Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks for ScoreStreak 6/14/14

DFSR has partnered with ScoreStreak: a new, innovative style of DFS play. Gone is the salary finagling, mixing and matching, and hair-pulling that goes into setting lineups. ScoreStreak simplifies the process in an easy-to-use interface. Employing a prop-pick style, ScoresStreak leagues are specific outcome dependent with three categories: Total Bases, Hits, and for pitchers, Strikeouts.

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Today's picks brought to you by the DFSR team with a hat tip to Mark Hallman

Total Bases

Nelson Cruz
One great aspect of ScoreStreak is you ability to play guys regardless of salary considerations. This would sound like an easy proposition, i.e. just choose the best players always. But with such a large player pool we need to make careful consideration in a limited number of spots. Today Cruz is a guy tough to play on salary sites because of his price, but here he’s in the sweet spot for total bases. Hr crushes lefty pitching with a .974 OPS and .415 wOBA over the last year against that hand. And then we get Mr. J.A. Happ(less). Cruz will face the lefty in Camden Yards, a batter’s haven. This is the top total bases expectation on the day and a guy I’ll have in my top spot.

Giancarlo Stanton
He’s significantly better against lefties, so I’m typically hesitant to get him in against righties. That being said, I’m usually considering him with the salary in mind. Here that isn’t an issue as we are just looking for total bases and not necessarily value hunting. It should be mentioned that he has a large gap between his expected total bases and his expected hits meaning he needs to be in one of the top total bases spots as he’s an all or nothing kind of guy. And hey, welcome back Vance Worley. You are about to get smoked.

Hits

Robinson Cano
Cano’s seen a power outage since the move to Seattle. Some of this was to be expected going from a great hitter’s park to a pitcher’s park. Though I don’t think anyone expected this kind of power decline. But the hits are still there and that’s all we are concerned with in this slot. Cano is a great play against Nick Martinez, he of the 5.80 xFIP and inability to record any kind of meaningful number of strikeouts. Cano is still a contact hitter through and through. His K’s sit at only about 11% and the walk rate is low as well. He just puts the bat on the ball. This is the perfect scenario against a guy like Martinez. We just want to give ourselves a chance in hits and he has the best chance of anyone to collect multiple hits today.

Victor Martinez
Martinez is much like Cano in that many of his stats revolve around him putting the ball in play. But he takes it to even more of the extreme. He is nearly impossible to strikeout with a crazy low 6.4% K rate this year. He walks more than he strikes out, neither in any kind of meaningful way. His bat just gets on the ball. Expect it even more against Ricky Nolasco who’s got his own kind of strikeout issues, in that he can’t get them. I’ll have V-Mart in a top hitting spot today as the contact rate should be there.

Strikeouts

David Price
Its pretty neck and neck for the top spot in the system for strikeouts today, with no one really standing out as a top K option. Price ranks pretty near the top in our system, though I don’t have a ton of confidence in him racking up the nine needed for the top spot. The Astros are a better hitting squad, but the K% is over 20%. Price has had issues with the long ball this season, though that isn’t a big issue for us because one swing of the bat doesn’t preclude him from going deeper in games even if he’s losing. Price is K-ing more than 10 per nine and his walk rate is as low as you’ll ever see under one per nine. That means he at least gives himself a chance to rack up the K’s.

James Shields
Could have gone Kluber here, but wanted to give another guy that could reap you beenfits and may be under-started in this format. The White Sox, while good against righties, also strike out second most in the league at 23.6%, only .1% behind the Marlins. Granted, they can hit and hit well. But the strike outs are there. This bumps up Shields’s expectation and could make his way into a top spot. If you want to shoot the moon with a Price or Kluber then slot Shields in for a little bit of safety. I don’t think he hits nine, but the six mark seems totally reasonable against a team that whiffs so much.