Below we’ve got a discussion of the starting pitching situation as well as the best teams to use for stacks for Sunday’s 15-game all-day 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

A pitcher’s matchup is one of the adjustments I make to his baseline projection. But with ball park adjustments, salary and the baseline projection itself to consider, often the matchup isn’t significant enough to be the determinative factor when deciding whether or not to roster a pitcher. However, today it turned out to be the deciding factor for several players I’m recommending you consider rostering.

The first is Corey Kluber ($10,600) who will be facing the Minnesota Twins. The Twins have a lineup that leans righty-heavy, and they’ve struggled against right-handed pitching. They have the third lowest wRC+ and seventh highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching. With Kluber and Max Scherzer having the best baseline projections of any starters going today, that bump for Kluber with the good matchup gives him the highest projection of the day according to my model. Throw in the more favorable ball park for Kluber and the fact that he’s $2,600 cheaper, and Kluber is definitely my preferred pitcher of the two.

That said, Scherzer’s 26.7 percent K-BB% is tough to ignore. He doesn’t have a great matchup against the Rockies, but he doesn’t necessarily need a great matchup to be considered. I would not choose to roster Scherzer over Kluber, but if you could fit them both into a lineup, Scherzer is certainly worth rostering. As you’ll see below, I think there are enough cheap bats available if you want to go this route.

As for the other expensive pitchers, Chris Archer ($12,300) is too expensive according to my model despite having a decent matchup with the Mets. Jake Arrieta is a bit cheaper than Archer, but he has a terrible matchup. He’s facing the Giants who have the highest wRC+ in the league against right-handed pitching. The other expensive option is Felix Hernandez. My model doesn’t see value in Felix’s price, but it doesn’t think he is overpriced. I imagine the hot-hitting Texas offense may scare people off Felix, so he’s a fine tournament play with a presumably low-ish ownership percentage.

In the mid-price range, we’ve got more starters with really good matchups. First, Jake Peavy ($6,900) will be starting opposite Arrieta in Wrigley. Unlike Arrieta, Peavy has a good matchup against the Cubs who still have the second highest strikeout rate against right-handed pitching. Peavy has a sub-4.00 ERA but an xFIP a bit above 4.00, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wary about using him. But if you don’t want to pay up for two expensive starters, this is probably where I’d turn first for salary relief.

The other option is Bartolo Colon opposite Archer. The Rays have the third highest strikeout rate and fourth worst wOBA against right-handed pitching so the matchup is obviously good. Colon is in the opposite situation of Peavy as his ERA is above 4.00 but his xFIP is below it. Either situation makes it tough to trust each guy, but, again, these are your options if you want salary relief in your second SP slot.

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

According to implied run totals, Vegas likes the Tigers, Diamondbacks and Yankees the most today. Two of those three teams have five hitters ranked toward the top of my projections today and the other has four, so I’m somewhat in agreement with Vegas, though there are a few other teams I have my eye on as well.

The two teams with five hitters ranked toward the top of my projections today are the Yankees and Diamondbacks. Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and potential salary relief option Garrett Jones are the five Yankees the projections like. The problem is that there’s no value to be had outside of Jones. Given that I don’t really love the cheap pitching options today, I don’t think it wise to pay up for Yankees.

As for the D’Backs, I like their matchup with Anthony DeSclafani. Or at least I like their left-handed bats. DeSclafani generates ground balls on over 50 percent of his batted balls against right-handed hitters, but his ground ball rate is just 38.8 perecnt against left-handed hitters. That’s a big reason why his HR/9 vs. LHH is 1.27. David Peralta, Jake Lamb, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ender Inciarte can all provide value today in that matchup. If you wanted to make a stack of it, throw Paul Goldschmidt in with that quartet as he’s fairly matchup-proof.

As for the Tigers, they’ll be facing left-hander Henry Owens who will be making his second career start. Detroit’s most devastating bat sans Miguel Cabrera is J.D Martinez, who has the platoon advantage against Owens, as do Ian Kinsler and Rajai Davis (who is likely to lead off). Victor Martinez, a switch-hitter, has been much better from the right side, so he is also an option today. Davis and Martinez are the value plays if you don’t want to stack.

The other teams I’m considering today are Seattle and St. Louis. Seattle will face Colby Lewis, so I really like their left-handed bats. Kyle Seager and Robinson Cano are solid values, and Brad Miller and Seth Smith are even better values. I particularly like Miller as the SS position is rather thin today. If you wanted to go with a Seattle-heavy stack, you could also go ahead and pay up for Nelson Cruz.

And finally, I’m interested in St. Louis left-handers against Jimmy Nelson. Nelson straight up dominates right-handers as hitters without the platoon advantage are slashing just .195/.276/.289 against Nelson this year. But left-handers are faring considerably better slashing .286/.360/.463. That makes Matt Carpenter, Kolten Wong, Jason Heyward and Brandon Moss all worth consideration and potentially stackable depending on whether Moss hits up the order near the other guys. As far as value goes, Carpenter is a bit overpriced and thus not necessarily someone you have to roster if you’re not stacking Cards.

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. Jarrod Saltalamacchia – $2,600 – Arizona Diamondbacks
2. John Jaso – $2,800 – Tampa Bay Rays
3. Yasmani Grandal – $3,400 – Los Angeles Dodgers

First Base

1. David Ortiz – $4,000 – Boston Red Sox
2. Anthony Rizzo – $5,100 – Chicago Cubs
3. Adam Lind – $4,000 – Milwaukee Brewers

Second Base

1. Robinson Cano – $4,100 – Seattle Mariners
2. Kolten Wong – $3,700 – St. Louis Cardinals
3. Scooter Gennett – $2,700 – Milwaukee Brewers

Third Base

1. Kyle Seager – $4,000 – Seattle Mariners
2. Jake Lamb – $3,500 – Arizona Diamondbacks
3. Todd Frazier – $4,600 – Cincinnati Reds

Shortstop

1. Brad Miller – $3,200 – Seattle Mariners
2. Ian Desmond – $3,500 – Washington Nationals
3. Hanley Ramirez – $3,900 – Boston Red Sox

Outfield

1. Jason Heyward – $4,200 – St. Louis Cardinals
2. Brandon Moss – $3,300 – St. Louis Cardinals
3. David Peralta – $3,400 – Arizona Diamondbacks
4. J.D. Martinez – $4,700 – Detroit Tigers
5. Rajai Davis – $3,200 – Detroit Tigers
6. Andrew McCutchen – $4,500 – Pittsburgh Pirates
7. Garrett Jones – $2,500 – New York Yankees

Starting Pitcher

1. Corey Kluber – $10,600 – Cleveland Indians
2. Max Scherzer – $13,200 – Washington Nationals
3. Jake Peavy – $6,900 – San Francisco Giants
4. Bartolo Colon – $7,400 – New York Mets
5. Felix Hernandez – $10,500 – Seattle Mariners

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.

See, I told you I thought there were enough cheap bats to pair Kluber and Scherzer. But let’s see what a lineup looks like with Kluber and a cheaper second pitching option.

This isn’t exactly the trade off, but essentially the difference between the first and second lineup is giving up Scherzer to get Trout and Martinez into your lineup. I don’t know that I have much of a preference one way or the other. The projections for both lineups are fairly close together. For fun, let’s see what an Arizona stack might look like.