CPT/MVP: Glasnow (Optimal), Gil (GPP)
Flex: Ohtani (GPP), Judge (GPP), Betts (GPP), Freeman (GPP), Stanton (GPP), Grisham, Wells, K. Hernandez, Heyward, LeMahieu, Lux, Verdugo
Relievers: Holmes, Hudson, Treinan
We have an exceptional pitching matchup in store for this Sunday’s edition of Sunday Night Baseball. You will quickly see that we would highly recommend not deviating from one of these two arms in your CPT/MVP spot. They are the only players that gathered any exposure in the top spot when we built 100 lineups with our projections and it would be a very sub-optimal move to slot a bat in up top. With that being said, it would differentiate you significantly and there are plenty of horses on both these teams that could run into one.
The Dodgers are going to be sending Tyler Glasnow to the mound to take on a New York squad that will be without the services of Juan Soto yet again. Glasnow is the overwhelmingly optimal captain choice and we received 82% exposure to him up top when building with our projections for the slate. He has been simply sublime this season, fanning 32% of lefties and 35% of righties. He has held lefties to a .147 xISO/.267 xwOBA and righties to a .089 xISO/.232 xwOBA. These are elite numbers and there is really nothing to suggest this won’t be a very strong outing from him. The Yankees do have a number of bats that hit righty fastballs well and he features that pitch roughly half the time. If they run into a couple and send them into orbit, that would be the downside case for Glasnow here. However, he really needs to be in most of your lineups as the CPT/MVP and the rest as a flex.
The Yankees will be trotting their ace, Luis Gil, out to the rubber this evening as well. He stands as the primary GPP pivot off of Glasnow in the CPT/MVP spot in this one. We only received 18% exposure to him when building our MME pool and that provides us with a very fun way to differentiate here. His numbers are nearly just as good as Glasnow’s with a 29.3% K rate to lefties and a 33.1% K rate to righties. Lefties have a .110/.264 line against him and righties have a .116/.262 line. With essentially nothing in the way of splits to speak of, we do not see any real reason to think he is going to get roughed up either. We may as well lean into the uncertainty of which pitcher may give up the homers to the other team and play the lower-owned option.
What is wild is that there was not a single one of the 100 lineups that were built that did not have both of these arms in the lineups together. The first is that tells us a couple of things. It will be extremely, extremely uncommon to fade one of them. Secondly, most lineups are going to look the same when it comes to the bats they have to slide in due to the expensive nature of these two arms. Because of that, we received quite literally 0% exposure to all three of Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and Mookie Betts as you cannot fit any of them in your lineup if you captain one of the two pitchers and play the other one in a flex spot. And as expected, this has led to a TON of projected ownership flocking to the cheaper options.
This presents us with a very interesting situation as we need to game out the most likely scenarios for one of the two pitchers not panning out. As alluded to earlier, given the X stats for both of them, it is quite unlikely that we are going to see prolonged rallies from either of the teams. Because of that, it most likely would have to be a homer that does in either of them. Both pitchers have issued their fair share of walks this year. It would not be surprising if a walk, a bloop single, and a blast tanked one of them. To bank on a blast from any of the scrubs is really pushing it, but we would want to rely on the ones that actually have good X stats. The Dodgers’ options seem very sub-par as none of them do. The Yankees have a couple of good cheap options in DJ LeMahieu (.429/.503), Austin Wells (.388/.494), and Trent Grisham (.216 xISO). It is not out of the question any of these three could send one out of the park. Our favorite relatively cheaper option is Alex Verdugo (.257/.385) who is going to be hitting near the top of the order for New York and would more likely come home on a homer from one of the big guns. So if building optimally, we would focus on this cohort. Bats like Lux, Heyward, and Kike Hernandez are projected to carry heavier ownership and do not have good X stats to rely on. Obviously, the more reliable bats to rely on to hit the bombs are the big ones. Aaron Judge (.338/.416), Giancarlo Stanton (.295/.344), Shohei Ohtani (.513/.585), and Freddy Freeman (.281/.404) are all very strong expensive options to consider. We are very inclined to recommend building on this slate with a specific narrative in mind. Fading one of the arms and hoping to catch the homers in your lineup is probably the best route to go in GPP formats.
Before wrapping things up, we wanted to call out the best bullpen arms to consider in this spot for value. In last night’s blowout, we saw a number of the lower-leverage arms get deployed for extended action. That means options like Kahnle, Santana, Vesia, and Yarbrough are most likely down this evening. With both pitchers expected to pitch deep into the night, we are going to see the higher-leverage arms on both sides in all likelihood. We love the upside of Holmes, Hudson, and Treinen in this spot for value as a result. Best of luck tonight!