Rangers (Dane Dunning, RHP) @ Yankees (Clarke Schmidt, RHP)
Mariners (Logan Gilbert, RHP) @ Orioles (Kyle Gibson, RHP)
Mets (Kodai Senga, RHP) @ Phillies (Taijuan Walker, RHP)
Brewers (Wade Miler, LHP) @ Guardians (Shane Bieber, RHP)
Athletics (James Kaprielian, RHP) @ Blue Jays (Chris Bassitt, RHP)
Red Sox (Brayan Bello, RHP) @ White Sox (Lucas Giolito, RHP)
Angels (Patrick Sandoval, LHP) @ Rockies (Kyle Freeland, LHP)
Nationals (Patrick Corbin, LHP) @ Padres (Joe Musgrove, RHP)
Astros (JP France, RHP) @ Dodgers (Emmett Sheehan*, RHP)
D-backs (Zach Davies, RHP) @ Giants (Logan Webb, RHP)

Weather Outlook

Good morning and happy Friday! We’ve made it. Time flies when you’re grinding dailies. I was having a not great week results wise until yesterday, where I almost got home with 1st plus more, but still ended up with two top-5 teams to help make up for the losses from earlier in the week on the third and final slate of the day. That’s just how things go sometimes. On the Underdog MLB show yesterday, Jon and I talked about the baseball META, and how we personally choose to draft, and I mentioned monitoring the lobbies for trends and finding paths to unique stacks and combinations. Last night the slate in question was 10k prize pool, 3-games, and 4-person lobbies. This slate featured two games with tight money line odds, and then Rays and Royals with -330 odds on the Rays, who felt like a giga smash. Drafts reflected this too – by the time the 5th round came around in each draft, the Rays 1 through 7 hitters were almost always gone. It wasn’t just one team hogging them usually, either. It would be a group effort by the lobby to gobble up as many Rays as possible, myself included for about half of them. This is what led me to begin taking 4 and 5-man stacks of other teams. Not a groundbreaking conclusion to come to, but I wanted to provide a look into my #mindpalace while I was drafting these teams. Fun night, let’s try and get it again.

Pitching Preferences
Shane Bieber
Joe Musgrove
Brayan Bello
Logan Webb
Chris Bassitt
Lucas Giolito
Dane Dunning
Kyle Gibson
JP France
Logan Gilbert
James Kaprielian
Kodai Senga
Taijuan Walker

All right, here we go. Ten games today, and no seemingly no smash spots for our starters. You know when I have Shane Bieber as my top preference that things are dire. He has one of the better matchups today against the Brewers, and the facts are the facts. (Brace yourself – I’m putting actual statistics into the take sheet) Milwaukee is 4th in the league in K% vs RHP at 24.8%, and 25th in the league in wRC+ against RHP. The Brewers are stinky, we like Bieber today. All of that being said… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting to at least one Brewers stack today in a lineup. I’m not blowing minds by pointing out these stats, everybody is aware the Brewers are not an intimidating team, and fading is going to be a popular position. I’m just saying. Leverage. Anyways, more pitchers I’m into today.

Joe Musgrove is second in my preferences, but I can see him being my number one drafted pitcher today by a long shot. He’s being drafted as the SP3, so he’s getting respect from the field as of this morning. But just doing a little Red Circle/Blue Circle + Fangraphs analysis, it’s pretty easy to look at Musgrove and see some positive regression come his way soon. His spin rates are still elite. He’s still not allowing much hard contact or many barrels. And his opponent plate discipline numbers are essentially the same as years past, when he was getting elite results.

Miss you, Joe.

Chris Bassitt is someone I’m pretty excited to fade today. I’m not sure if my handful of readers are able to tell, but I love the Oakland Athletics. They’re bad, yeah. But their badness is overblown by the fantasy community, IMO. They’re not a team that’s a guaranteed slam dunk to produce fantasy points for opposing pitchers and/or hitters. They are a bottom five offense against RHP (hell, all pitching for that matter, but we’re talking about Bassitt) so he isn’t an awful pick today by any means. But he’s had some bad, bad outings lately on the mound. I’m confident I’ll have as many, if not more, A’s combinations than I will Chris Bassitt teams today. He Does Not Move Me.

Favorite Teams
Angels (Coors Field)
Padres
Rangers
Giants
Orioles

I want to keep this list brief today, because I find these five teams to be in very good spots today, and I could see all of my lineups containing at minimum one batter from at least one of these teams.

Angels don’t require much elaboration from me. It’s Kyle Freeland at Coors. The entire Angels lineup will be drafted at some capacity, but I would recommend taking more of the lesser drafted guys for leverage in a great spot.

Padres face Patrick Corbin. Tatis would be the ultimate 1.01 today if not for the Angels. He still is my 1.01, but if I run insanely pure I’ll mix it up with some Angels instead at that pick. This is another “take some lesser owned players” spot.

Rangers are facing some weather issues in The Bronx today. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from scary weather spots, it’s to lean in. I’ll have plenty of Rangers as it’s a day that ends in “y” and they’re in a great park against a mediocre starter.

Giants get Zach Davies at home, so the park factor isn’t great for them as the wind doesn’t even appear to be blowing too strongly today. But, their matchup is pristine. I’m going to pray LaMonte Wade Jr. comes back today, because he is the 1.01 of good luck charms for me. Him batting leadoff today would make him someone I want to be greatly over the field on.

And lastly, we have the Orioles against Logan Gilbert, who I really do like. However, left handed power plays well at Baltimore, and Gilbert has been very inconsistent lately. His last four starts:

Orioles ADP as of writing this:

Let’s take advantage of this and hope for a Gilbert clunker today.

Good luck everybody in your drafts today! Enjoy your weekend. I hope to have a post for tomorrow as well, but I do have some plans (shocking) that could interfere, so that is TBD. I will certainly let you know ahead of time.

Nez