Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks for ScoreStreak 8/25/14

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

Giancarlo Stanton
This dude completely dominates lefty pitching. He's been among the league leaders in annihilating the inner souls off southpaws taking the mound against him. Stanton's 1.128 OPS against lefties to go with a 209 wRC+ are about as high as you'll ever see. Wade LeBlanc has actually been better against righties for his career. But that doesn't mean much considering he isn't good against anyone really. Stanton is a premium play in this spot today.

Mike Trout
What makes Trout such an enticing play on a day in/ day out basis is that he's platoon neutral so as long as he's facing someone average to below average he's in play to snag bases. He's having a down season only by his own Hall of Fame numbers. He's a favorite, as much as anyone on a regular basis, to collect enough total bases to win a tier. Jarred Cosart is pretty garbage-y and Trout is Trout.

Hits

Robinson Cano
This is of course assuming he plays today. Cano checked himself out of last game with dizziness, but if he plays today against Mikolas then Cano is a great play for a multi-hit game. Cano has been raking righties this season and the upshot is that he keeps his K% and BB% relatively low all things considered. Oh, and Mikolas stinks. He can't strike batters out with any consistency and though his ERA is higher than his xFIP, the latter isn't all that great. Here's to hoping Cano can give it a go in this one.

Buster Posey
Speaking of guys with great contact rates, Posey has a 8.6 K% and 7.1 BB% against lefties. That means 85% of the time he's putting the ball in play against lefties. Tyler Matzek is as average as it comes and though the ballpark doesn't help Posey's case any, the rest of the numbers lead to a solid play for a hit or two. His spot near the top of the order plus the historical averages against lefties make this a solid move.

Strikeouts

Jeff Samardzija
On a weird* pitching day all you can ask for is to target the team that strikes out the most and play one of the guys going against said team. It isn't total rocket science, but hey I never got into all that "learning" crap. What I'm look at here is Samardzija's better than 8 per 9 K rate and the Astros ability to go down on strikes at an alarming rate. They K more than 23% of the time against righties and rank in the bottom half of of the league against righties. I wouldn't shoot for nine K's here. But the seven or six mark is reasonable.
*Crappy

Francisco Liriano
Oof, this one is based strictly on the guy and hoping against hope that he can stick long enough to get to six K's. I think it's possible. Liriano can rack up strikeouts quick. But he can also get rocked. This is a little contrarian here and I think there's case for Odorizzi as well. But I want to pick up some points on the competition from a guy who is most likely off some radars.