Daily Fantasy Baseball Stacks for 05/26/17

*Chris Durell*

DFS MLB Picks – Friday, May 26

Welcome back for another high-octane Friday in daily fantasy baseball. It’s once again a beautiful TGIF as we faced multiple rainouts and pitcher scratches yesterday across the all day slates. Today is a completely different story as we get some top end heavy pitching options to choose from with some awesome value to boot. Put your favorite stacks from the article below in our lineup optimizer and hit calculate. You can let it fill in the rest of the spots for you or choose your personal favorites from the MLB Player Lab.

Starting Pitchers

Jacob deGrom
Opponent – @ PIT
Park – PNC Park (Pitcher Positive)
Vegas Favorite (NYM +103)
Vegas Total (8.5)

First of all, don’t worry about the Vegas line as it is slated to move anytime now with deGrom being moved up a day after rain presented a delayed threat last night. Speaking of last night, here is what I wrote about deGrom before learning of the push back.

The weather makes this more of a GPP play tonight but deGrom most definitely as the highest upside of any pitcher. He is coming off his best start of the season where he shut out the Angels over seven innings while striking out nine batters en route to his third win of the season. Four times this year he has recorded double-digit strikeouts and his elite 12.3 K/9 rate have him sitting behind only Danny Salazar and Chris Sale through almost two months of the season. He now gets a plus matchup vs. the Padres who have struggled to a .276 wOBA and 69 wRC+ over the last seven days and have struck out just over 24% of the time this season vs. right-handed pitching.

The only thing that really changes here is the matchup as DeGrom and the Mets now travel to Pittsburgh to take on the Pirates. They do strike out quite a bit less which does lower the K upside a bit but the Pirates still rank in the bottom third of the league when looking at wOBA and wRC+ vs. right-handed pitching. Roll out DeGrom with confidence tonight.

Mike Clevinger
Opponent – vs. KC
Park – Progressive Field (Pitcher Positive)
Vegas Favorite (CLE -175)
Vegas Total (8.5)

I won’t mention Max Scherzer in this spot as it seems pretty obvious he is the top play of the day as a giant -250 favorite going up against the Padres. Instead, I will dip into the value range and give you a pitcher who I think makes an excellent SP2 with Scherzer or DeGrom and comes with a ton of upside. Enter Mike Clevinger of the Indians who was also slated to pitch last night but a rainout pushed him back until today. Good news for Clevinger who went from having to face a dangerous Reds team to now getting to face the lowest scoring team in the league in the Royals. Not only that but the Royals also rank second to last in wOBA and wRC+ vs. right-handed pitching and strike out close to 22% of the time. Clevinger, in his second major league season, has elevated his game so far by dropping his ERA by more than four runs and increasing his K rate by over a strikeout and a half per nine innings. He still struggles with the control at times but has only walked two batters over his last two starts. In the high $7K/low $8K range on both sites, he is safe in all formats and makes a nice GPP pivot on FanDuel to load up on bats.

**STARTING STACK**

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Antonio Senzatela (COL)
Park – Coors Field (Hitter Positive)
Vegas – (STL -125)
Vegas Total (10.5)

The start of the long weekend begins with another series opening up in Coors Field. I hesitate to use the Rockies tonight as they face a pretty darn good pitcher in Carlos Martinez but the visiting Cardinals sit in a great spot tonight and projected for the most runs on the slate. They have been up and down this season sitting just two games over .500 and in the bottom half of the league in overall runs but have scored five or more runs in 10 straight wins and I have a feeling they will get that win tonight so fire them up. They face a rookie pitcher who has started to regress after a hot start and has given up eight earned runs over his last two starts and just doesn’t miss any bats with a sub 7% swinging strike rate. Senzatela has also struggled more vs. left-handed bats so make sure to get Dexter Fowler and Matt Carpenter into your stack.

**Stay tuned later this afternoon for my daily YouTube video going over a few more pitching and stacking options for tonight. You can find the video on my Twitter feed (@Jager_Bombs9) or on the LineupLab Twitter feed (@LineupLab).**