Below we’ve got a discussion of the starting pitching situation as well as the best teams to use for stacks for Tuesday’s 15-game evening slate on DraftKings. We’ve also got projections derived from Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, rankings of the top plays at each position and some sample lineups for you to consider.

Pitching Perspective

Welcome to another edition of “Should You Pay Up for Clayton Kershaw?” We’ve played this game 23 times this season, and Kershaw has been worth his price tag more often than not. That said, I’m not sure today is one of those days. First, there’s the actual price tag. It’s always high, but at $15,000, I think it’s tied for as high as it has been this year. He really has to be worth it for 30 percent of your budget.

As for his matchup, he’s facing the A’s who are well below average against left-handed pitching, so there’s little downside. But they also have the third lowest strikeout rate against left-handed pitching. For the season, left-handed pitchers against the A’s have averaged about two DK fantasy points less than than average per nine innings.

Despite his high floor and potentially-lower-than-normal ceiling, I think Kershaw may actually be more of a GPP play. I don’t like the concessions you’ll have to make with your bats to get Kershaw into a lineup. But he’s always a threat to go nine innings and hit double digit strikeouts, so for that reason I’d only roster him in tournaments.

As for the rest of the expensive starters, I just don’t see much value. Jacob deGrom is also over-priced according to my model, and Lance Lynn and Hisashi Iwakuma have bad matchups. That leaves Francisco Liriano ($10,300) and Garrett Richards ($9,800) who are priced just about right per my model. They both have above average, but not great, matchups against the Diamondbacks and White Sox, respectively. They’re also both pitching in their fairly pitcher-friendly home ball parks. Liriano has a better ERA, xFIP and strikeout rate for the season, and Jeff Zimmerman has Liriano projected to post a higher strikeout rate and a lower FIP today, so Liriano will be my expensive choice of the day.

But my favorite pitching play of the day is not an expensive arm. No, my favorite play is Anibal Sanchez whose $7,300 salary is just a hair higher than the average salary of a starter today. Yet Anibal’s projection is right there with deGrom’s and behind only Kershaw’s. The reason for all the love is the matchup with the Cubs who have now overtaken the Astros for the highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching. Per nine innings, the Cubs allow right-handed pitchers to score 3.82 DK fantasy points more than average.

Anibal’s 4.95 ERA for the year might scare you, but his xFIP is 3.94 for the season. And his 6.60 ERA over his last five starts might also scare you, but his xFIP is 4.01 in that same time frame. Both recently and for the season, his strikeout and walk rates have been better than average, but he’s been killed by the long ball having allowed nine home runs in his last five starts and 28 for the season. But his 15.7 percent HR/FB rate is obviously bad luck given his career 8.6 percent HR/FB rate. I get that it may be a scary proposition rostering Sanchez, but there is unquestionably plenty of value potential at this price point.

As for other mid-price options, James Shields ($8,600) is another option, but he’s only slightly under-priced. Shields has struggled with left-handers this year, but he’s facing the Braves today who don’t have intimidating left-handers. The only left-handed bats currently in Atlanta’s lineup who have been above average against right-handed pitching this year are Nick Markakis and A.J. Pierzynski. That’s not enough to scare me away. I just may prefer some other options.

If you’re looking for a bargain play, Scott Feldman ($5,900) and Kevin Gausman ($5,100) are your options. Feldman has basically no upside with a 13.6 percent strikeout rate this year, but he does have a good matchup against the Rays who have the fourth worst wRC+ against right-handed pitching. They also have the fourth highest strikeout rate against right-handers, so maybe there is a tiny bit of upside there. A tiny bit. Regardless, his floor is probably higher than Gausman’s. Gausman has a slightly above average matchup against the Mets that would be even better if Lucas Duda remains out of the lineup tonight. But this is your lottery ticket here, not remotely a safe play. Zimmerman’s daily projections (linked again here) have him with the sixth highest projected strikeout rate today, so if you like to gamble, Gausman is your guy.

Here are our projections for today’s starters. You’ll see each starter’s salary, the average number of fantasy points the starter is projected to score per game and how far above or below average his projection is compared to his salary in the value column. You’ll also see adjustments being made for matchup and ballpark. As for the colors, they rank as follows from good to bad: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, burgundy.

Stack Options

When you look at tomorrow’s implied run totals courtesy of the Vegas lines, the Nationals have the highest team total by a mile. After that, Colorado, New York (Yankees), Boston, and Seattle are grouped together in the second tier. Of those four teams, I like the Nationals and Yankees the most, but I don’t know that I see the value to go with five- or six-man Nats stack. Bryce Harper will cost you an obscene $6,400, so if you want exposure to Nats, I’d take a look at Anthony Rendon ($4,000) and Jayson Werth ($3,500), and, yes, I know they’ve been terrible. If you end up being able to fit Harper in, go for it. But I’m not a fan of building a lineup around just one hitter, no matter how favorable his situation may be.

