Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks for ScoreStreak 8/21/14

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

FYI, with such a gap in games today and such a short slate, I'm focusing mostly on the shorter, later slate for these picks. I like to play it safe.

Mike Trout
Getting a little old recommending him every day, especially when he doesn't always get the job done. But that's the story with MLB DFS. You need to play the percentages on any give day. Baseball is a fickle sport and is prone to streaks. I tend to not play too much into the streakiness of a player (unless it's a bad one possibly related to injury). Trout remains an ultimate talent and today faces a subpar pitcher in Rubby de la Rosa. I'm all over Trout again in the total bases category.

Evan Gattis
This guy just murders lefty pitching, and David Holmberg is just the kind of lefty to pick on. Gattis' numbers this season are off the charts with a 1.133 OPS against lefties. His insanely high Babip (well over .400) has something to do with that, but you can't have a number that high on luck alone. He crushes lefties for his career as well and this is a great spot to pick up some separation as I think some more folks will be on Upton (also a solid play). I'll take Gattis and look to pull away from the field.

Hits

Buster Posey
Hunter Pence
Both of these guys hit lefties much better for their careers and Posey is especially difficult for lefties to strike out. They get a great matchup against Travis Wood who doesn't strike many batter out (walks a few more than I'm comfortable with in this format) and could be in trouble against the Giants who have some middle of the order bats that hit well against southpaws. I could just have easily gone with some Angel bats against Rubby de la Rosa, and I might still. But I like these Giants paired up in a game that should see them getting an extra at bat throughout if the Giants get to Wood early.

Strikeouts

Clayton Kershaw
Wouldn't want to go about fading him today. Not in this format at least. He faces the lowly Padres who despite recent success, still rank dead last in the league against lefties. They strike out 21% of the time and the team .283 wOBA is bad even if you are factoring for some bad luck. Kershaw meanwhile is completely dominant, striking out close to 11 batters per nine and never walking anyone. He's in the 9 K slot and it's easy.

Madison Bumgarner
For the later slate of games I'm also targeting Bumgarner against the Cubs. The Cubbies aren't bad against lefty pitching, rating in the top third against that split. But the big story is their strikeout rate. They go down on strikes more than 24% of the time against lefties. That should increase Bumgarner's K expectation today. He already averages about a strike out an inning. Could be a tougher matchup for the guy, but I think he gets to six or seven rather easily.