The Sunday afternoon Main Slates get underway at 1:05 ET on both DraftKings and FanDuel, with 10 games all starting within an hour of lock. The Sunday spring slate should be quite a ride, with several strong spots for power and a solid mix of pitching available.

Main Slate Power Index – 4/9/23 – 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 power-packed Yankees lineup wraps up a series in Baltimore with a game against Tyler Wells, a limited right-handed starter. Wells threw 103.2 innings over 23 starts last season, pitching to a 4.60 xFIP and a 4.25 ERA with a 3.78% home run rate allowed. The righty yielded a 38.8% hard-hit percentage with a 7.9% barrel rate on a 19.1-degree average launch angle, which should provide solid home run shape for Yankees hitters. The starter had a 4.02% home run rate on a 41.1% hard-hit rate in 2021, so there is a consistency to his ability to allow power. Wells did post a strong start in his first outing of the season, pitching five clean innings of no-hit ball while striking out two Rangers hitters, the Yankees should find some hits at a bare minimum. The team’s loaded lineup gets started with D.J. LeMahieu who is capable of going deep but is more of an on-base correlation piece with the massive home run hitters that follow him. Aaron Judge hit more home runs than anyone in American League history in 2022, breaking Roger Maris’ record with 62 home runs. Judge leads the Yankees projected lineup with a 16.76 in our home run model. He is followed in the lineup by left-handed first baseman Anthony Rizzo, a masher who has hit 30 or more home runs five times in the last eight seasons. Rizzo is pulling in an 11.65 in the home run model, ranking him between Judge and righty designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton. For just $3,300 on FanDuel, Stanton is a ludicrously cheap outfield option given his power upside against this pitcher. He is in play at $5,100 on the DraftKings slate as well, he will likely be lower-owned where he is higher-priced. Stanton hit 31 home runs in 452 plate appearances last year, driving the ball with a 19.2% barrel rate and a 52.1% hard-hit rate. The outfielder has tattooed baseballs early this season, driving mammoth home runs deep into the stands, he has a strong chance to continue that trend tomorrow. Gleyber Torres is no stranger to hitting home runs in Camden Yards and he has regained his power after hitting 24 home runs last year, following a brief power outage during the pandemic season. Torres should be hitting in front of a group that includes Jose Trevino, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Anthony Volpe, who would have had the first home run of his career on Saturday had his triple been one foot to the left in order to miss the high wall in right field, the shortstop had to settle for a triple instead. The missing hitter in that group should either be Aaron Hicks, who saw a start on Saturday, or Franchy Cordero, who has added pop from the left side of the plate as a part-time outfielder. Either bat would be in play, but Cordero is currently the more reliable option for home run upside, he is pulling a 6.25 in our model at the bottom of the batting order.

With plenty of power and a team filled with exciting players, the Mariners are a blast to watch. The team is third in potential home run upside for this slate, they are facing soft-tossing righty Zach Plesac, who struck out just 17.6% of opposing hitters in 131.2 innings last season. The righty yielded a 3.35% home run rate with a 40.9% hard-hit percentage on a 9.6% barrel rate. Plesac pitched to a 4.40 xFIP and a 4.31 ERA last season and he had a 4.77 xFIP with a 4.67 ERA the season before. That year, Plesac allowed a 3.85% home run rate on an unsightly 43.1% hard-hit percentage, he is a targetable pitcher with a lineup like Seattle’s. In his first start of the season, Plesac lasted just one inning, yielding six runs on seven hits, including a home run, to the 11 batters that he faced. Three of the bats in the Mariners’ projected lineup are pulling better than a 10 in our home run model. At 11.26 in the home run model, Julio Rodriguez leads off and has excellent speed in addition to his prodigious power. The right-handed outfielder hit 28 home runs and stole 25 bases as a rookie last year, he is a strong play on this slate home run or not. The other two hitters with a strong rating in the model are Eugenio Suarez at 10.17 and Teoscar Hernandez at 10.22. Suarez hit 31 home runs each of the last two seasons, he is one of the better pure power hitters in all of baseball, regardless of any flaws in his swing-and-miss – something the Mariners also do aggressively across the board – while Hernandez hit 25 home runs of his own in 2022. The outfielder hit 32 the season before and he posted a .226 ISO over those two years. With Ty France hitting between Rodriguez and Suarez, and Cal Raleigh dropping between Suarez and Hernandez, the Mariners offer fantastic options for stacking run creators and power bats together. Raleigh costs just $3,500 at catcher on the DraftKings slate, the slugger crushed 27 long balls in 415 plate appearances last year. France is more of a correlation play but he managed 20 home runs of his own last season and he can be deployed in stacks as much as any of his teammates. Second baseman Kolten Wong had a 15 home run and 17 steal season last year, he has a solid left-handed bat, while veteran A.J. Pollock provides another sturdy stick in the late part of the batting order. Jarred Kelenic had a monster Spring that sparked talk of a post-hype breakout, but he has scuffled to just a .211/.250/.316 triple-slash with no home runs and a 58 WRC+ over his first 20 plate appearances after the games began to count. Kelenic still has upside and he might be under-owned at a cheap price, which makes him all the more interesting for tournaments. Even in his disastrous two partial seasons, Kelenic managed 21 home runs over 558 combined plate appearances from 2021 and 2022, and he put up a 13.6% barrel rate in his 181 plate appearances last year. There is still hope for the young outfielder, he should be included in Seattle power stacks.