Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks for ScoreStreak 8/17/14

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.

New users who deposit through DFSR will get an extra $10 to play with. We are putting in picks every night and giving you some of our top plays each day. Two are on us, the third is all you. Or go your own way. As always, if you are new to daily fantasy baseball, make sure read our Free Baseball e-book. It contains one mistake that basically everyone in the daily fantasy baseball industry is making!

Also be sure to sign up for a free 3-day trial to access the MLB system and spreadsheets that help produce our picks. And give ScoreStreak a try. You'll like it as much as we do.

Total Bases

Ryan Braun
Braun hasn't quite been himself this year, but that shouldn't matter against Dan Haren. For all of his ability to avoid allowing walks, what's left of Haren's stuff simply isn't enough to keep the elite bats in the league off of the bases. His major weakness is the long ball, which is nice, since what we're looking for from the top spot is the long ball. Haren has fewer than 1 K or BB per 9 innings, which means that Braun ought to get a few balls in play, and hard hit ones at that.

Mike Trout
With 43 Ks and 24 BBs in 79 innings, Tepesch is also a guy who allows a ton of balls in play. Watching Trout march to the plate will have to feel akin to watching the middle school bully round the corner and get that sickening smile on his face. Trout doesn't care if you're right handed, left handed, or ambidextrous - and he'll have a ton of opportunity to go off today.

Hits

Joe Mauer
Danny Santana
Mauer tops the hits projections today, and for good reason. Even as he enters his decline phase, he's firing off line drives and registering his trademark high BABIP - .335 this year. The question for Mauer at this stage in his career is the strikeouts. He doesn't strike out a ton or anything, but certainly more than many guys we recommend in the hits category. That's why today makes for such a happy marriage. Guthrie's 5.82 K/9 is awful, and Mauer should have plenty of opportunity here.

Santana, like Mauer, plays for the Twins. It's no coincidence then that he will be facing Jeremy Guthrie as well. With a 4 hit game a little while ago, Santana has proven he can put together hits in bunches. He makes a great play today.

Strikeouts

Jon Lester
Lester brings his incredible peripherals to Atlanta, where he'll face the swing-happy Braves. The Braves are the 4th easiest team to strike out in all of the majors. This one has all the makings of a game where Lester goes deep into the game and racks up a lot of Ks in the process.

Danny Salazar
While it's not quite as good a match-up as the Braves, the risky Salazar has a great match-up in its own right. Baltimore owns a lot of right handed hitters who aren't shy about trying to get a ball in play. And while he's risky simply due to his control issues - the cool thing about Scorestreak is that we simply don't care. As long as he gives us 6 innings, 7 Ks feels like a very fair expectation.