A split-up MLB DFS Friday features slightly different Main Slates in the evening. FanDuel is starting their six-game slate early, including the 6:40 ET contest between the Athletics and Rays. The DraftKings slate picks up at 7:10 ET, and includes the five games from that point in the evening, but the night’s leading source of home run upside comes in the late contest between the Diamondbacks and Dodgers, with the elite Los Angeles lineup facing Madison Bumgarner. The Padres vs Braves game could see some weather, but it is also looking like a good source of power, while Coors Field is profiling more for run scoring than for home run upside tonight.
Main Slate Power Index – 4/7/23 – DraftKings & FanDuel Main Slates
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 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 easy pickings of the evening slate look to be Dodgers bats against veteran lefty Madison Bumgarner. The Dodgers are profiling for strong home run upside against a contact-oriented soft-tossing southpaw who allowed a 3.58% home run rate last year and a 3.92% mark the season before. Bumgarner yields far too much premium contact, last season opponents barreled the ball at a 9.8% rate with a 42.8% hard-hit percentage on an average launch angle of 16.8 degrees, which is a nice average shape for allowing home runs. Bumgarner’s strikeout rate also fell from an already poor 20.2% to just 16% and his swinging strikes dipped from a weak 9.6% to a bad 7.7%. The Dodgers lineup should feast, the top four hitters in the projected lineup are all over the 10-mark in our home run model. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman cost $5,900 and $5,600 on DraftKings, they are $3,900 and $3,700 players on FanDuel. The star duo at the top of the lineup can be played across the industry, but they are likely to be popular in this matchup, even at these prices. There is cheap pitching available on this slate, which should allow for aggressive lineup construction. The Dodgers have J.D. Martinez and lefty slugger Max Muncy next in the projected lineup, Muncy is a career .243/.358/.486 hitter with a .243 ISO and a 129 WRC+ against fellow lefties with 40 of his 145 career home runs (27.5%) have come against same-handed pitching, and Bumgarner represents a very minor challenge, do not skip Muncy simply for lefty-lefty reasons. Chris Taylor has moderate power if he is in the lineup, he hit 10 home runs in 454 opportunities last year but 20 in 582 chances the season before. Trayce Thompson already had a big day this season, he has premium power upside if he is hitting late in the lineup. At just $2,800 on DraftKings and $2,900 on FanDuel, Thompson has a strong projection in our fantasy points model and he is pulling a 10.41 in the home run model. In just 255 plate appearances last season, Thompson hit 13 home runs with a .251 ISO and created runs 42% better than average. He had a massive 16.4% barrel rate and a good-not-great 46.9% hard-hit percentage. Given the opportunity, the slugger could be primed for another big fantasy score. Dodgers bats are stackable from top to bottom, pending the final form of the lineup.
The game at Coors Field profiles interestingly in the home run model today. The Nationals are drawing a reasonable amount of power against right-handed starter Jose Urena, particularly given their typically low marks and bad lineup, but the Rockies drop to the bottom of the board with just a 4.00 average for the team. This is somewhat pulled down by a light-hitting bottom third, but slugger CJ Cron lands at just a 6.37. Coors Field is always in play for excellent run creation upside, this game has an 11.5-run total on the board in Vegas, by far the highest of the day, but it is not always on the back of home runs. The park sports a gigantic outfield and is excellent for extra-base hits, which drive run scoring. This is to say that, even though the Rockies only profile as average options for home run upside in a matchup against young starter MacKenzie Gore, they should still be played for runs and MLB DFS point-scoring. Gore allowed just a 2.27% home run rate in his 13 starts and 70 innings last year, but he yielded a 9.7% barrel rate and a 45.4% hard-hit rate on a 13.7-degree average launch angle, meaning there could be additional power that simply did not come through in a small sample. Rockies right-handed bats including Cron, Kris Bryant, Elehuris Montero, and Yonathan Daza are in play for stacks, though Daza is a correlation play, not a home run hitter. On the Nationals side of things, Joey Meneses tops the board at 11.99, the only mark over the “magic number” in our model today. Meneses slashed .324/.367/.563 with 13 home runs in 240 plate appearances over which he posted a .239 ISO last season. He is joined by options including lefty Dominic Smith, who hit no home runs in 152 tries last season but managed 11 in 493 the year before; and Jeimer Candelario, who hits from both sides of the plate and has managed 29 home runs in 1,093 plate appearances over the past two seasons combined. Lane Thomas hit 17 home runs with a .163 ISO last season, his 6.5% barrel rate and 34% hard-hit percentage suggest that the ISO is more accurate than the home run total when it comes to Thomas’ true power. The Nationals are a moderate stack for home runs, but the Coors Field and pitching matchup of it put them very much in play for MLB DFS scoring and they should be in play across the industry.
