MLB Championship Week rumbles on at DraftKings with the $300k High Heat Championship and the $10k Quarter Arcade Championshp tonight. With price points of $100 and $0.25, there is action for everybody. If you have never played DFS before, tonight is a great night to get your feet wet with an entry or two into the Quarter Arcade. Check out this article I wrote last week about how to play DFS today, for your first time.

No day slate this Wednesday as only Houston at New York and Oakland at Seattle are the day games. That leaves us with 13 games to choose from tonight and the options abound. I’m having a tough time picking out favorites and projecting ownership, so let’s wrestle with this conundrum together.

Chris Sale at 13k seems to be the top option and will likely be the most popular. He struck out 14 and 15 in his last two. He has struck out at least 7 since 7/19, and he’s struck out at least 6 every outing since April 30th. He’s a -205 favorite at home and Boston’s TT (team total) is less than 3.

Chris Archer at 12.8k has been on fire recently too. He went the distance last outing striking out 11 while walking one and giving up a hit in Houston. He kept the pitch count under 100 so I’m not worried about a dead arm. While he hasn’t struck out guys as prolifically as Sale and his 12.2 K/9 rate, he is 3rd in the bigs at 10.9 K/9. He offers almost as much upside as Sale, is in a better pitcher’s park at home in Tampa Bay, and faces a weak Minnesota offense. He is a -194 favorite and Vegas actually expects MIN to score fewer runs than BOS tonight (-149 u3 vs. -142 u3).

Sale looks like the better option but not by much. Therefore if we think Sale will be slightly more owned than Archer, then it doesn’t matter which of these guys you take. If Sale is going to be twice as owned as Archer, then Archer is the play, since Sale is not twice as likely to have a big game than Archer. In fact, Archer is the only one of these players to put up a 50 spot – he did that last game.

Behind these two guys are more fine options. David Price is in Texas, Johnny Cueto faces Baltimore at home, and thankfully King Felix throws during the day so we don’t need to wonder if he is broken again (he’s not). Cueto at 10.4k is really cheap and my favorite play of the bunch. -145 vs. Baltimore at Kaufman Stadium, they strike out a lot and he is in a pitcher’s park. That means then that David Price will be the least owned of the lot? Maybe he’s higher owned than Archer due to his price point? David certainly has the worst matchup and has to throw in Arlington, but he’s David F’n Price.

Only two guys I am considering on the cheap end and I likely won’t go there because I think it will be important to pay up for pitching tonight. Gio Gonzalez vs. SD at 7.5k and Bartolo Colon at 6.2k at PHI look like the two best cheap pitching options to me due to their matchups.

Bunch of catching options tonight. If you want to punt I like both the guys from SD,Derek Norrisand Austin Hedges. They can both dong and will be highly under owned. If you want to pay for dongs, I recommend Kyle Schwarber or Russell Martin. 1B has a lot of guys good a hitting available but no exceptional value or matchups. I’ll take Justin Smoak at 2.5k. 6th most likely to dong of all the 1st basemen according to my projections. More value comes to us at 2B with Chris Coghlan. Lefty on righty matchup vs. Peavy, still hitting 3rd amongst a bunch of ball smashers, and still cheap. Give meKiki Hernandez if he is up in the order today, he should be against lefty Holmberg in the Great American Smallpark. We all know Mattingly hates Joc Pederson and his slump, he certainly won’t be hitting up in the order tonight. I expect to see Rollins 1 and Kiki 2, Rollins is also a fine SS option. At 3B I’m paying up, either Todd Frazier or Justin Turner. In the outfield Mike Trout is all the way down to 4.6k and people have forgot about him. Ryan Braun looks nice at 4.1, and David Peralta is too cheap at 3.3k. Rajai Davis is also nice at 3.3k. If you didn’t use Coghlan at 2B you can use him in the OF too, and Jason Bourgeois is still the minimum price and is still leading off against lefties. Anderson is a lefty and not very good.

