This article is part of our FanDuel MLB series.
Friday represents what could be our last full-roster slate of the season. The Guardians will look to draw even with the Yankees, while the Dodgers look to sweep three straight in New York and close out the Mets.
Betting odds have the Dodgers as the slate's biggest favorite (-138), while the Guardians are the biggest favorite (-168) on the +1.5 run line. Run totals sit at 7.5 for both games, with things trending upward in Cleveland. We're dry in both locations with reasonable temperatures. Winds are blowing in New York, so a slight lean towards not chasing the long ball, but overall, the weather is largely irrelevant.
Pitching
Jack Flaherty, LAD at NYM ($10,200): This is the easiest pick of the day. Yes, we have four starters to choose from. Two of them haven't pitched in the playoffs. While Kodai Senga has, he's gone 3.1 innings and allowed four runs (although David Peterson looks to get the "start" for the Mets while Senga will come in as relief, according to manager Carlos Mendoza). Flaherty is a necessary evil, as even if he gets hit, he's going to have the longest leash and the most stable floor thanks to those innings. It certainly doesn't hurt that he's on regular rest and threw seven shutout innings against the Mets earlier in the series. Current Mets are hitting .200 (18-for-90) with a .602 OPS and a 27.8 percent strikeout rate off him.
Top Targets
Paying for Flaherty is going to make using Shohei Ohtani ($4,800) or Aaron Judge ($4,700) difficult, and they'd have to turn in flawless performances to make it work. As such, we likely need some second-tier top options. Mookie Betts ($4,000) fits that bill. Given Senga's recent body of work, I'd expect the Dodgers to pounce once he's in the game, so multiple shares of the top of this order is a preferred build. Betts is conveniently 3-for-3 off Senga with a homer and had a massive Thursday. Pairing him with Max Muncy ($3,900), Teoscar Hernandez ($3,500) and/or Freddie Freeman ($3,200) looks like a nice strategy.
Lane Thomas ($3,300) and Steven Kwan ($3,400) look like decent options for stability and slightly lower top-tier pricing. They don't offer a lot of upside but have collectively reached base 12 times through the first three games of the series
Bargain Bats
Brandon Nimmo ($3,200) is a liability defensively with his injured foot/ankle. Pair that with Jesse Winker ($2,800) being 9-for-24 (.375) off Flaherty with two homers, and he has to be in Friday's lineup.
This can default to an exercise in who's playing even if they aren't producing. But Brayan Rocchio ($2,500) fits both bills. He's hit safely in eight straight postseason games, collecting 11 knocks total. It's also seen him top 9.0 fantasy points just three times, so there's no upside. But the price is stable.
Enrique Hernandez ($2,900) flirts with must-play status given the sub-$3,000 price tag. He comes with five-position flexibility, a huge advantage with the full roster slate. His spot in the lineup fluctuates, but don't be scared away if he's at the bottom of the order given Ohtani's ridiculous stats with runners in scoring position this postseason.
Stack to Consider
Yankees vs. Gavin Williams (Guardians): Giancarlo Stanton ($3,500), Gleyber Torres ($3,100), Anthony Rizzo ($2,800)
Stacking on a two-game slate is very difficult, made even more so by the extreme prices of the top bats. But there is a targetable split we can look to exploit, and that's Williams against righties at home. They've posted a .422 wOBA and .983 OPS against him. That puts Torres, hitting atop the order and in front of Judge and Juan Soto, a very viable play. Stanton gives us a second righty hitting around them, and he's homered in three of his last five. Rizzo fades that split but offers a fair price for a bat that figures to hit near-ish the top of the order, allowing this to somewhat feed off each piece.
