MLB

Under-the-Radar MLB FanDuel Plays for Monday 9/25/21

When being contrarian in daily fantasy sports, there's a fine line between taking a calculated risk and being reckless. But differentiating your lineups from everyone else's is the name of the game if you plan on taking down one of those highly lucrative DFS tournaments. Whether it's because of bookmaker totals, other options at a given position, or some gem you've found who everyone is overlooking, we can always find potential under-rostered plays if we look hard enough.

Here are three such players to consider branching out for on FanDuel's main slate.

Seth Brown, 1B/OF, Oakland Athletics ($2,000)

With only two games on the slate, finding players who go overlooked can be tough.

Not only is it a two-game slate, but one of the games is at Coors Field. It's no secret that Coors Field causes players to be popular, and that should be accentuated even further tonight due to the small slate. This is why we'll turn to Seth Brown to get away from some of the chalk. To be clear, the options at Coors Field are great tonight and have plenty of upside, but we should also look to be a bit different where we can.

Brown comes in a .246 ISO, a very solid 49.4% fly-ball rate, a 33.5% hard-contact rate, and an 18.5% HR/FB rate versus right-handed pitchers this season. He is the minimum salary and has some sneaky home run potential against Chris Flexen, who has a 4.32 xFIP and 38.8% fly-ball rate versus left-handed hitters.

Flexen also has an 8.5% HR/FB rate in this split, which is noticeably better than the league average HR/FB ratio (13.5%). Flexen could be due for some regression to the mean given the fact he allows so many fly balls.

Tom Murphy, C, Seattle Mariners ($2,300)

Tom Murphy is actually a really solid hitter when it comes to one specific thing.

Power. That's what Murphy brings to the plate -- no pun intended -- and that is shown by his 125 wRC+, .210 ISO, 38.5% fly-ball rate, and 40.7% hard-contact rate versus left-handed pitchers. Sure, he is also carrying a 29.1% strikeout rate in the split, showing he is a real boom or bust option.

That lines up nicely versus Cole Irvin, who is allowing a 4.96 xFIP, 1.13 HR/9, a 39.2% fly-ball rate, and a low 15.6% strikeout rate versus right-handed hitters this season. If everyone is looking to Coors Field, take a shot with the other game to be different.