Monday’s MLB slate is a nine-gamer with no major weather concerns across the country. Using Stokastic’s MLB DFS Top Stacks Tool and Top Pitchers Tool, we are going to analyze the player pool and uncover the most effective contrarian picks and stacks for today’s MLB games.
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MLB DFS Contrarian Picks Today: Monday, August 19
MLB DFS Contrarian Pitcher
Angels-Royals: Seth Lugo
Stokastic’s Top 2 Pitcher Rate
DraftKings: 15.0%
DFS Salary
DraftKings: $9,500
Royals right-hander Seth Lugo has been featured multiple times in this article this season, and he’s once again the top contrarian pitcher on DraftKings. With nine games in play and solid pitching options across every price point, ownership at pitcher is spread out. As of this writing, Yusei Kikuchi, Michael King, Taj Bradley, Kevin Gausman and Kyle Harrison are projected to be at least 20% owned on DraftKings. While Kikuchi will probably end up the highest owned of the bunch, all five of those pitchers are going to be in a good number of lineups. That leaves multiple contrarian arms to look at.
Lugo comes into tonight’s action averaging 18.7 DraftKings points per game while sporting a 3.04 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 135 strikeouts and 39 walks across 159.2 innings. Making his first All-Star team this season, Lugo has undoubtedly been one of the best pitchers in baseball. Although Lugo’s amazing start to the season has wilted in the summer heat — he’s allowed at least five runs in four of his last six starts — he is in a really nice get right spot matched up with the Angels at home. While the Angels have shown some feistiness against left-handed pitching, they are towards the bottom in all offensive categories against righties.
Stokastic’s Top Pitchers Tool projects Lugo to be a top-2 pitcher 15.0% of the time this slate plays out on DraftKings. With only 9.2% of lineups expected to roster him, Lugo looks like one of the top differentiators on the board.
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MLB DFS Contrarian Stack
Orioles-Mets: Orioles
Stokastic’s Top Stack Projection
DraftKings: 6.4%
Ownership Projection
DraftKings: 4.6%
Similar to ownership at pitcher, stack exposure is extremely spread out on DraftKings. As of this writing, only the Royals are projected to be double-digit owned as a stack against Carson Fulmer at home. With no Coors Field in play and multiple stacks in similarly good spots, it’s a nice change of pace to have a slate where no single stack is running away from the field. With that in mind, pretty much every stack on the board, outside of maybe Kansas City, will be somewhat contrarian. A case can be made for a bunch of offenses in this spot; however, Baltimore stands out as the top contrarian stack on the slate.
Matched up with Mets left-hander David Peterson, the Orioles would be popular on a lot of slates in this spot. That said, this particular slate has Baltimore coming in much lower owned than they should be. While Peterson’s 3.04 ERA and .313 WOBA look good on paper, his 5.31 xERA and .354 xwOBA are much more indicative of the pitcher he actually is. Facing a Baltimore team that has smashed left-handed pitching, the regression monster could easily be coming for Peterson in a bad way tonight.
The Orioles are projected to be the top stack 6.4% of the time this slate plays out on DraftKings, but only 4.6% of lineups are expected to stack them.
Other Contrarian Stacks to Consider
Pirates, Astros, Giants
