The MLB DFS Weekend Planner is back for the 2022 season! After a long lockout and a short Spring Training, the time for grinding MLB DFS lineups is here. There’s absolutely nothing better than diving into the data, the matchups, and the ballparks to build some daily lineups.
This season, this weekly piece will look ahead to each MLB DFS weekend through a few different lenses. We can’t cover every possible matchup or salary so this macro view will cover the schedule, the weather, ballparks to fade and stack, and the best offenses and pitching staffs of the weekend. At the end, I will give my thoughts on an underrated bat and arm that look to have favorable circumstances over the coming days.
Let’s dive into the MLB DFS Weekend!
MLB Weekend Schedule
The “Probable Pitchers” grid at Fangraphs is always a fantastic resource for looking ahead at the MLB schedule. Here is the weekend at a glance. As we will look at in the Weather section, below, just about all of the games should see good baseball conditions during the holiday weekend.
You can see, we have Coors Field, Camden Yards, and Great American Ballpark that all host elite hitting environments. There are also plenty of pitching-friendly options over the weekend. More on that in the Ballparks section of this column.
MLB Weekend Weather
Presently, the weather in Florida looks bad for the weekend, but both Miami and Tampa Bay have roofs on their stadiums. Kansas City may experience light rains this weekend for the Royals-Astros, but nothing that is likely going to have any impact on the games.
Weather for this weekend’s games and for any MLB game can be found at Swish Analytics or any number of MLB tracking sites. It is important to monitor the weather right up until a game starts to get the latest local updates.
Best Pitching Parks
| Park | Offensive Park Factor | HR Park Factor |
| Oakland Coliseum | 30th | 29th |
| Tropicana Field | 28th | 25th |
| Rogers Centre | 23rd | 13th |
Best Hitting Parks
| Park | Offensive Park Factor | HR Park Factor |
| Coors Field | 2nd | 9th |
| Great American Ballpark | 1st | 1st |
| Camden Yards | 6th | 7th |
| Dodger Stadium | 5th | 2nd |
Data courtesy of Baseball Savant (3-year averages)
Best Offenses to Stack
Cincinnati Reds (vs. WSH) – Getting to hit at home as the weather warms up is one piece of a very enticing puzzle for the Reds this weekend. The other is the fact that the Reds get to face the dregs of National League pitching against the Washington Nationals who will roll out both Josiah Gray and Patrick Corbin this weekend. Gray and Corbin rank 114th and 138th, respectively, in starting pitcher ERA this season. Both also have walk rates hovering around 4.00 per nine innings. Joey Votto, Brandon Drury, and Tyler Stephenson have really been heating up lately and make excellent pieces in a Reds stack this weekend.
Atlanta Braves (@ COL) – Insert powerful offense in Coors Field here. Just be prepared to pay the Coors tax for this team, especially considering the pitching they will face. Sadly, the Braves won’t face Worst Pitcher of the Year, German Marquez, this weekend, but they do get nice consolation prizes in Kyle Freeland and Ryan Feltner. It won’t be a surprise when the Braves have the highest implied total of the slate for three straight days. With the insertion of Michael Harris into a potent lineup, this looks like a team you can stack multiple ways with the 1-9 hitters.
Best Pitching Staffs
Boston Red Sox (@ OAK) – Rich Hill is 84 years old so you never know what you’re going to get from him, but this just looks like the best spots imaginable for both Nathan Eovaldi and Nick Pivetta on Friday and Saturday. Both of the Boston pitchers have been surging lately, with ERAs under 3.00 in the last two weeks. Oakland, as you might imagine, has been unbelievably bad this season, ranking 29th or 30th in average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS for the year. The Oakland park is the icing on the cake here. You can feel comfortable paying up for these salaries when they are high this weekend.
Chicago White Sox (@ TBR) – Doing research for this column, I was surprised to find that Tropicana Field is the number one park for strikeouts, according to Baseball Savant. But then I remembered how much players have complained about how they can’t pick up the ball well due to the backdrop and the white roof of the park. That should work to the advantage for strikeout pitchers like Dylan Cease and Lucas Giolito this weekend. Both are swing-and-miss guys who rely on nasty off-speed stuff to fool their opponents. Both also have strikeout rates over 12.00 this season and are going up against a team that that strikes out 25.2% of the time against righties. That’s the third-worst mark in the league.
Underrated Weekend Bat
Matt Carpenter (DH, NYY) – Carpenter’s start to his Yankees career has been an odd one. He is batting just .188 but has a strong 1.066 OPS. The primary reason for that is he has three hits so far, and all of them have been home runs, including one on Thursday. But the best news for this weekend is that Carpenter is now in the leadoff spot for New York and the Yankees face three mediocre right-handers from Detroit this weekend. He might end up being a cheap leadoff piece that can gain some walks and has enough pop to be worth the price of admission.
Underrated Weekend Arm
Zac Gallen (SP, ARI) – After a strange, injury-filled season in 2021, Gallen appears to have made a complete turn back into the dominant pitcher who gave us some amazing moments in 2020. Gallen’s ERA of 2.32 is the lowest of his career, and while the strikeouts are a little low at 8.76 per nine innings, the walk rate (2.15 BB/9) is also his best ever. But the Pirates are about to come calling and they can assist in those strikeout issues. Pittsburgh strikes out 25.3% of the time against right-handers, the second-highest in the league. They also rank 25th in slugging percentage against righties, so this looks like a spot where Gallen should be able to cruise to a Quality Start at home and hope the offense can get him the win.