Welcome to Tuesday and a full slate of baseball. Below are some hitters to target and some juicy stacks to take advantage of in your DFS lineups. Also later Tuesday look for my “Look Ahead” for the rest of the week. Enjoy and good luck!
Your Fantasy Baseball Rundown for Tuesday 6/20
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Matchups to Target
Jorge Soler
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Soler is quietly having an All-Star caliber season, perhaps under-the-radar. He batted just .207 in April, but since then he’s turned it on, batting .271 in May and .313 thus far in June. He raised his season average to a respectable .260. Add in a .363 OBP and .560 SLG, you have a .923 OPS that puts him at 7th highest in the league. With 21 home runs on the season now, he ranks third in that category and has 45 RBI. Did you know he destroys left-handed pitching? You didn’t? Well then prepare to be enlightened.
Versus left-handed pitching he’s slashing .333/.860/1.30, and he’s got 9 home runs in 57 at-bats against the southpaws (approximately 6 at-bats per home run). For comparison, he’s slashing .238/.472/.811 against righties (northpaws?), with 12 home runs in 193 at-bats (around 16 at-bats per home run). And guess what? That’s right, he’s facing a lefty Tuesday night: Toronto’s Yusei Kikuchi.
Kikuchi has been more generous on the road, with a 4.87 ERA (3.56 at home), and hasn’t been nearly as stingy to righties (.274 BA) as he has been to lefties (.209 BA). Miami has won 5 games in a row now, putting them 11 games above .500, so the team appears to be gelling, with Soler’s supporting cast putting up good numbers too. Luis Arraez is batting .400, while Bryan de la Cruz and Jesus Sanchez are hitting in the .270-.280 range. Ok, the point has been made, on to the next one.
Josh Naylor
Another guy having a bit of an under-the-radar All-Star caliber season is Josh Naylor of the Guardians. He’s batting .288 with 8 HR and 53 RBI, the RBI total being good for 6th highest in the MLB. This spot was nearly given to Jose Ramirez, who tends to get most of the Cleveland fanfare and who is also having a pretty good season as well, but looking more closely the edge goes to Naylor.
Rotowire projects Ramirez as the third-highest scoring DFS hitter on DraftKings Tuesday, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility (and maybe you could stack him with Naylor, hint-hint), but Ramirez’s splits are starkly contrasted, hitting .326 against righties versus just .193 against lefties. Naylor’s are basically the same (.314 vs .211), but he’s the hotter hitter, batting .387 in June, with 5 doubles, 13 RBI, and 9 runs scored in 15 games.
You could argue Ramirez has been a better category contributor, hitting .308 in June with 3 doubles, a triple, 5 HR, 14 RBI, and 13 runs scored. So why does Naylor have the edge here?
BaseballSavant.com shows the opposing pitcher, Luis Medina, throws a 4-seam fastball over 50% of the time, and Naylor has a much higher Run Value than Ramirez. It has Naylor with a higher xBA, xSLG, xwOBA, and Hard Hit %. Naylor is also a value option compared to others at his position (i.e. Freeman, Goldschmidt, etc.). And also, with the recent call up of his brother Bo, don’t confuse them and put Bo in your lineups (unless you want to, of course!).
Christian Yelich
The D-Backs @ Brewers game has one of the higher over/under run totals on the board, but most of the offense is probably going to come from the Arizona side of the offenses (think Corbin Carroll, Christian Walker, Ketel Marte, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and recent call-up Alek Thomas to name a few). However, D-backs pitcher Ryne Nelson (5.30 ERA) is not likely to pitch a shut out, and Christian Yelich will be part of the reason why.
Yelich is having a nice June, hitting .333 with 7 doubles, a triple, 2 HR, 11 walks, 7 RBI, 12 runs scored, and 4 stolen bases. He’s hitting righties better than lefties (.288 vs .229), and Ryne Nelson is allowing lefties to slash .336/.592/1.02 through 14 starts. Plug him in.
