The Phillies will hand Taijuan Walker the ball for this week’s edition of Sunday Night Baseball. Walker has been pretty bad for Philadelphia with a .304/.429 line allowed to lefties and .207/.337 line against righties. He does have some things going for him in this matchup with Nolan Gorman being the only Cardinal with an xISO over .180 against right-handed hitters this season and the lineup having a 24.4% K rate against righties on the season. Walker projects to be highly-owned on this one and a popular Captain option. He’s a solid cash game play based on the matchup. He’ll be opposed by Lance Lynn who has rebounded a bit this season for the Cardinals. He’s held both sides of the plate to xISOs under .180 and xwOBAs under .340 allowed to both sides of the plate. He edges out Walker just slightly in our projections and will be a popular option as well. With neither pitcher being expensive, playing both seems to be the popular option tonight. In GPPs we like fading one of them with Lynn being the preferred play. Jeff Hoffman, Jose Alvarado, and Andrew Kittredge are GPP reliever options for value.
The Cardinals’ bats project to be higher-owned on DraftKings, but fading one of the pitchers can help you get one of our top projected bats in Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. On DraftKings Schwarber projects as the higher-owned of the two, but neither will be highly owned in the Captain slot. On FanDuel they project as the chalk MVP/STAR options. Both are great plays and have nice upside against Lynn with xISOs over .220 and xwOBAs over .350 against righties this season. Bryson Stott is the next highest projecting Phillie for us on the night and will be up in the 2 hole tonight. He’s a solid flex play if stacking the Phillies. Alec Bohm and Brandon Marsh will be low-owned as well. Marsh is a great value, potentially even at Captain in GPPs, with a .240/.397 line against righties on the season. Both are good GPP plays on FanDuel as well.
For the Cardinals Dylan Carlson projects to be the chalk value on both sites with how cheap he is. He projects as our top PT/$ play on the slate and is a fine play there. There aren’t many options that cheap tonight but Ivan Herrera will be lower-owned and can be a pivot off of Carlson. Nolan Gorman and Paul Goldchmidt project as our top two Cardinals bats for raw points. Both will be popular plays on FanDuel and Carlson will see a good amount of ownership on DraftKings, with a good amount of that being in the Captain slot as well. He’s our favorite Cardinals’ bat tonight but Goldschmidt is a good GPP pivot off of him on DraftKings. Finally Alec Burleson is a solid option from St. Louis. He’ll see some ownership but projects as one of our better PT/$ plays on tonight’s slate.