Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/8/16

Welcome to the daily MLB updates and news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it!

Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock today.

By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the batting lineup changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below!

What We Know

Weather looking clear-ish
After a day of unknowns with the weather and a game getting canceled we get a day that looks pretty safe all around. There is some chance of rain in San Francisco but to my untrained weather eye (though I've gotten kind of good at this from studying MLB DFS for years) it doesn't look like enough to effect the game into cancelling. Everywhere else is looking either safe or under a dome.

Danny Salazar is starting
He was pushed back from yesterday after the Cleveland-Boston game was postponed. On the early slate I'm much more excited about deGrom so I don't think I'll risk it on Salazar in a bad park. But it's worth nothing in case you had skipped past his name after the PPD yesterday.

Sneaky Pitcher

Early Slate
Jerad Eickhoff FD 6400 DK 8500
Opponent - NYM (deGrom) Park - @NYM
FD - 26.69 DK - 13.77
He's a big under dog to deGrom today which decreases his win expectation significantly. And remember, I'm not advocating him as any kind of safe play. BUT, if you want to stack Colorado bats on the thearly slate and are looking for a significant cost savings then Eickhoff offers the best peripherals in his price tier. Last season he struck out close to a batter an inning, walked only 2.29 per nine and had an 3.60 xFIP (worse than the 2.65 ERA, but solid nonetheless). He's very cheap on both sites, but especially on FanDuel. He's actually showing up in DraftKings lineups too which I don't mind on the short slate though it isn't a fantastic GPP play to pair him with deGrom.

Evening Slate
Yordano Ventura FD 8700 DK 9200
Opponent - MIN (Santana) Park - @KC
FD - 35.75 DK - 23.7
Sure, he's not exactly sneaky. But considering we wrote up Walker and Garcia last night, I wanted to include Ventura here as well. Kansas City is a great place to pitch as it really suppresses power across the board. Ventura is a -153 favorite going in with one of the lower run total expectations on the board at 7.5. He turned in his best xFIP last season at 3.60 thanks in some part to an increase in his K rate to nearly a batter per inning. Man, I probably should have included him in the main picks.

Tournament Stacks

Look: It almost always makes sense to stack teams in Coors whenever possible. That park just has such a huge power expectation that I'm not going to go into it each time there's a game in Denver. It just makes sense and today with the Padres and Rockies it's no different. So start there if looking for power. These other suggestions are specifically non-Coors.

Early Slate
Cleveland Indians
I'm all about stacking these guys on the early slate. They have a fantastic matchup against Danks who pitched to a high 4's xFIP last season and got just shelled by righties along the way allowing a .353 wOBA to that split. Really the whole Indian lineup is in play for me today with Napoli, Santana, Ramirez and Lindnor leading the charge.

Evening Slate
Chicago Cubs
Robbie Ray has some strikeout stuff, but the Cubs can really get to lefties quickly. Guys like Zobrist, Bryant (presumably), and Fowler are all significantly better in this split. Even Rizzo put up close to a .900 OPS against southpaws last season. And I love the ballpark. Chase Field is right up there with the best power parks in baseball.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Early Slate
Jacob deGrom FD 11000 DK 12300
Opponent - PHI (Eickhoff) Park - @NYM
FD - 44.12 DK - 24.75
The only pitcher I'm considering on the early slate and it's not particularly close. I suspect he'll be the highest-owned pitcher by a significant margin. He has a great matchup against the Phillies and isn't priced in a tier that causes you issues down the rest of your lineup. This one's an easy call.

Cory Spangenberg FD 2900 DK 3400
Opponent - COL (Lyles) Park - @COL
FD - 12.54 DK - 10.22
Jon Jay FD 3000 DK 3300
Opponent - COL (Lyles) Park - @COL
FD - 12.2 DK - 9.84
These two are easy calls especially if they are hitting 1-2 for the Rockies today. Heading into Coors at prices in the lower middle tier and you should have them in all lineups.

Evening Slate

*I'll update this later in the day as some batting lineups come in.

One other note: There are big differences between DraftKings and FanDuel pricing so the optimal lineups are looking quite different.

These are players that show up in each of the top 10 lineups as produced by our lineup optimizer. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're "safe," it just means that their projected weighted-mean point total is a solid building block for a great lineup foundation today.

Good luck out there today! If you want access to all of our numbers, get started with a free trial below of our lineup optimizer, on us!