A very left-handed Tuesday features another massive 11-game MLB DFS slate on both DraftKings and FanDuel, starting at the traditional 7:05 ET lock time. The slate ha a mixed bag of pitching, with many teams running left-handed starters and a mixture of the back and front ends of rotations. This should create a dynamic slate with some true haves and have not, as can be seen in today’s Power Index below.
Main Slate Power Index – 4/4/23 – DraftKings & FanDuel
The power index represents a team’s opportunity for home run upside in the matchup against the scheduled starting pitcher. This is not a direct guideline for stacking, but it can be utilized to determine the most likely sources of power-based contact, hitters who are not homering are frequently hitting valuable doubles and driving in runs, and providing valuable MLB DFS scoring. The “Full” column is the average of our home run opportunity score for each player in the lineup from 1-9, while the “Top 6” column averages only hitters 1-6, where teams typically place their biggest bats.
The Braves top the board for home run upside once again. The homer-happy squad in Atlanta is facing lefty Steven Matz, and their right-handed power should be very much in play. Ronald Acuna Jr. and Austin Riley are the obvious names to target, but the Braves feature additional excellent bats from the right side, including catchers Sean Murphy and Travis d’Arnaud, either backstop would be playable, if both are in the lineup both may be playable. Marcell Ozuna still has pop in his bat despite anything else going on with him, and switch-hitting Ozzie Albies gets most of his power as a right-handed hitter against a lefty, making this an ideal situation for the second baseman. Perhaps the best sleeper on the board in Atlanta, however, is left-handed first baseman Matt Olson, who has titanic power against any starter, and who has thrived against same-handed pitching. For his career, Olson sports a .255/.351/.523 triple-slash with a .268 ISO and a 136 WRC+ against righties, but he maintains a very high level with a .240/.325/466 slash and a .225 ISO with a 117 WRC+ against fellow southpaws. Olson has hit 51 of his 178 career home runs (29%) against lefties.
The Mariners could be in play as a sneaky power stack this evening in a matchup against lefty Jose Suarez, who may draw a bit of popularity from the field given his typical mid-range quality reputation. Suarez threw 109 innings in 2022 and yielded a 3.03% home run rate with an 8.4% barrel rate and 38.2% hard hits. The southpaw was good the year before, limiting power to just a 2.66% home run rate, but the Mariners are shining through for upside in the home run model in this matchup, partly on the back of a significantly right-handed lineup. The Mariners start things off with superstar Julio Rodriguez who launched 28 rookie home runs last season. Ty France is the only hitter in the top half of the lineup who did not have a monster barrel rate last season, but he still managed to drive 20 balls out of the park, keeping him in play for power, France is also an excellent correlation piece with his hit tool and on-base acumen. In addition to Rodriguez’s 13.1% barrel rate last year, Teoscar Hernandez (15%), Eugenio Suarez (14.8%), and Cal Raleigh (15.4) all had extreme barrel marks last season. That trio all hit from the right side (Raleigh is a switch-hitter) and drives the ball, they make for a fine stack and can also be deployed as one-offs. At the bottom of the projected lineup, Tom Murphy is somewhat interesting, Murphy has long had tremendous power, but he struggles to make contact against advanced pitching. Last season he made just 42 plate appearances, hitting one home run, but he made 325 appearances with 11 long balls the year before. Murphy would be a low-cost speculative play at the end of only a few stacks at best.
