MLB Sim Sports Picks for 5/30/20 on FanDuel
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FanDuel's MLB Sims Sports, a new free-to-play format that simulates the baseball games that were originally scheduled for play each day. Starting pitchers and batting orders are announced in advance, and then games will play out through numberFire's custom simulator.
Starting pitchers will have a simulated pitch count that we won't know beforehand but should be roughly based on their performance last season. Hitters will play the whole game, so there's no fear of pinch hitters and the like.
Best of all, the simulation is meant to replicate real life, so all the usual things you typically analyze in MLB DFS -- things like player skills, matchups, park factors, and platoon splits -- are in play here, so you can approach this in much the same way you would on a real baseball slate.
Here's the breakdown for today's main slate, which starts at 8:02 p.m. EST.
Pitchers
Walker Buehler ($11,400) and Stephen Strasburg ($11,000) give us a sweet elite tier tonight. Buehler is on the road at the New York Mets while Stras goes on the road to face the Philadelphia Phillies.
You can't really go wrong with either. Stras has the slightly better matchup -- Philly was 18th in wOBA last year with a 23.5% strikeout rate, compared to 11th and 22.0% for the Mets -- though he's in the park that's better for bats. Ultimately, I give Strasburg a very slight edge, but both offer good floors and nice ceilings.
Jon Gray ($9,000) is really enticing in a friendly road clash with the San Francisco Giants. It's obviously a huge park-factor boost for Gray to be in San Fran, and the Giants had the third-worst wOBA (.295) a year ago. I wouldn't put Gray -- who had a 23.5% strikeout rate and 11.7% swinging-strike rate last season -- on par with Buehler or Stras, but he's close given the matchup.
We should also feel good about Luke Weaver ($7,800), who draws a sweet matchup with the Detroit Tigers. Detroit made some moves to help their offense for 2020, but this is a team that had the second-worst wOBA (.290) and highest strikeout rate (26.4%) a season ago. Prior to getting hurt, Weaver was dealing in 2019, finishing with a 26.5% strikeout rate, 5.4% walk rate and 3.84 SIERA in 64 1/3 frames. While I usually pay up on the mound, Weaver makes some sense in this spot.
Stacks
Jordan Zimmermann struggles to get strikeouts (16.3% strikeout rate in 2019) and gives up a lot of juicy contact (42.7% hard-hit rate a year ago). That's exactly what we want to stack against, and it makes the Arizona Diamondbacks a great offense to target -- maybe the best one of the night considering how cheap they are.
Starling Marte ($3,100), Ketel Marte ($3,300) and Eduardo Escobar ($3,300) -- who are hitting 1-2-3 -- are the only D-Backs priced above $3,000. David Peralta ($2,800) is a sweet play at his price, and he's hitting clean-up. And Christian Walker ($2,700) offers power upside at a modest price.
The Houston Astros are at home against Ryan Weber, who has a career 14.8% strikeout rate over 114 1/3 innings. This is a smash spot for Houston, but as is usually the case, they're expensive.
Yordan Alvarez ($3,200) and Michael Brantley ($3,200) are priced favorably and are hitting fifth and third, respectively. Alvarez is way too cheap given his rookie-year numbers against righties -- .437 wOBA, 52.2% hard-hit rate and 41.9% fly-ball rate. Yulieski Gurriel ($2,700), slotted seventh, is another cost-effective way to get access to Houston. Of course, studs Alex Bregman ($4,000), George Springer ($3,900), Jose Altuve ($3,600) and Carlos Correa ($3,400) are worth using if you have the coin.
The author of this article has no involvement with the MLB Sim Sports simulations powered by numberFire and has no knowledge of the results of tonight’s contest.
