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 and rankings of the top plays at each position.

Pitching Perspective

Man, Monday’s 10-game slate didn’t provide us much depth at pitching, and tonight’s full slate of games might be even weaker on the mound. Last night at least provided us with a somewhat reasonably priced Dallas Keuchel and, to a lesser extent, David Price. But tonight the theoretical top pitching option, Jake Arrieta, is exorbitantly priced at $14,500 and has only an average matchup, so I’ll be looking elsewhere.

Of the three other pitchers priced above $10,000, the one I like most is Tyson Ross ($10,600). Ross has been solid lately with a 1.73 ERA in his last four starts. The matchup is below average against the Giants, but the park factor of Petco offsets that to some degree. It’s not my favorite play, but, again, the options are limited tonight.

My favorite play of the day is a guy I was targeting on Monday, Gio Gonzalez ($8,800). The O’s-Nats game was rained out last night, so Gio had his start pushed back to tonight. As I said, I was on Gio last night when his price tag was $9,600, so I’m certainly on him tonight with a price tag that is $800 lower in the exact same matchup. And it’s a good matchup, the best of the slate according to my model. The O’s have the fifth worst wRC+ and fourth highest strikeout rate against left-handed pitching this year. Gio is a must-start.

Danny Salazar ($11,100) is the other expensive pitcher to consider tonight, though I definitely prefer Gio to him and probably prefer the $500 savings you get with Ross. The Twins are right-handed heavy in the lineup and it shows in their stats. They have the fourth lowest wRC+ and eight highest strikeout rate in the league against right-handed pitching. Salazar is a boom-or-bust type option who has racked up eight-plus strikeouts in 12 of his 27 starts but has also allowed four earned runs or more in eight starts. He can miss bats, but when hitters put the bat on the ball, he does not manage contact as well as other starters. He’s more of a tournament than a cash play.

If you’re looking to save a little money on pitching tonight, it’s going to be tough. There could be no better evidence of that than the fact that the first cheap pitching option I might consider is one pitching in Coors Field. J.A. Happ ($7,300) has been very good in his last seven starts with a 1.30 ERA (3.03 xFIP) and 44 strikeouts compared to just seven walks in 41 2/3 innings. The closest thing he has faced to Coors in that stretch is Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, so the conditions will obviously be much different tonight. But my model accounts for ball park, and it has Happ being severely underpriced. That’s partly because of Happ’s recent performance and partly because Colorado does not hit left-handed pitching well as they own the lowest wRC+ in the league against left-handed pitching by a wide, wide margin.

Other than that? I’d say Chris Heston ($8,500) at San Diego is a good play, and it is. But the price isn’t as good as it could be. On other sites that shall not be named, he’s much more favorably priced. And my model thinks Sean Nolin ($5,900) at home in Oakland with an above average matchup against Texas is a value, but I can’t stomach the 5.33 xFIP. Perhaps Tyler Cravy ($4,600) could capitalize on a Cubs team that strikes out a lot, but his strikeout rate is below average as is his walk rate, which makes for a bad combination.

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

Perhaps the hardest thing about a slate without good pitching options is picking between all the hitters who have great matchups against a weak crop of pitching. I could easily make the case for stacking seven or eight teams tonight, but I’ll try to keep it to three or four.

First, the Coors game. I would stay away from the Rockies for the reasons I mentioned above when discussing Happ as a pitching option. You don’t have to use Happ, but I wouldn’t use Rockies. The Pirates will face Chris Rusin who has a bizarre set of recent performances. In his last three starts at Coors he has two complete games, one of which was a shutout, and in the third he allowed 11 runs to the Mets. In his last three road starts he has turned in two quality starts, one of them at Pittsburgh, and in the third he allowed six runs in San Diego in just three innings. Make sense of all that.

That strangeness aside, Rusin has shown a pretty traditional split and has a 4.24 xFIP against right-handed hitters compared to 3.54 against left-handers. That makes Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte good, but expensive, options. Were Sean Rodriguez to crack the lineup, he would make for a nice value play, but that’s unlikely. Josh Harrison and Francisco Cervelli are underpriced but only slightly so. Still, they have a nice matchup. I don’t know if a full-on Pittsburgh stack makes sense, but all those righties are options if in the lineup.

