Daily Fantasy Sports – Major League Baseball Lineup Tips for August 10, 2018

Take a look at our Daily Fantasy Sports – Major League Baseball Lineup Tips for August 10, 2018.

Pitchers

Masahiro Tanaka has been tremendous recently, posting 27 K’s in 19 innings in his last 3 starts. Tanaka threw a complete game shutout, followed by a great performance vs. Baltimore and a 9 K game vs. the Red Sox in less than 5 innings. Tanaka has been better in the second half for most of his career and seems to be rounding into form at a great time. The Rangers have some power, but they have a lot of swinging strikes too. Tanaka has a ton of swinging strike stuff and I think Tanaka’s floor in this matchup is pretty high because he WILL record 1 or more Ks per inning. I like Tanaka in all formats tonight as my SP1 on 2 pitcher sites and even alone on BetOnline.

Nathan Eovaldi has been great of late and faces a lowly Orioles team that has fully punted the season and traded away a significant amount of their talent. Eovaldi is a hard thrower that has recently really honed in on perfecting his pitching ability over his ability to throw the ball really hard. This has allowed him to get deeper into games and finish more batters off. I think Eovaldi will be highly owned tonight and I like Tanaka better, so I will stay away for the most part. Eovaldi’s advanced numbers show that he is clearly not this good of a pitcher. He has allowed a .230 BABIP, which is crazy low and has posted an xFIP around 4 in his last two games combined. These starts appear to be dominant performances, but I can assure you that some luck went into these starts and Eovaldi hasn’t been THAT good. He’s been good, but not chalk + high priced good.

Zach Eflin has been rather solid this year and he gets the Padres in a ballpark upgrade. I really wonder how owned Eflin will be tonight, but I don’t think there is an ownership that I would say he’s particularly a bad play. Eflin gets an offense that just cannot produce a high amount of runs very often and Eflin is more than capable of continuing that trend. I think my lineup construction will lead me away from Eflin today, but there isn’t anything wrong with him in any format.

Jon Gray is a great tournament play today. He is playing in Coors field today, which is generally a terrible place to pitch, but Gray’s stuff is ideal for Coors. Now, it’s not like Coors is good to him, but relatively speaking, Gray’s stuff projects better than most pitchers in altitude. Gray was sent down to Triple-A recently, much to the annoyance of baseball fans everywhere that were upset the Rockies sent down their best pitcher because he is getting unlucky. Gray’s xFIP, K/9, and other advanced numbers were great, but there did seem to be a hitch in his game. He was really bad with guys on base. Maybe he was tipping pitches out of the stretch or his mechanics were off out of the stretch, but it was a problem whichever way you slice it. Since returning, Gray has had 2 dominant games in Coors against the Mariners and the Astros and I think he could add the Dodgers to the list tonight. Coors should scare people off, but I think Gray has the ability to limit the effect of Coors Field on his outcome tonight.

Kevin Gausman is really talented and I don’t even know if he knows it. Gausman’s issue is the pitches he throws are the wrong ones. When Gausman was caught by Cory Joseph, he would call more splitters, this almost directly correlated with his success, especially in the swinging strike category. Now, the rest of the Orioles’ catchers struggled to do that and he struggled much more in those games throwing more fastballs and sliders. I was hoping that Gausman would get another catcher who would call the splitter like Joseph did, but they didn’t AT ALL. The last start, Gausman threw his season low % of splitters. I like Gausman because of the talent, but I’m scared he didn’t get the help he needed in Atlanta.

Clay Holmes is most likely my second pitcher on 2 pitcher sites. He is as cheap as can be and he has been pretty solid this year in the minor leagues. Holmes is a big guy with a good fastball that has never really flash strikeout stuff in the minor leagues, posting a K/9 under 7 before this season. Now, Clay Holmes isn’t the talking point of many articles out there, so I don’t really know what has changed, but in 90 innings in AAA this season, Holmes has a 9.27 K/9 and a 3.33 xFIP. Holmes’ appears to be a sinkerballer with a ground ball rate that is also really high, so I think that brings in some safety. The matchup is great pitching in AT&T Park against an unimposing Giants team, so I just think Holmes is a great play at such a cheap tag.

Stacks

The Cardinals will see Burch Smith tonight is what appears to be a great spot. Smith has struggled in his short MLB stints throughout his career and he doesn’t appear to be much different. He has walk problems and he has HR problems. Generally, stacking against those pitchers is the way to go and that is what I’ll be doing tonight. Matt Carpenter is good at baseball and you should probably play him even if you don’t stack.

Jacob Nix is a young prospect for the Padres that has had a decent season this year, but the numbers show that it’s been a lot of luck on his side. Now he is moving up to the major leagues to face a team with a lot of power in the Phillies. The Phillies K a lot, but Nix hasn’t really shown the ability to post high K numbers, which is why I am on the Phillies side tonight.

The Yankees get Mike Minor tonight in Yankee Stadium. Minor isn’t THAT bad of a pitcher, but this is that bad of a spot. The Yankees have a bunch of right-handed hitters that should really take Minor yard a couple of times tonight. Giancarlo is quietly batting .330 since June 16th and has absolutely slaughtered lefties all year. I want Stanton in my lineups whether or not I’m stacking the Yankees.

The Best of the Rest (in order)

Angels

Red Sox

Tigers

Indians