As for the Yankees, their typical top five of Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Brian McCann are a stack option today. I don’t like their price tags necessarily, but if you like to stack one team heavily that is a Vegas favorite, the Yanks are who I would go with today.

If you’re looking for a potentially lesser-owned stack, the Angels and Twins look like options to me today. Typically I’d suspect the Angels to have a high ownership percentage against John Danks, but that might not be the case today. With a game in Coors on the slate and other teams with high implied totals, people may not lean heavily on an Angels team that has the second worst wOBA over the last 14 days. And though Danks has been decent to good in five of his last six starts, this is still a guy who is allowing right-handed hitters to slug about .500 against him this year. For that reason, Shane Victorino, Mike Trout and Albert Pujols and Chris Iannetta are a stack option presumably hitting 9-1-3-4. I also like C.J. Cron, but you cannot roster both Pujols and Cron as they each only have 1B eligibility.

As for the Twins, I was on them last night expecting them to face C.C. Sabathia. But Sabathia was pushed back a day, so I pivoted off Twins. It’s too bad as the four Twins I planned to use combined for 58 DK points. Alas, they’re getting the matchup I was interested in today, so I’ll likely be back on them to some degree, though there are more good options today. The stack targets are Brian Dozier, Aaron Hicks, Torii Hunter, Eduardo Nunez and one of Miguel Sano and Trevor Plouffe, who both only have 3B eligibility.

You can view and download our hitter projections here. These projections are an average of what each hitter is projected to do on a per game basis according to the ZiPS rest-of-season projections. The projections have then been adjusted for splits, quality of the opposing starting pitcher and ballpark.

Player Rankings

Catcher

1. Chris Iannetta – $2,600 – Los Angeles Angels
2. Jonathan Lucroy – $3,500 – Milwaukee Brewers
3. John Jaso – $3,200 – Tampa Bay Rays

First Base

1. Albert Pujols – $4,200 – Los Angeles Angels
2. David Ortiz – $4,700 – Boston Red Sox
3. C.J. Cron – $2,900 – Los Angeles Angels

Second Base

1. Brian Dozier – $4,400 – Minnesota Twins
2. Anthony Rendon – $4,000 – Washington Nationals
3. Justin Turner – $3,900 – Los Angeles Dodgers

Third Base

1. Miguel Sano – $4,300 – Minnesota Twins
2. Trevor Plouffe – $3,800 – Minnesota Twins
3. Alex Rodriguez – $4,000 – New York Yankees
4. Pablo Sandoval – $3,000 – Boston Red Sox

Shortstop

1. Hanley Ramirez – $4,000 – Boston Red Sox
2. Eduardo Nunez – $2,800 – Minnesota Twins
3. Enrique Hernandez – $2,800 – Los Angeles Dodgers

Outfield

1. Mike Trout – $5,600 – Los Angeles Angels
2. Ryan Braun – $4,800 – Milwaukee Brewers
3. Jarrod Dyson – $3,200 – Kansas City Royals
4. Yasiel Puig – $3,400 – Los Angeles Dodgers
5. Shane Victorino – $2,400 – Los Angeles Angels
6. Scott van Slyke – $2,800 – Los Angeles Dodgers
7. Bryce Harper – $6,400 – Washington Nationals
8. Carlos Gonzalez – $5,300 – Colorado Rockies

Starting Pitcher

1. Anibal Sanchez – $7,300 – Detroit Tigers
2. Francisco Liriano – $10,300 – Pittsburgh Pirates
3. James Shields – $8,600 – San Diego Padres
4. Clayton Kershaw – $15,000 – Los Angeles Dodgers
5. Kevin Gausman – $5,100 – Baltimore Orioles
6. Scott Feldman – $5,900 – Houston Astros

Sample Lineups

Every day I play DFS, I take the projections you see above and run them through Fantasycruncher.com, a lineup optimization tool. Basically, it just tells me what the maximum number of projected points is that I can get into a lineup under the cap. Below is the optimal lineup it spit out for tonight using my projections.

The optimization tool almost always includes the top projected pitcher of the day in the optimized lineup, so I’m not surprised to see Kershaw and his high price tag in there. And given that I mentioned liking both the Angels and Twins above, I don’t hate this lineup at all. The problem is that the stacks are fairly disjointed as I’m guessing those Angels hit 1-3-5-9 in the lineup and those Twins likely hit 9-2-5. But again, I don’t hate this all. If you want to use Kershaw, I’d do it with this lineup. Now let’s look at a Kershaw-less lineup.

This lineup looks pretty good for cash games to me. It’s my favorite two pitchers with exposure to several of the teams where I like bats tonight. Alright, one more. Let’s look at a true tournament lineup with cheap pitching and expensive bats.