FanDuel Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Wednesday 5/17/23
Wednesday's seven-game slate will be a tough one for stacking, with lower implied team totals across the board, while one arm stands out above the rest at pitcher.
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Let's check out the top options on today's main slate.
Pitching Breakdown
Spencer Strider ($11,500) and Gerrit Cole ($11,000) are the first names we're drawn to at pitcher, but even Cole's numbers pale in comparison to Strider's this season.
Strider leads all qualified starters in strikeout rate (42.9%) by a country mile, with the next-best hurler, Kevin Gausman, dropping over eight percentage points lower (34.7%). As a result, Strider has logged at least eight punchouts in all eight of his starts, and he's hit double digits in three of his last four.
Considering all the strikeouts the 24-year-old is racking up, it probably isn't surprising that he also leads the league in SIERA (2.31), as well.
Walks continue to be the only real concern for Strider (8.2% rate), which is the main reason he's gone six or more innings in just half of his starts. But as you would expect, the upside has been immense when he goes at least six frames, boasting FanDuel scores of 55, 55, 73, and 57 points.
The Rangers have performed well against right-handed pitching so far this year, but they have a slate-low 3.44 implied team total and are a good matchup for strikeouts (23.8% rate). Strider tops numberFire's projections by a sizable margin.
As for Cole, he's coming off a pair of underwhelming outings -- but that can be forgiven in back-to-back starts against the Rays. He's gotten good results overall, though, and while his underlying metrics remain down from last season, most pitchers would gladly take a 3.69 SIERA, 27.4% strikeout rate, and 8.0% walk rate.
However, he's given up two dingers in each of the last two games, and that could be an issue that persists because his 0.64 home runs allowed per 9 innings looks unsustainable. Cole's 8.0% homer-to-fly-ball rate is extraordinarily suspect for someone who more than doubled that mark last year and has been over 13% in five of the past six seasons.
This isn't an easy spot against the Blue Jays, but Cole could get a boost if Vladimir Guerrero Jr. takes a seat, as Guerrero left yesterday's game early and is getting an MRI on his knee. The absence of Guerrero would not only help Cole keep the ball in the park but eliminate one of Toronto's low-strikeout batters. It isn't a perfect scenario, but we've seen Cole dominate for years now, and even with some home run regression, he's still one of the top pitchers in the game until he proves otherwise.
Nathan Eovaldi ($10,800) and Corbin Burnes ($10,000) are the two other pitchers coming in at $10,000 and above.
Eovaldi actually has better numbers than Cole this season, posting a sparkling 3.13 SIERA, 27.2% strikeout rate, and 3.9% walk rate, and he's even inducing grounders at a 52.1% clip, as well. He's fresh off easily his best 2023 start, a 12-strikeout, 72-point performance against the Athletics, and he's now logged eight or more scoreless innings in three straight. Over that three-game stretch, Eovaldi's been allowed to go 113, 107, and 113 pitches.
There's a ton going for the veteran pitcher at the moment, and despite Atlanta's stud hitters, the bottom half of the order has often scuffled, leaving the team as more of a neutral matchup for righties. Put it all together, and while it feels a little strange, I would strongly consider going with Eovaldi over Cole tonight.
It's hard to know what to make of Burnes' 2023 campaign. While he secured 49 FanDuel points and 7 strikeouts in his last start, his second-best performance this year, he still walked 4 batters and needed a lucky .154 BABIP to go six scoreless innings against... the Royals. For the season, he's sitting on a 21.0% strikeout rate and 9.7% walk rate, and were it most other pitchers, we would gloss over him in a heartbeat.
Against a low-strikeout opponent like the Cardinals (20.6% versus righties), this doesn't feel like the best spot to take a leap of faith, but he figures to see a low roster percentage at least.
Outside of Strider, Cole, and Eovaldi, Kodai Senga ($9,200) is the only other pitcher with a strikeout rate over even 23% tonight. While that's all well and good, a 26.4% strikeout rate doesn't totally balance out a 14.1% walk rate, and Senga's up against those pesky Rays. At a decent salary discount, Kodai is worth taking a chance on in a Blake Snell sort of way, though I do wish his cap hit was lower than this.
