This article is part of our Yahoo DFS Baseball series.
It's not quite summer according to the calendar, but the weather and the robust baseball action indicates otherwise. Sunday sees us with 14 games on the DFS docket. The first pitch is at 1:35 p.m. ET. It's time for my lineup recommendations! Good luck!
Pitching
Nathan Eovaldi, TEX vs. SEA ($51): Eovaldi allowed zero runs in his last start. That's good. He's allowed zero runs in four of his last six starts. That's great. The Mariners have dipped down the offensive leaderboards and are now trying to avoid being in the bottom 10 in runs scored. That's hard to do when you are in the bottom five in team batting average.
Marcus Stroman, CHC at SD ($44): Coming off a complete-game shutout, perhaps I'm "buying high" on Stroman, but I still like him Sunday. He has a career 3.56 ERA, which is decent enough to buy his 2.59 ERA in 2023. Plus, he's an elite groundball pitcher who doesn't allow many home runs, and that always has value in modern baseball. The Padres are, surprisingly, in the bottom eight in runs scored, and Petco Park tends to be kind to pitchers as well.
Sandy Alcantara, MIA vs. OAK ($43): The trip from Cy Young winner to DFS risk was swift for Alcantara. Even his 3.88 FIP is a concern, a throwback to his pre-breakthrough campaigns of the prior decade. However, he is a Cy Young winner, that is true. Also, the Athletics are only technically an MLB team. No offense is worse. No team is more checked out. If I believed Alcantara was truly a 3.88 FIP pitcher, I'd still deploy him in this matchup.
Top Targets
He hasn't hit 40 homers yet in his career, but Yordan Alvarez ($24) has 15 home runs already in 2023, so he this could be the season. The southpaw has a career .589 slugging percentage, which is the kind of number that is almost hard to fathom. After missing all of 2022, Griffin Canning has a 4.89 ERA and has allowed 1.49 home runs per nine innings. In his career his HR/9 rate is 1.54, so that doesn't feel anomalous.
It seems like the Rays are just looking to rack up 20/20 guys. Josh Lowe ($18) is in the mix for that to be sure. He has 11 homers and 13 swiped bags. In his career, the lefty had an .848 OPS versus righties and an .878 OPS on the road. Red Sox starter Tanner Houck has a 5.30 ERA, and since 2021 he has a 4.44 ERA at home.
Bargain Bats
After a tough 2022, Bryan De La Cruz ($18) has bounced back with a .296/.347/.452 slash line with seven homers and three stolen bases. Plus, in his career he has an .803 OPS at home. Meanwhile, Paul Blackburn has a career 5.05 ERA and has struck out a mere 6.11 batters per nine innings.
With a lefty on the mound for the opposition, Eduardo Escobar ($13) should be in the lineup for the Mets on Sunday. He's a switch hitter, but since 2021 he has an .837 OPS versus lefties. Yusei Kikuchi, well, he has a FIP over 5.00 since joining the Blue Jays. He's also allowed righties to hit .269 against him since 2021.
Stacks to Consider
Dodgers vs. Yankees (Domingo German): Mookie Betts ($25), J.D. Martinez ($23), Will Smith ($19)
German has a 3.98 ERA overall but a 5.01 ERA on the road. Additionally, his FIP is 4.40, in line with his career 4.38 FIP. I did go with three righties in my stack, because even though German is a righty, he has tamped down on lefties fairly well, having only allowed a .203 average to southpaws since 2021.
Betts has caught fire, and now he has a .261/.367/.541 slash line with 15 home runs. He also has a .935 OPS at home over the last three seasons. You can make a case for Smith as the best hitter at the catcher position in baseball. He's slashed .315/.415/.531 with eight homers. His home OPS in 2023 is 1.023 for good measure. Martinez is the latest successful revitalization project for the Dodgers. He's got a .276 average, but his .612 slugging percentage is what really stands out.
Phillies at Nationals (Trevor Williams): Bryce Harper ($19), Bryson Stott ($13), Brandon Marsh ($10)
This is more than a Killer B's lineup for the Phillies. It's also three lefties who get a shot at Williams, who has allowed lefties to hit .294 against him since 2021. That's with spending time in the bullpen the last couple of seasons as well. This year, Williams has spent the whole season in the rotation, and while he has a 3.93 ERA, his 5.16 FIP tells a different story. So do the 1.64 home runs he's allowed per nine innings.
Harper has three homers and three stolen bases since returning from injury, and while his numbers aren't where we'd expect, the issue has been with lefties. As per usual, Harper has an OPS over 1.000 versus righties, and since 2021 his OPS in those matchups is a robust 1.055. Marsh has been a different hitter since he joined the Phillies. He had a .774 OPS with Philly in 2022, and this year he's slashed .277/.373/.470 with five homers and four stolen bases. Stott had 10 homers and 12 stolen bases as a rookie, and he has five of the former and eight of the latter already this year. Notably, he has been better against his fellow lefties, but it is easier to steal against righties, and Williams' woes won out for me.
White Sox vs. Tigers (Matthew Boyd): Luis Robert ($21), Eloy Jimenez ($20), Andrew Vaughn ($17)
As a Tigers fan, I wasn't necessarily enthused about the team's reunion with Boyd. After all, he had a 4.96 in his previous stint for Detroit before he briefly appeared in Seattle's bullpen in 2022. Back starting, the lefty Boyd has a 5.96 ERA this year. The White Sox don't have the best lineup, but they have enough righty bats to make for a good stack.
Robert has two issues: He doesn't walk, and he has proven to be injury-prone. However, he's a career .283 hitter, and this year he's also slugged .502 with 13 homers. Since 2021, he has an 1.084 OPS versus lefties. The 2021 campaign was brutal for Jimenez, but over the last two seasons he has an .835 OPS. Additionally, he had a .925 OPS at home in 2022 and his home OPS is .854 in 2023. Vaughn has never hit like was expected when he was drafted, but he has shown an acumen against southpaws. In his career he's slashed .287/.369/.466 versus lefties.
