Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/15/16

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

We have another day with excellent weather conditions across the board. There looks to be some fairly strong winds blowing in towards home plate in Texas and Los Angeles(Dodgers) and some possible strong winds blowing out to right field in Oakland. It is something to monitor throughout the day but nothing to be that concerned about.

There is only one afternoon game today but it features two of the top four offensive teams so far in 2016. If you are going to play an all day slate on DraftKings we recommend stacking the Cubs as they come at a better price with similar upside. Both pitchers have been decent to start the year but the Rockies are still priced up from their recent series at home. They carry nowhere near the upside on the road as they do in Coors. Not to say they can't produce runs anywhere but the risk/reward just isn't there for me at these prices.

Tournament Stacks

Texas Rangers

So far in the 2016 season the Rangers look to have one of the scariest lineups in the American League. They have scored 48 runs and are solid from top to bottom in their order. They have guys at the top with speed who can get on base and plenty of power behind them to drive them in with some added pop near the bottom of their lineup with emerging talent, Roughned Odor who has four doubles in his last four games. Then there is the pitching matchup today. The Rangers will face Vance Worley who isn't known for striking out many guys(seen his K/9 drop since his first full season back in 2011). Only Ian Desmond and Prince Fielder have faced Worley more than five times with Fielder going 4-9 with HR and Desmond 3-14 with two HR's. Look for the Rangers to jump all over the Orioles in what could be a one of the highest scoring games on the slate.

Houston Astros

It has been a slow start  for the Astros who have lost all three series to open the season. After beating the defending champion Royals in game 1 of their most recent series, their bats were shut down while losing the next three games. There is nothing better to help a team get out of a slump than a matchup vs. Mike Pelfrey who just doesn't put a lot of fear into anybody. He doesn't strike anybody out(5.12 K/9 for his career) which is a good sign for the Astros who have struckout at a 27.8% clip to start the season(3rd worst). Look for the Astros to hand their ace, Dallas Keuchel, some run support today as they look to take game 1 from the Tigers in Houston.

Sneaky Pitcher

Wei-Yin Chen FD 8000 DK 8200
Opponent - ATL (Perez) Park - @MIA
FD - 35.87 DK - 19.23

Until the Braves prove they can score runs and win a game I will continue to target starting pitching against them. Chen comes with a very affordable price tag and makes a great cash game play with average strikeout upside. He can give the long ball but that doesn't scare me in this matchup as the Braves have only hit three dingers on the season and lack power throughout their lineup. Should be a high floor cash game play with upside(due to opponent) for GPP formats.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Anthony Rendon FD 2800 DK 4200
Opponent - PHI (Hellickson) Park - @PHI
FD - 11.64 DK - 9.21

Rendon is showing up in every optimal lineup on FanDuel today. He hits in an elite spot in the Nats lineup right ahead of Bryce Harper and Ryan Zimmeran which presents a ton of value.

Carlos Correa FD 4600 DK 5000
Opponent - DET (Pelfrey) Park - @HOU
FD - 13.95 DK - 11.07
George Springer FD 3500 DK 5000
Opponent - DET (Pelfrey) Park - @HOU
FD - 14.31 DK - 11.21

Targeting Mike Pelfrey is usually a winning strategy. He will be in tough today vs. the Astros tremendous combination of power and speed. Springer and Correa hit back to back in the heart of the order and offer a ton of upside in almost every category.

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!