If you're looking for a value play to roll the dice with, Brayan Bello ($8,500) is intriguing against Seattle. Bello's endured his share of struggles as he attempts to convert his minor league success into something that sticks in the Majors, but he's strung together some encouraging results lately and owns an elite 62.5% ground-ball rate. While he's been roughly average when it comes to generating Ks, the Mariners possess one of the league's highest strikeout rates (25.0%) against righties. Bello got up to a season-high 100 pitches last time, so workload shouldn't be an issue moving forward, too.
Hitting Breakdown
No offense has an implied team total that hits even five runs tonight, which is a far cry from what we saw yesterday, even if Coors Field ended up being a dud. The top team in this regard would be the Boston Red Sox, who come in at 4.91 implied runs.
Boston is facing left-hander Marco Gonzales, who's showing a poor 4.99 SIERA and 16.1% strikeout rate over seven outings. The only problem? Gonzales routinely outperforms his ERA estimators, owning a 4.09 ERA since the beginning of 2021 despite carrying a 4.98 xFIP over that span. For that reason, the Red Sox are less of a slam dunk, and it doesn't help that most of their best batters are left-handed this season.
On the bright side, the southpaw has also allowed a 44.6% fly-ball rate to right-handed batters from 2021-23, leading to him allowing 1.60 home runs per 9 innings to them. This theoretically opens to door for Justin Turner ($2,900) and Enrique Hernandez ($2,700) to capitalize despite a lack of power thus far, and Rob Refsnyder ($2,400) should get a start against a lefty and bat high up. Connor Wong ($2,500) has shown some pop (.207 ISO) in limited time, giving him some value near the bottom of the lineup.
Gonzales doesn't get strikeouts against lefties, either, so Rafael Devers ($3,700) is still the best guy to spend up on, and I wouldn't hesitate to include the other regular lefties in stacks if you go here.
Jumping over to another pair of socks, the Chicago White Sox have been completely meh against right-handers, but on this slate, they're in the running against Peyton Battenfield. Battenfield enters with a mediocre 4.60 SIERA, 20.2% strikeout rate, and 8.9% walk rate over 30 1/3 innings this season, and he put up uninspiring Triple-A numbers in 2022, including a 5.27 xFIP and 17.0% strikeout rate.
Luis Robert ($3,600) is the guy to make room for, and then it's all value, with guys like Yoan Moncada ($3,000), Andrew Vaughn ($3,000), Gavin Sheets ($2,500), and Jake Burger ($3,000) being the best power options. Burger already has 9 home runs in just 85 plate appearances due to the barrage of barrels he's hit this year.
The Houston Astros have the third-highest implied team total (4.69), though opposing lefty Drew Smyly has actually been pretty solid this season. That being said, he has a 21.6% strikeout rate and 46.4% fly-ball rate, and his 6.9% homer-to-fly-ball rate is all out of whack, so he definitely has more long balls coming his way. In his career, he has a 12.9% homer-to-fly-ball rate and has given up 1.44 home runs per 9 innings.
Lefties Yordan Alvarez ($4,300) and Kyle Tucker ($3,100) are Houston's best power hitters and can hold their own against left-handers, so they still top the list, and then Alex Bregman ($2,800) and Jeremy Pena ($3,000) give us some solid value righties.
The Seattle Mariners are the one other team with an implied team total above 4.50, though even if Bello struggles, I'm not sure how much upside we can expect attacking a guy allowing a 23.6% fly-ball rate. Sure, he's allowed one home run in each of his five starts, but a 29.4% homer-to-fly-ball rate is absurd, and the high rate of hard contact he's coughed up probably says more about the hard matchups he's had so far than anything else. Low temperatures at Fenway won't help Seattle (or Boston) at the plate tonight, either.
Other alternatives include the Cleveland Guardians (vs. Mike Clevinger) and Tampa Bay Rays (vs. Kodai Senga) who both face pitchers with questionable control.
