Welcome to another edition of Def Pen’s MLB Daily Fantasy breakdown series. In this breakdown, the top pitching options of the early slate, as well as the top hitting stacks of the day slate, will be analyzed. We will be using FanDuel’s pricing and scoring system as that is my personal preference. To read last week’s breakdown, click here.
Pitchers:
*Important Note: When playing FanDuel daily fantasy baseball it has become evident that having a strong starting pitcher is an integral part of the success of a lineup. Strikeouts are weighted heavily in FanDuel’s scoring system thus making guys with a high strikeout upside very appealing. The SIERA stat (Skill interactive ERA) has become very popular amongst sabermetrics crowds of baseball and helps understand just how good the pitcher is. These two aspects of strikeout percentages and SIERA combined with ballpark factors as well as weather factors are all taken into consideration when analyzing the best fantasy pitcher of the night.
Early Slate:
- Jesse Chavez: $6,800 – Among the top pitchers in this slate, Chavez has the best K/9 ranking with 7.29 strikeouts per 9 innings. Additionally, he’s up against a highly strikeout-prone lineup in the Oakland Athletics who strike out against right-handed pitchers 24.5 percent of the time. With a respectable, but not overwhelming, SIERA of 4.47 and a favorable park for pitching (Oakland Coliseum) with low HR rates, Jesse Chavez seems likely to perform as the best starter among the 1:05 PM slate.
- Andrew Triggs $8,000 – Because the weather is a major concern in other parks during the early slate, Triggs seems to have a pretty favorable matchup against the Los Angeles Angels. Of course, Oakland Coliseum hosts this game which is always comforting for pitching matchups, and the Angels, who are without Mike Trout again today, have been mediocre offensively, holding onto a 21.2% strikeout percentage against right-handed pitching. Triggs will provide some extra assurance for his owners as he maintains the best SIERA (3.67) of pitchers in the early slate.
Main Slate:
- Yu Darvish: $11,200: Yu Darvish boasts the best matchup of the main slate, with a k/9 slightly over 9.0 and an ERA of 2.76. Darvish Faces a weak Padres offense who ranks third highest in strikeout percentage. PetCo park in SanDiego has also been considered a fairly favorable pitcher ballpark, for the most part, again adding more incentive to get Darvish into your lineups tonight.
- Danny Salazar: $10,100: Despite Salazar’s ERA not looking that great this season, he has been striking out hitters at an absurd rate, posting a 13.1 k/9 thus far. Combine that with the fact that he is facing a very weak Blue Jays offense who ranks eighth highest in strikeout percentage and you get a very favorable matchup for a lot of strikeouts to happen tonight. If Salazar can keep the runs to a minimum expect him to be the highest scoring pitcher on this slate.
Batters:
*Important Note: While often times you can get lucky by selecting individual players off of different teams, the best strategy for MLB Daily Fantasy is to stack hitters in a lineup as to rack up runs/RBIs if a guy scores another guy in your lineup. Think of it as similar to a QB/WR stack in football, where both get the points for a touchdown connection so by starting both and in the case that they score a touchdown you are getting seemingly double the points. This works in the same way, wherein if you stack a lineup you are maximizing your potential points.
Early Slate:
- Houston Astros – Playing against Atlanta starting pitcher Jaime Garcia, who has struggled thus far, in a home field that projects to yield an extraordinary amount of triples to hitters, the Houston Astros could be in line for another standout performance. Houston’s been one of the best teams in the MLB, if not the best, and there isn’t much reason to believe that they won’t continue their dominance in this early matchup.
- Chicago Cubs – With an inviting matchup at Coors Field against German Marquez, who picked up -6 FanDuel points in his last outing, the Cubs look to feast & take advantage of the lighter air. We should expect those well-renowned hitters like Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo power a potent offensive attack in today’s game, especially if the precipitation isn’t too severe.
Main Slate:
1. Detroit Tigers – The Tigers have been on an absolute tear from the offensive side of the ball lately, putting up 5+ runs in 6 out of their last 7 games. While playing in Chase field, they also have a very large ballpark advantage as this ranks as the 2nd best hitting ballpark for fantasy stats. Not to mention that they also obtain a very good matchup in facing opposing pitcher Zack Godley who has been less than Godley his past two MLB seasons, to say the least, hosting an ERA above 4.2.
2. Milwaukee Brewers – Despite the offense hitting a bit of a slump since Ryan Braun got hurt, he came back into the lineup last game and figures to right the ship. With guys who can go yard at any moment the Brewers stack of players is always a potent one. Along with them hitting in a very good ballpark at home today, they also obtain the best matchup of the night, in my opinion, facing Kyle Kendrick who has an absurdly high 13.50 ERA on the season thus far.
All stats and data courtesy of Fangraphs, RotoGrinders, and baseball reference
Contributed to by Ryan Niemchick @ryanniemchick on Twitter.
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