DraftKings contributor Nick Friar and RotoWire’s Erik Halterman join The Sweat to give their favorite DraftKings value plays for today’s MLB slate.
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Video Transcript
Erik Halterman:
Let’s go to the White Sox, all the way down at $2200, Gavin Sheets. He was in the lineup pretty often earlier in the year, just not having a very good year and was sent down a few weeks ago. But since he was recalled, Gavin Sheets has started four straight games, has five hits and a homer. For his career, you look at a partial season last year where he was pretty good and a partial season this year where he wasn’t all that good—a 107 wRC+, that’s an above average bat. Nothing special, but hey, for $2200, you can do a lot worse.
If you look under the hood a little bit, 22.2% strikeout rate, right around average, a little bit better. 8.9% barrel rate, again, a little bit better than average. This is a pretty good bat in there, a lot better than you’d expect to get for this price range. He’ll get the platoon advantage against Noah Syndergaard, whose name value way outstrips his performance at this point. Strikeout rate way down this season to just 16.3%, I’m not at all scared of Syndergaard. I think getting a guy like Sheets, who is hitting the ball well again, has had pretty good underlying numbers across his brief career, in this kind of price range, I can’t turn that down.
Nick Friar:
So Erik was talking a little bit about Connor Seabold before—I want to try to find wants to target Connor Seabold, and I think when you’re looking at value, of course, you should try to look at that Dodgers game, and there are some other options out there, but with that Blue Jays lineup, I look at Lourdes Gurriel at the bottom of the lineup. And I understand you don’t usually want to target guys that far down in the order, but he has been outstanding.
And also, with a young pitcher, who has got a really tough lineup that he’s going up against, you’re going to have moments where he’s going to try and take it easier, he might let his guard down to some extent—Gurriel being down in the order is the kind of guy he’d do that against. And he’s crushing right-handed pitching this month, five doubles, two home runs, .440 wOBA, 31.3% line drive rate, 39.6% hard contact rate. So going up against a young guy, I think he’s in a great spot to go off.
Erik’s Pick: Gavin Sheets ($2,200)
Nick’s Pick: Lourdes Gurriel Jr. ($2,900)
Watch the entire MLB segment below!
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