arroyo $3,800
Donovaan Solaano $3,600
Brice Turang $3,400
Jeter Downs $3,300
Pretty weird price on Turang! We’ll probably load up on him and Ketel.
Third Base
Junior Caminero $5,100
Alex Bregman $4,500
Mark Vientos $4,300
Nolan Arenado $3,900
Gio Urshela $3,700
Donovan Solano $3,600
Emmanuel Rivera $2,900
Shortstops
Bobby Witt Jr. $5,800
Willi Castro $4,100
Michael Arroyo $3,800
Geraldo Perdomo $3,500
Brice Turang $3,400
Jeter Downs $3,300
Darell Hernaiz $2,800
Outfield
Aaron Judge $6,000
Juan Soto $5,900
Kyle Schwarber $5,600
Fernando Tatis Jr. $5,500
Heliot Ramos $4,900
Julio Rodriguez $4,700
Byron buxton $4,400
Willi Castro $4,100
Harold Ramirez $3,900
Roman Anthony $3,800
Carlos Cortes $3,600
Pete Crow-Armstrong $3,300
MJ Melendez $2,700
And there we go! The first of MANY DFS slates covered this year. Become an MLB DW Pro member to get those all year long, and get access to the daily projections and DFS tools we’ll have going starting on Opening Day.
I’ll post my player exposures in the Discord later if I remember. And I’ll probably get some posts going on X as the slate draws near.