If I had a gun to my head and had to pick two more stacks, I’d probably go with Boston and Houston. Both will face left-handed pitchers with Boston facing Matt Moore and Houston facing fly ball machine Hector Santiago.

Moore was dynamite in his last start against Baltimore tossing seven shutout innings with nine strikeouts. We mentioned how good of a matchup Baltimore is for left-handed hitters above, but it was still a surprising performance from Moore. Even with that start being one of his nine on the season, he still has a 7.06 ERA (5.30 xFIP). Right-handed hitters have a collective wOBA against Moore that is just shy of .400. So Mookie Betts, Dustin Pedroia, Xander Bogaerts and Rusney Castillo are all solid options with Rusney being a very nice value option. Even David Ortiz grades out well against the left-handed Moore as Moore has been well below average against left-handed hitters also. Those five could make for a heavy stack, or Mookie, Pedroia and Xander could be a mini-stack.

As for Houston, they can go very right-handed heavy and will face Santiago who has a 1.66 HR/9 against right-handed hitters this year. On the road, his HR/9 against all hitters is 1.60. The Astros are second in the league in ISO against left-handed pitchers, behind only the powerful Blue Jays. Jose Altuve, Geroge Springer, Carlos Correa, Jed Lowrie and Evan Gattis should hit 1-2-3-4-5 and make for a great stack option. Were Chris Carter to start at first, as he did the last time Houston faced a lefty, he could be thrown into the mix as well.

In the interest of expediency, here are a few other teams I would consider without getting into specific names. Chicago left-handers have a good matchup against Tyler Cravy. Miami left-handers have a great matchup against Aaron Harang who has the worst xFIP in the league among qualified starters against left-handed hitters. White Sox right-handers are an option against Daniel Norris. Seattle lefties look great against a very fly ball-heavy pitcher in Jeremy Guthrie. And the Yankees could be the ones to finally start closing the gap between Marco Estrada‘s 3.14 ERA and 4.96 xFIP.

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 – $4,100 – New York Yankees
2. Kyle Schwarber – $4,400 – Chicago Cubs
3. Wilin Rosario – $3,000 – Colorado Rockies

First Base

1. Anthony Rizzo – $5,100 – Chicago Cubs
2. Lucas Duda – $3,800 – New York Mets
3. Joey Votto – $4,900 – Cincinnati Reds
4. Justin Bour – $3,500 – Miami Marlins

Second Base

1. Jose Altuve – $4,500 – Houston Astros
2. Robinson Cano – $4,300 – Seattle Mariners
3. Daniel Murphy – $3,700 – New York Mets

Third Base

1. Kyle Seager – $4,400 – Seattle Mariners
2. Derek Dietrich – $3,300 – Miami Marlins
3. Evan Longoria – $4,000 – Tampa Bay Rays

Shortstop

1. Xander Bogaerts – $4,200 – Boston Red Sox
2. Brad Miller – $3,300 – Seattle Mariners
3. Carlos Correa – $4,700 – Houston Astros

Outfield

1. Jacoby Ellsbury – $4,000 – New York Yankees
2. Seth Smith – $3,100 – Seattle Mariners
3. Andrew McCutchen – $5,800 Pittsburgh Pirates
4. Christian Yelich – $4,100 – Miami Marlins
5. Jay Bruce – $4,000 – Cincinnati Reds
6. Justin Ruggiano – $3,200 – Los Angeles Dodgers
7. Brandon Guyer – $2,900 – Tampa Bay Rays
8. Brett Gardner – $4,800 – New York Yankees

Starting Pitcher

1. Gio Gonzalez – $8,800 – Washington Nationals
2. Tyson Ross – $10,600 – San Diego Padres
3. J.A. Happ – $7,300 – Pittsburgh Pirates
4. Danny Salazar – $11,100 – Cleveland Indians
5. Chris Heston – $8,500 – San Francisco Giants