I’ve been reading Bales’ book Fantasy Basbeball for Smart People. I recommend it. He has some neat data in there that reinforces my ideas on stacking in MLB and how important stacking 6 guys is for chances to win GPPs. With 6 guys in a stack, the probability of scoring over 110 DKfps is 33.2%. With 3-5 it’s 31%, 29.2% for 2 guys, and under 28% for 8 singletons. Taking a full stack is clearly the way to go.

He also did some interesting studies on popularity of a stack vs. profitability of a stack. The most popular 10% of stacks won 22% of GPPs, and this makes sense because the most popular plays usually have the highest expectation. But when you’re on that train, it’s much harder to beat all your opponents. In that same decile of ownership, the average winning score was 167.6. Move down to the second decile of popularity, this tier of stacks won 12% of the GPPs, but with an average winning score of 158.9. What this tells me is that it is almost always correct to fade the chalk stack, because it’s much harder to win a GPP with the chalk stack because of extra ownership on that stack. Baseball is highly volatile and any team can go off on any night. Obviously the chalk stack is the most likely to go off, but the increased expectation of them going off is usually not worth the added competition.

Nobody really jumps off the page as chalk to me tonight though. There is no Coors game. Only four teams have TTs of 4.5; the Mets, Dodgers, Tigers, and Blue Jays. A handful of teams are at 4.0, PIT, STL, ARI, LAA, TB, CWS, and CLE. Everybody knows the Phillies are terrible at defense, Citizens Bank Park is bad at holding baseballs, and the Mets have been on fire lately. TOR has the most potent offense in baseball and plays in Arlington tonight. TOR and NYM were the two most popular stacks with TOR checking in at 20% and NYM around 15% last night, I suppose it is safe to assume that they will be the most popular again tonight. DET was popular last night also, Miggy was 15%, they all performed, chalk DET up for 3rd most popular stack? If that’s the case then most lineups won’t be able to afford two stud pitchers, those stacks are expensive. That means most players will go with an ace and … Gio Gonzalez? Bartolo Colon? Patrick Corbin? Jake Peavy? That probably means that after the BOS, BAL, MIN, and TEX teams facing aces, the most under owned stacks will be SD, PHI, STL, AND CHC? StL and ChC have my attention, both those teams can score runs.

As far as the rest of the lot goes, I’m setting my sights on the Great American Smallpark in Cincinnati. The Dodgers are chronically cheap and under owned even in great matchups. I like taking visiting teams because they always get 9 at bats and can score as many runs as they want in the top of extra innings. CIN looks good too but not as good as LAD. They will be even less owned. LAD is getting some attention today, CIN gets none. Two other stacks I may run with include ARI at home v Lackey. Lackey’s perceived as good so most will avoid ARI, but it’s hot in the desert and Vegas has ARI projected for 4 runs. Lastly I think the Angels will go over-looked tonight. Verlander has name recognition and he’s a righty, there isn’t any exciting lefties for the Angels. Check this out though – Verlander is a reverse splits pitcher. His wOBA vRHB is 0.356 with 17.3% K, vLHB it’s 0.296 and 19.10%. The Angels have been cold vs. RHP lately but I don’t care about that. They’re 19th on the season. More importantly, the studs named Trout and Pujols who are cheap and will be under owned do good things vs. RHP. Trout has a wOBA of 0.406 and ISO of 0.286 – insane numbers – vs. RHP. Pujols checks in at 0.352 and 0.225 – both strong enough to make me salivate over this matchup, not worry about righty on righty nonsense.

I’ve got three entries into the $100 event tonight. One is LAD. Two is LAA. Three is either ARI or CIN, I’m leaning ARI, although lineups may make the decision for me. Or maybe I’ll enter four times. Or maybe I’ll make another Dodgers stack and enter 5 times. DFS is so fun.

Devo