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

Pitching Perspective

Welcome to another edition of “Should You Pay Up for Clayton Kershaw?” The answer today is fairly simple: probably, yes. First of all, he’s been fantastic over his last 10 starts. His ERA in that time frame is 0.92, and he has 91 strikeouts compared to seven walks in 77 innings of work. Second, he has a good matchup and is in his pitcher-friendly home park. He’ll face the Cubs who are slightly below average against left-handed pitching and have the highest strikeout rate in the league against left-handers. At $14,400, Kershaw isn’t priced quite as high as he has been in other starts, and he’s worth that price tag today. In fact, he’s under-priced.

Seven other pitchers are priced over $10,000 today, and two others are options if you don’t want to spend quite so much on your SP1 with Kershaw. Max Scherzer ($12,500) is a little under-priced according to my model, though not as much as Kershaw, and he has a non-threatening matchup against the Marlins who have the worst wRC+ in the league against right-handed pitching. Scherzer admittedly hasn’t been very good in his last four starts and in five of his last six, but he still has a sub-3.00 ERA and xFIP this year, so I wouldn’t panic.

The other expensive option I can get on board with is Francisco Liriano ($10,000) against the Rockies. According to my model, Liriano has the second best matchup of the day against a Rockies team that ranks dead last in wRC+ against left-handers. The game is in Pittsburgh, not Colorado, so there’s no reason to shy away from Liriano unless you’d rather roster Kershaw or Scherzer.

Normally there is only one expensive starter that grades out as a good value and occasionally two. But with the three mentioned above, we actually have more expensive starters who grade out as good values than we do cheaper starters as only Henry Owens ($7,700) and Jonathan Gray ($4,300) look like really good value plays among the cheaper options.

Owens has a 4.50 ERA in his first four big league starts, but he has a 4.08 SIERA and 21.2 percent strikeout rate, which is safely above average. I’m less concerned with Owens’ ERA to date and more worried about his matchup against a scorching hot Mets lineup. Entering Thursday’s game, the Mets had been literally twice as good as league average over the last seven days, and they kept it up with nine more runs on Thursday. But it’s going to be very tough to fit two of Kershaw, Scherzer and Liriano into your lineup, so you may have to go cheaper at SP2. Owens is an option with a strikeout rate that could lead him to a solid performance.

Gray is your other option, and he’s primarily an option because he’s so damn cheap. It wouldn’t take a ton for him to be worth his price tag that is only $300 over the minimum. But he’s also worth consideration because his numbers aren’t all that different from those of Owens. Sure, Gray’s ERA sits at 5.94, but his 4.10 SIERA is about the same as Owens’. Gray’s strikeout rate is a couple of percentage points lower, but his walk rate is about a percentage point lower, so their skills to date have been similar. His matchup with the Pirates is admittedly average at best, but it could be worse. And most importantly, this game is in Pittsburgh, not Colorado.

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

My model is rarely too clear about who the stack options are in a day, but three teams really stand out today. Of the top 54 projected hitters, 27 of them come from three teams. If you’re bad at math, that means half of the top 54 projected players are on just three teams, the Blue Jays, Yankees and Tigers. Those teams rank first, second and sixth in runs scored, respectively, so we’re not exactly going out on a limb here. But all three teams have very good matchups today.

In fact, the Tigers and Yankees have the best matchups of the day according to my model. They’ll be facing right-handers R.A. Dickey and Williams Perez who have the highest xFIPs allowed to left-handed hitters among starters in action today. But what really makes them such good candidates to stack against is that their xFIPs allowed to right-handed hitters are also worse than average.

For Detroit, their left-handed hitters and switch hitters are all really good value plays tonight. Victor Martinez, Anthony Gose, Tyler Collins and Andrew Romine are all salary relief options if you need them. You’ll have to pay up for some of their right-handed bats to make a stack work, and I’d prefer to pay for Miguel Cabrera and J.D. Martinez as opposed to paying for Ian Kinsler. Collins hit second for Detroit yesterday against a right-hander, so if he hits there again, Collins, Cabrera, Martinez and Martinez at 2-3-4-5 would make for a nice stack. If you wanted to go full-Tigers with a stack, you could include Kinsler and Gose and go 9-1-2-3-4-5.

For the Yankees, they can really stack a lineup with left-handers against a right-handed starter. That’s obviously nice given how bad Perez is against left-handers. Another nice thing about the Yanks is that none of them are priced over $4,600. They don’t have any super cheap options like Detroit, but they’re priced reasonably enough. It’s unclear if Ellsbury and Teixeira will be back in the lineup for this one, but if they are, they’re good options as are Gardner, McCann, Beltran and Headley. Stephen Drew or Didi Gregorius could also be used in a five- or six-man Yankee stack as salary relief.

And finally we have the Blue Jays. We all know how good they are against left-handed pitching, and today they’ll face left-hander Matt Boyd who will be making the seventh start of his big league career. Edwin Encarnacion might be a little pricey in my opinion, but I really can’t argue with you wanting to roster any Blue Jay today. And if you want to go with a five- or six-man Toronto stack, you won’t hear any opposition from me as long as you can fit in one of those expensive starters with them.

If you’re wondering what Vegas thinks, they’re unsurprisingly with me on the Blue Jays, also with me on Detroit, and sort of with me on the Yankees.

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. Brian McCann – $4,000 – New York Yankees
2. Russell Martin – $4,000 – Toronto Blue Jays
3. Alex Avila – $2,200 – Detroit Tigers

First Base

1. Victor Martinez – $3,500 – Detroit Tigers
2. Mark Teixeira – $4,500 – New York Yankees
3. Adam Lind – $4,000 – Milwaukee Brewers
4. Justin Smoak – $2,800 – Toronto Blue Jays

Second Base

1. Stephen Drew – $3,000 – New York Yankees
2. Scooter Gennett – $3,100 – Milwaukee Brewers
3. Neil Walker – $3,500 – Pittsburgh Pirates

Third Base

1. Josh Donaldson – $5,700 – Toronto Blue Jays
2. Miguel Cabrera – $5,300 – Detroit Tigers
3. Chase Headley – $3,600 – New York Yankees
4. Pedro Alvarez – $3,200 – Pittsburgh Pirates

Shortstop

1. Troy Tulowitzki – $4,300 – Toronto Blue Jays
2. Andrew Romine – $2,000 – Detroit Tigers
3. Didi Gregorius – $3,000 – New York Yankees

Outfield

1. Jacoby Ellsbury – $4,500 – New York Yankees
2. Jose Bautista – $5,300 – Toronto Blue Jays
3. Anthony Gose – $3,000 – Detroit Tigers
4. Tyler Collins – $2,500 – Detroit Tigers
5. Brett Gardner – $4,600 – New York Yankees
6. Carlos Beltran – $4,000 – New York Yankees
7. Chris Colabello – $4,000 – Toronto Blue Jays
8. Jerry Sands – $2,400 – Cleveland Indians

Starting Pitcher

1. Clayton Kershaw – $14,400 – Los Angeles Dodgers
2. Francisco Liriano – $10,000 – Pittsburgh Pirates
3. Max Scherzer – $12,500 – Washington Nationals
4. Henry Owens – $7,700 – Boston Red Sox
5. Jonathan Gray – $4,300 – Colorado Rockies