At long last, we’ve made it. It’s not quite Opening Day, as there’s just one game on the schedule. I guess that means it’s Opening Day for the Giants and Yankees, while every other team will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday.
Showdown slates are volatile, especially baseball ones. Baseball is, inherently, the most unpredictable of the major sports. That volatility is worth leaning into if you’re playing DFS. Ownership is particularly important when it comes to MLB, because going against what most of the field is doing is generally the smartest way to try and reach the top of the GPP leaderboard.
Will that contrarian approach always work? Of course not. There’s no end-all, be-all way to win tournaments. The key is to maximize the amount you win when you do get it right.
In this article, I’ll break down tonight’s Yankees-Giants showdown slate. You can apply these concepts to both DraftKings and FanDuel contests, but it’s worth noting that the salaries and projected ownership I will be using will be for DK.
Let’s go!
Two-Pitcher Chalk?
- Logan Webb (30% CPT pOWN%, 43% UTIL pOWN%)
- Max Fried (21% CPT pOWN%, 48% UTIL pOWN%)
Median projections for pitchers are much more stable than those for hitters. This is where the volatility comes in, though. There’s also the added uncertainty of pitch counts on Opening Day. The Yankees and Giants aren’t going to let their aces go out there and throw 9 innings from the jump unless they’re remarkably efficient. Logan Webb and Max Fried are both workhorses, though, and I do think there’s a chance both could get to 90+ pitches tonight if things go smoothly enough.
Both pitchers obviously get the benefit of pitching tonight at Oracle Park, one of the game’s premier pitching environments. Both pitchers have similar profiles. Webb’s strikeout rate was about 3% higher than Fried’s, and both posted groundball rates on the right side of 50%. The on-paper matchup favors Fried overall, as New York’s projected lineup (14.5% barrels, .236 ISO vs. RHP) just has a lot more thunder than that of the Giants (8.4% barrels, .149 ISO vs. LHP). Both lineups struck out at similar clips last season, as well.
Webb is projecting for more captain ownership than Fried at their similar salaries on DK, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Fried is more popular once the cards flip over after lock. Regardless, it’s safe to assume both pitchers will be around at least 20% CPT ownership, with ownership in the 40%-50% range in the UTIL spot. If salaries allowed, the chalkiest approach would be to play both pitchers along with Aaron Judge.
For better or worse, you can’t play all 3 of them together unless you play Judge in CPT or all 3 of them in UTIL. Will people try to jam ’em in? Absolutely. Should you? Probably not.
It’s counterintuitive, but I don’t mind the approach of playing a 5-1 stack with as many as 4 hitters against your captained pitcher. So, for example, play Webb at CPT, Fried in UTIL, plus 4 NYY bats. Not only is this going to make you different, but you do retain some upside. Maybe Webb skates through 6-7 easy innings before his bullpen implodes behind him, which helps your bats to get there in the later innings.
I think being underweight on Judge, in general, is just the easiest way to zig from the field. This is one of the worst offensive environments in baseball, so banking on the pitchers to perform and Judge to come up short makes sense. It’s obviously a scary fade, but Judge – and the rest of the game’s best hitters – will finish with zero fantasy points on numerous occasions over the course of a long season. Judge is Judge, but Webb has been lights-out against right-handed hitters over the past few seasons.
The NYY Hitter Pool
The Yankees non-Judge hitters are your building blocks if you’re going double-SP. Trent Grisham, Ryan McMahon, Jose Caballero, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm, and Cody Bellinger are all in play, and the field is going to spread across them fairly evenly in the 20-25% range. That means any combination of three or four of them is going to be relatively owned.
I really like the Caballero-Wells-McMahon-Grisham quartet. This group is cheap enough to deploy along with both pitchers, including one in CPT.
The way to differentiate here is Chisholm. He’s sitting around 12-13% projected ownership, which is notably lower than every other relevant NYY bat. He’s the kind of player who hits a home run and cashes you in a slate where everyone else is on the same four guys. Jazz is kinda buried in the order – projected to hit 6th – but profiles decently as a power-hitting lefty with a low groundball rate.
I’m probably just going to be under the field on Judge and praying he doesn’t hit 8 home runs.
The SF Side
The opportunity is in building around Fried CPT and then going back to the SF side for 2-3 hitters. Some of the Giants’ better hitters – Rafael Devers, Jung Hoo Lee, Luis Arraez – are lefties, and the field generally shies away from playing bats in lefty-lefty matchups. These 3 are also very high-groundball hitters, but you need to find an edge somewhere. Devers still hits the ball hard (12.2% barrels) vs. LHP, for what it’s worth.
I’m just prioritizing the cheaper stuff, so Devers isn’t really getting into many of my lineups.
Patrick Bailey ($3,200) is a poor hitter buried in the No. 9 hole, but he provides meaningful savings. In a game that isn’t expected to be high-scoring, I’m not too worried by rolling the dice on him. Bailey is the cheapest player on the slate by a mile.
Quick Hits
- Don’t sleep on SF bats: Encarnacion, Ramos, Bader, Arraez, and Jung Hoo Lee are all projecting in the 19-27% ownership range, lower than most of the NYY hitters. The field is going to be Giants-light while rostering Webb, which sets up a nice leverage angle if you go back to the SF side for 2-3 hitters. I also think there’s a strong chance Fried – not Webb – will be the chalkiest CPT, which makes the SF bats potentially even more valuable.
- Stanton, Bellinger, and Chisholm are your best NYY differentiators: Picking from the Grisham/Wells/McMahon/Caballero group is my favorite way to pay up for both SPs. People will want to play Judge at the expense of Jazz, Belli, or Stanton.
- Bailey is a near-lock: At $3,200 he’s the piece that makes the rest of your salary work. Roster him in most builds and move on, the decisions that matter are the ones around him.
- 2-SP is probably The Way: I was initially skeptical of pairing pitchers, but I think jamming Webb + Fried together makes the most sense. Save salary on bats and hope guys like Caballero, Bader, and Bailey can do enough to get you there.
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