MLB DFS Slate Breakdown for FanDuel and DraftKings, 7/16/21 - Free Premium Preview!

Thunder Dan Palyo previews our RotoBaller daily Premium MLB DFS content with his favorite pitchers, GPP stacks, and hitters for daily fantasy baseball on FanDuel and DraftKings for July 16, 2021. Crush your DFS competition with our advice!

Welcome back baseball, how we have missed thee! We were supposed to have an appetizer last night but the Yankees-Red Sox game was postponed due to COVID issues. Today we get a massive 13-game slate on FanDuel and 14-gamer on DraftKings (FanDuel didn't include the 7-inning game between Detroit and Minnesota).

My goal here is to show you some of the data and numbers that I crunch of every slate and give you some actionable info for your lineup building tonight. But it's also to show you some of the premium tools and content that we offer our premium members on a daily basis.

For every MLB main slate, our team puts out our signature cheatsheet (with sample lineups), value plays, and our newest addition - the pitching primer. We also have our DFS optimizer with customizable settings, research station, hitter matchup ratings, pitcher matchup ratings, and much more! Sign up for an MLB premium pass now and get the rest of the season for HALF PRICE and use promo code THUNDERDAN to save an additional 10% off.

MLB DFS Pitchers

Let's start by looking at our daily pitching primer data table that was compiled for our premium members today by me!

NOTE: Some starters have not been officially announced and it looks like Adrian Houser may start over Brandon Woodruff, E-Rod over Martin Perez, etc...be sure to check all the starting pitching matchups later this afternoon.

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It's a strong pitching slate with most teams being able to reset their rotations and toss out one of their better starters today. Woodruff and Gausman are at the top of the salary scale along with Robbie Ray (on FanDuel, at least). So how did I land on these seven pitchers for my daily pitching article? Let's take a look at some of the numbers I run every day when breaking down these matchups.

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I take every starting projected starter and find their opponents' season-long wOBA, ISO, and wRC+ against the handedness of that starter. Right-handers are on the left and lefties on the right (makes sense, right?) If you want to look at some smaller samples like the last 10, 14, or 30 days, I wrote about that yesterday here. Then I project a strikeout rate, walk rate, GB rate, and hard contact rate based on each offense's numbers against the handedness of the starter and the starter's season-long numbers. I then norm these against the league averages in each category to create what I think is a more realistic projection. The color-coding is pretty intuitive with green being good for the pitcher and red being bad for the pitcher (and good for the offense, more on that later).

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Here are the projected strikeouts and K percentages for each of today's starters. These are median projections based on season-long numbers. I am still working on incorporating a more recent sample into my data, but I usually just manually adjust them with how teams and pitchers have fared more recently if it's considerably worse or better than their season-long average.

While Gausman and Woodruff are safer options today, we have Robbie Ray with the highest strikeout projection and then three other guys projected over seven with Morton and Mahle being my favorites and Andrew Heaney being a very volatile guy that I don't trust very much.

Finally, let's take a look at bullpens. This is something that I do weigh when considering teams to stack, but should only be one box that you're checking off as we have no idea how many innings a team is going to see against a bullpen on any given night, or which bullpen arms will be used.

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Some of the best bullpens to target so far this year have been Colorado, Detroit, Cincinnati, Arizona, Minnesota, and Kansas City. Some of those teams have decent rotations (say, like the Reds) which makes it tougher to target them while others (like Arizona) have some pretty bad starters who when backed by a bad bullpen make for great targets with offenses.

Here's a little sneak peek at our optimizer and projections, with the top-six projected pitchers (sorted by DraftKings points) on tonight's slate.

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MLB DFS Hitters and Stacks

I write up pitchers nearly every day and usually finding the right pitchers is less challenging for me than finding hitters. I'll be honest, my process varies quite a bit from building GPP to cash game lineups. When building cash, I immediately check our premium MLB values article and our projections to find some cheap pieces to plug in around my pitchers. Here's a quick look at some of the highest-projected values on DK according to our research station.

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I also like profiling hitters against the opposing starting pitcher's pitch mix, using teams that I have identified as having good matchups. Here's a very simple chart with how each offense has fared so far this season against LHP and RHP in terms of their K rate, wOBA, and ISO.

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Remember that these are season-long numbers that don't always reflect current hot or cold streaks that teams are going through during the course of the season. But there's some good spots there that sometimes get overlooked, for example, Tampa Bay against LHP or the Cubs against righties. And, of course, our usual suspects show up as good targets on a daily basis (Seattle, Detroit, Miami, Arizona, Texas, and Pittsburgh - though they don't strike out).

When building GPP lineups, I am looking to stack against a bad pitcher (or maybe even just a mediocre pitcher who is trending down) and hopefully a bad bullpen, too. I have created this "stack finder" this season that gives me some useful data about the offenses I am considering and how they match up against the opposing pitcher and bullpen. I plug in the highest Vegas totals every day and see which matchups justify those totals.

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I expect the Dodgers to be popular at Coors against a pitcher who doesn't miss bats, but Senzatela is far from the worst pitcher on this slate, though the Rockies' bullpen is terrible. Going just by the numbers, Oakland has the best matchup of teams facing righties as Eli Morgan has been really, really, awful in terms of giving up barrels, homers, and hard contact.

The teams facing lefties are on the bottom with Kansas City having the highest implied total there and facing Keegan Akin. I certainly don't mind the Royals, but they are a pretty mediocre offense against LHP so I might go elsewhere if they end up chalky. The Cubs certainly look good against Mad Bum if you're looking to stack righties.

Well, that's all I have for you today! I hope this data helps. you on today's slate and that you'll consider joining us for the second half of the season and seeing everything we have to offer with our premium MLB product. Good luck and thanks again, RotoBallers, for reading!

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