Welcome to the MLB DFS League Championship Series (LCS) rundown & cheat sheet column for Monday, October 12, 2020.

Looking for help with building line-ups on DraftKings, FanDuel and Yahoo for the 2020 MLB DFS Playoffs?  We’ll be here each day covering our thoughts on the Main Slate (2+ games) on the best plays and picks for the day’s MLB Playoff DFS contests!

With just 2 games on most slates from here on in, we need to keep some of the basic small slate principles in mind:

• Make sure that you adjust “batters vs pitcher” settings in the Lineup Cruncher to allow for 2+ vs the default of 0
• It’s critical to use some ownership data (especially for you FC Pro members) to create groups of sub-20% owned players for lineup uniqueness in GPPs
• Generally we’re not going to have significantly one-sided games, so all-out team stacks are not often going to be the most profitable path to profit
• Limited options is going to cause us to do deeper dives into things like historical BvP, pitch type data and how starters have fared against their opponents the last couple years

With this said, let’s take a look at some of the key things and facts to know as you head into lineup construction for this two gamer.

On FanDuel, Lance McCullers Jr should be pretty intriguing at his $7,500 salary, especially thanks to the 5 for 27 nature that the starting unit for Tampa Bay has against him (.197 wOBA). He wasn’t great his last time out, but did dominate with 7 innings of 0 earned run, 7 strikeout ball when they last met (despite that being in 2018). He’s a fine GPP SP2 on DK, too, especially given that we may see another lower-scoring game between HOU and TB.

On DraftKings, I don’t see how you fade Walker Buehler here thanks to an accessible price point, solid historical K data against ATL hitters (22.4% vs the current ATL roster) and leading the slate in terms of implied opponent total and win probability. I think you can pretty easily have him and one of Charlie Morton or Lance McCullers as your mound tandem (just $200 separate these guys, so if you tighten your hitting groups you can make sure you cover your bases for just about all combinations).

From a hitting perspective, the Dodgers have the highest run total on the slate, and they face Max Fried who they’ve had some collective success against (11 for 29 and a .496 wOBA). The likes of Justin Turner as a LHP-masher in his last 2 seasons (135 wRC+) puts him in a great spot to succeed. Don’t sleep on Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy who mash lefties at a pretty nice clip as well – especially given they should be underowned due to the LvL nature of the matchup. Mookie Betts has actually been quite pedestrian against LHP his last couple years (56 wRC+), so it’s not crazy to think about fading him here if you want to be a little contrarian, too.

The Rays against McCullers is not a great match-up on paper at all, but there is plenty of value on this roster that you’ll probably want to have some exposure to. Austin Meadows and Randy Arozarena are both great options on FanDuel for the price – as are Ji-Man Choi and Manuel Margot (both FD and DK). Joey Wendle’s been making a lot of hard contact lately, too, and remains a nice lower-own% option in this matchup.

Check out the full player pool below as you head into crunching mode for this slate!

Cheat Sheet for FanDuel, DraftKings & Yahoo! Contests (player pool-oriented)