Mariners (Luis Castillo, RHP) @ Blue Jays (Jose Berrios, RHP)
Mets (Julio Teheran, RHP) @ Braves (Charlie Morton, RHP)
Dodgers (James Paxton, LHP) @ Twins (Bailey Ober, RHP)
Phillies (Spencer Turnbull, RHP) @ Cardinals (Miles Mikolas, RHP)
Astros (Framber Valdez, LHP) @ Rangers (Andrew Heaney, LHP)
D-backs (Zac Gallen, RHP) @ Rockies (Kyle Freeland, LHP)
Rays (Zach Eflin, RHP) @ Angels (Tyler Anderson, LHP)
Cubs (Javier Assad, RHP) @ Padres (Yu Darvish, RHP)
Nationals (Trevor Williams, RHP) @ Giants (Blake Snell, LHP)
Good morning! Happy Monday folks. Who is ready for the eclipse today? I’m fortunate to be in the “line of totality”, but unfortunately will likely be fighting cloud coverage during that time. We simply hope for the best and enjoy the phenomenon regardless.
It’s been rough sledding since opening day for me, with no sizable wins under my belt and no real sweats to report. Nonetheless, we press on and continue to adapt where needed. We have a fairly loaded slate today with nine games to draft from and plenty of contests up in the Underdog lobbies.
The season itself has gotten off to a bumpy start for the league. Losing so much star power at pitcher this early into the year is going to prompt some serious mirror looking for teams, players, and Rob Manfred (though we know he sees no reflection staring back at him when he looks at a mirror). Many questions need asked – Are the number of injuries increasing year over year? Is a certain style of pitcher getting hurt more than others? Is this preventable? I don’t have the answers, but I have the thought that in this current MLB landscape, these injuries and the frequency of them are unavoidable. I’d like to quote the artist 50 Cent – “Get Rich, or Die Trying”. Pitchers are very much aware of what teams are looking for in free agent pitching. They know it is a stuff+ league and they know one of the easiest ways to boost this statistic is to throw harder. If you know how to game the way in which you are evaluated that then affects how much money you can earn, what other incentives are there for individuals to not take this approach in their game? You simply take the risk as a player, flash good stuff, hope you survive, or hope you maintain the results post surgery if you do not. It’s brutal, but sometimes the bag will be waiting for you at the end of your arbitration years despite all of this (in the case of Tyler Glasnow, at least). It’s a bummer for fans of the game and especially those of the teams that are affected. We will press on.
Favorite Teams
- D-backs
- Braves
- Phillies
- Dodgers
- Astros
- Rockies
- Rays
- Giants
- Padres
Pitching Preferences
- Blake Snell
- Yu Darvish
- Luis Castillo
- Jose Berrios
- Zach Eflin
- Javier Assad
- Charlie Morton
- Zac Gallen
Another Coors slate! And it features a loaded offense against Kyle Freeland! So fun. Now I’m no probabilities expert, but it’s no guarantee that the D-backs win or score the most runs on the slate today. However, I’m not sure I can write this post with a straight face and tell you that I’m not going to try to take as many D-backs as possible in all my lobbies today. I think it will make sense to scroll to some unique one-offs or 2x stacks when getting to Arizona, however. 1-7 in their order will be taken every single lobby.
The Dodgers, Braves and Phillies all face some easy pitching today and just so happen to be some of the best offenses in baseball. They’re very easy targets today as well. You can expect 1-5 at a minimum to be taken from LAD, 1-6 from ATL, and 1-3 from PHI. This, if you include Arizona, means roughly 21 hitters will be drafted from these four teams every draft. The Astros are looking like great plays today as well, so lets say three Astros go every draft. That’s now 6 free spots in each lobby that are up in the air every draft. And despite the Rockies facing Zac Gallen, they’re still in Coors. So expect one or two to be drafted from this lineup too.
Where does this leave us? It leaves us with the Rangers, Rays, Giants, Cubs, Padres, Twins, and Cardinals being heavily overlooked today (by my estimates). I’d be willing to let yourself get to some stacks of these teams today because the chalk is so obvious. It’s going to be difficult but I would bet it’s worth it. The Giants are likely to be my team of choice to be unique on today. Trevor Williams is fine, but not good. Give me Michael Conforto, LaMonte Wade Jr, and Jung Hoo Lee today.
This is all I’ve got for us today. I’ll be covering the slate in depth on the Badge Bros YouTube with my pal Jon Warner at 4PM EST for more. Thank you for reading folks. I’ll be back on Wednesday for more!
Nez
Take Sheet 