The Daily Grind: 4-24-14 – Presented by FanDuel

Agenda

  1. …And we’re back
  2. DFS for Today
  3. Fantasy for Tomorrow
  4. Table

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1. What did I miss?

Certainly not two home runs from Kyle Seager. While I didn’t have any time to watch baseball these last two days, I was able to monitor my normal fantasy teams. Nice to have Seager finally pull his weight.

What else happened that maybe didn’t show up in my fantasy stats?

2. Today’s DFS

Early: Six games fit in the early bucket. Not a single one of them is a hitter’s paradise, so we’ll have to play it by matchup.

And therein lies the rub. With Edwin Jackson, Michael Bolsinger, Erik Bedard, Ricky Nolasco, Brandon Cumpton, and Bruce Chen on the hill, who do you exploit? Jackson and Bolsinger have a strong cross breeze to knock down the baseball. Bedard and Nolasco play in one of the least hitter friendly parks in baseball, but at least weather won’t get in the way. Pittsburgh and Cleveland are no place to stack today.

I’ll probably focus on the Diamondbacks against Edwin Jackson with a generous side helping of right-handed Twins and left-handed Rays.

Late: Only five games in the late bucket. The schedulers that be have made Thursday twice thin.

Bud Norris and Drew Hutchison are both reasonably decent pitchers, but they also both carry an implosion risk. Since the Rogers Centre is always one of the best parks for home runs, this isn’t a bad place for a do or die stack.

Twin lefties in Boston means more right-handed batters. Your Jonny Gomes and Alfonso Soriano types look best.

Brett Oberholtzer maybe isn’t as bad as I keep saying he is. He’s not a fantasy asset by any means, but he looks like he can maintain a 4.50 ERA without too many meltdowns going forward. He won’t do better because extreme fly ball pitchers don’t usually sport a 3.2 percent HR/FB.

Kyle Kendrick can get swatted around by lefties from time to time, but I’m not going to Chavez Ravine for any stacks tonight.

3. Tomorrow’s not DFS

Pitchers to Start: I like Robbie Erlin, but he has to get past both Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals lineup. This isn’t the best place to stream.

If you want to be completely unexcited about your prospects, Henderson Alvarez will probably do just fine against the Mets. He also probably won’t record many strikeouts or the win.

The only thing hinky about Jesse Chavez’s line is his 27.5 percent strikeout rate compared to a 8.5 percent whiff rate. He’ll probably strikeout fewer batters going forward. He’ll probably walk more guys. For now, he has a 2.93 FIP, which is all I need to know going into a game against the Astros.

Robbie Ross already made the lefty-leaning Mariners look pretty bad. We’ll see if he can do it again.

Pitchers to Exploit: Ubaldo Jimenez doesn’t have a tough assignment against the Royals, but he’s having trouble rolling ground balls and Baltimore is friendly lefty power hitters.

Let’s try out the Rays against Erik Johnson at the Chicago Slugging Grounds.

I wish Carlos Villanueva was left-handed so I could watch Carlos Gomez go yard on the first pitch of the game. Hell, it could still happen.

Brad Peacock is on the wrong side of the Jesse Chavez matchup. I say that because the A’s are a strong offense, not because Chavez is comparable to King Felix.

Hitters (power): David DeJesus and Matt Joyce are on call again. You’ll notice these hitter picks can get repetitive.

I love Jonny Gomes day. Did you notice Mark Buehrle still has a sub-1.00 ERA. He’s also down to 82 mph. Just a few away from Jamie Moyer. I hope he also pitches until he’s 75.

Run the Yankees lefty-stack, headlined by Kelly Johnson. Anyone better will absolutely be owned.

Hitters (speed): Gregor Blanco and Brandon Crawford might be worth a look against Carlos Carrasco. For some reason, I think Carrasco is going to shutdown the Giants.

Gerardo Parra draws Roberto Hernandez.

4. Table

The table below indicates which stadiums have the best conditions for hitters today. The color coding is a classic stoplight where green equals go for hitters. The weather conditions are from SI Weather’s home run app. A 10/10 means great atmospheric conditions for home runs. A 1/10 means lousy atmospheric conditions.

The weather is clear although it’s still a bit nippy at many stadiums.

The Link. With the early games, you’d think a windy day in Chicago would be a good thing, but it’s mostly blowing in today. Speaking of wind blowing, I found this very cool tool today.

The late games are hogging all the hitter friendly parks. Overall, it’s not the best day for my particular process. That probably means I’ll win with the way my luck has been running backwards over the last 10 days.

This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy, is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of FanDuel. FanGraphs maintains complete editorial control of the postings, and brings you these posts in a continued desire to provide the best analytical information on the latest in baseball.





You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam

13 Comments
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thalooch
9 years ago

Tropicana is now hitter friendly?

Stack Dbacks……yawn. This is not DFS strategy.

Rehallek
9 years ago
Reply to  Brad Johnson

I think he’s talking about saying Bedard and Nolasco play in one of the most hitter friendly parks in the league.

thalooch
9 years ago
Reply to  Brad Johnson

Stacking is not DFS strategy. It’s simply gambling for people who don’t care to spend the time to do their own research and just want to make a quick buck. It’s nothing more than a get rich quick strategy for GPP play and frankly the discussion of it lowers the credibility of Fangraphs as a reputable site for baseball analysis.