DFS Stacks to Consider
Naylor/Ramirez/Rosario vs Medina and A’s bullpen
We already outlined Naylor and Ramirez above, but the other Guardian having a nice June is Amed Rosario. He’s batting .321 in June, with 3 doubles, 5 RBI, and 7 runs scored. The over/under on this game is on the higher side at 9 runs, but with Medina on the mound and the A’s having one of the worst bullpens in baseball (5.58 ERA – worst, 300 hits – worst, 191 earned runs – worst, 1.55 WHIP – worst, 40 HR allowed – tied for worst, 177 walks – worst), look for the Guardians hitters to be the ones doing the bulk of the scoring. Medina hasn’t been good either way, but by comparison he’s even worse on the road (9.35 ERA) than at home (6.14 ERA). Rosario likely won’t cost you much for DFS either.
Cruz/McLain/Votto vs Rockies
This game had a high over/under at 9.5 but it has moved higher, up to 10 runs as of this writing. LHP Kyle Freeland was the original starter but he was scratched because his confidence was brutally shaken the last time out by the Braves hitters and the Rockies didn’t want that to happen again in hitter-friendly Great American Ball Park — er, um, I mean — he was scratched due to an illness.
Nevertheless, slotting RHP Noah Davis changed the stack here somewhat, but Davis and the ineptitude of the Rockies bullpen (think the National League version of the A’s bullpen I described above) are likely what pushed this number higher, which bodes well for the Cincinnati hitters.
Matt McLain is having a nice year and hits both lefties and righties well. The crafty verteran Joey Votto showed last night that he can still hit, at least in Cincinnati, so look for him to get on base versus the Rockies, whether it is via hit or walk.
Elly de la Cruz has struggled mightily against left-handed pitching in a small sample size so far, so he was not in this stack originally, but now that a righty is in there you should feel confident about firing him up. He’s got a higher batting average hitting from the left side of the plate (.333 vs .133), and with this kind of speed he can turn ANYTHING hit on the ground into a base it. Then he’ll steal a base on you. Then one of these other guys will knock him in.
You could swap one of these guys for Spencer Steer if you’re looking for a little more pop/HR potential, or Jonathan India, who has “reverse splits,” meaning as a right-handed hitter he hits right-handed pitchers better (.288 vs .222).
Other DFS Stacks to Consider:
Yandy Diaz and Randy Arozarena have good numbers vs Kyle Bradish of the O’s, who has been good in Camden but not nearly as effective on the road. You could make the case for some combination of the D-backs hitters mentioned in the Yelich section above against Colin Rea (4.71 ERA) of the Brewers, but none have a history against him. The Braves have seen Ranger Suarez a bunch now, although not yet this season, and some have decent numbers against him (Ronald Acuna Jr.and Austin Riley), and some hit lefties well (Ozzie Albies and Orlando Arcia).
Start vs Sit
Start Lane Thomas
Thomas is hitting .311 in June, .290 on the year, and is in the midst of 7-game hit streak (4 multi-hit games). He is 0-for-3 in his career against Jordan Montgomery, but hasn’t struck out against him and is hitting lefties at a .356 clip this season (.258 vs righties).
Sit Christopher Morel
Morel has been hitting well of late, and really all season for that matter, but he faces Johan Oviedo Tuesday who he has seen 6 times before. In those 6 at-bats he’s 1-for-6 with 4 strikeouts. The Pittsburgh ‘pen hasn’t been great, but they haven’t been bad either.
Betting Angle
FanDuel Dinger Tuesday Pick: Rowdy Tellez (+340) – we outlined above that Arizona righty Ryne Nelson struggles against lefties, and Rowdy is a lefty power hitter. He hasn’t hit a HR since 5/22, so he is long overdue for a blast.
TB Rays F5 Run Line -0.5 (-132): Bradish worse on the road, top of the Rays order has had success vs Bradish , Glasnow has been good since his return and the Rays are rolling.
SEA@NYY and NYM@HOU No Run Second Inning parlay (+148): Both games have low o/u run totals (7 or 7.5) with some studs on the mound.
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