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Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/17/16
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
One huge weather concern in Texas
The Texas Rangers will be hosting the Baltimore Orioles in a game that is looking very weary. The forecast is showing close to an 80% chance of rain throughout. This is a game that I would love to target but will not be able to with such high weather concerns, especially on early lock sites like FanDuel. I will make sure to update here if there is any further news on this situation. UPDATE: This game has been postponed!
Tournament Stacks
St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals bats ave been on absolute fire lately and there is no reason to believe this is the spot they cool down. Jon Moscot is a below average right handed pitcher who held a 5.54 xFIP in his short 2015 major league stint. Although this is a very small sample size, his minor peripherals did not suggest anything different. The Cardinals have absolutely rocked right handed pitching thus far with a .411 wOBA. My favorite 6 Cardinals are Matt Carpenter, Jeremy Hazelbaker, Brandon Moss, Matt Holliday, Stephen Piscotty and Kolten Wong in that order. If you want to be contrarian, throw in Aledmys Diaz.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Here is the sneaky stack of the day. While Samardzija is not a horrible pitcher, he has shown his ability to be smashed a few times last year. The Dodgers are a team that hits much better at home against righties than any other situation. This lineup has some lethal bats against righties in Adrian Gonzalez, Corey Seager, Yasiel Puig, Joc Pederson and Justin Turner. Both Puig and Turner have proven they can hit righties just as well as southpaws, if not better. When you pair all of that with the fact that the wind is blowing out 15 MPH to right, you get a sneaky recipe for success.
Sneaky Pitcher
Juan Nicasio
Nicasio is a player who has completely changed up his game and has moved from a reliever to a starter. While I don't necessarily believe Nicasio is all of a sudden some great pitcher, I do think he will be an average pitcher throughout the year. The Brewers have showed us just how bad they can be on any given day. If Nicasio has his off speed stuff working, I think you can expect a very nice tournament outing. The Brewers toss out plenty of strikeout prone guys in Ryan Braun, Chris Carter, Domingo Santana, so on. I would only use Nicasio in tournaments as I would much rather go up to Gio Gonzalez or Lester in cash games.
The "Every Lineup" Guys
Anthony Rizzo
Kris Bryant
While it may seem odd that these two are paired due to one being a lefty and one a righty, both of these guys have proven their abilty to hit righties. They will be facing off with a bad pitcher in Tyler Chatwood at home with the wind slightly blowing out. Chatwood has given up a combined .322 wOBA to lefties and righties this far into his career. I could see nice double homer game for one of these guys today.
Dee Gordon
Dee Gordon is always one of my favorite players to roster in DFS as it always seems like he produces in some way. Tody he will be taking Jhoulys Chacin, a pitcher who struggles to hold runners. Chacin has held a career .332 wOBA against lefties, which is far below average. I look for Dee Gordon to take advantage of Chacin today and have a hue game.
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!
image sources
- Yasiel_Puig_2: By Ron Reiring [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
35 Visitor Comments
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I have not had much luck on Fanduel so far with MLB, it’s like playing the slot machines in Vegas, all I have accomplished so far is winning $5 here in their on Fanduel. Also stacks do not work well either, but I love this site and thanks for the tips.
Jared, if you’re playing cash games don’t recommend stacking as it could be boom or bust
I think stacking in cash games is fine if you diversify some of the stacking opportunities to reduce the variance. For instance, I will run about 10 different cash game lineups on a slate broken up between system generated optimal lineups and stacking/ double stack opportunities that I see as advantageous.
I am definitely going to second Doug here. Although on the surface it seems like you are taking a boom or bust approach, are you really? This is baseball and nearly everything is boom or bust. If you think a team is going to score 5 or 6 runs, I see no problem putting 4 of those guys in your lineup.
Just think it’s more advantageous to look at the 3 lineups you think will score the most runs and stack 2 or 3 guys from each team imo
There’s many factors into decisions like a 30 mph wind blowing out at Wrigley I’m all for stacking both teams so there are instances I would recommend stacking in cash
The obvious stacks sometimes work….but when he says sneaky stack…those are the ones that create paydays bc no one else is using them…the advice given on this site helps tremendously…no way I would have placed 47th out of 37k yesterday without dfsr. Give the projection system some time to adjust and get over the sample size, but take every single bit of written advice doug or these pros give you…they know their stuff!
Chatwood is a RHP not a lefty
Maybe I was a day early thought Dodgers were sneaky stack yesterday vs Cueto didn’t kill me with seager and grandal
Addison Russel is out today
I would move on to a Gyorko or Seager. Depends on your roster construction and if you are in a good spot to pay up or down.
Does anyone like Matt Moore today?
Texas game postponed sucks
Do you guys play the “different slates” more or the “all day games”? I find that if you play the “all day games” you pretty much have to check your lineup throughout the day for scratches (which I personally don’t have time to do). Any thoughts?
It depends on whether I think there is value in a particular slate. I won’t just do it to do it. For instance, I think the express slate on FD is solid because of Lester and some of the other games. But I’m not touching the 4PM slate.
No Hazelbaker, Diaz, Holliday, or Wong for my Redbirds today, interesting getaway day lineup. I love the 1-2-3 options today thought (Carp, Pisco, Moss)
My lineup is Nicasico, Vogt, Moss, Gordon, Turner, Seager, Piscotty, Puig, and Yelich- How does this lineup look-
is the optimizer not working
It’s been working fine all AM as far as I know. We’ve been running it.
Doug might i suggest a tourney optimizer and a 50/50 one. I think plenty of your current and new customers would love that! I keep reading how they cant win and its making you look bad…i think that addition could end it!
I’m surprised by this comment. I don’t see any discussion as far as strategy and need for advice as making us look bad in anyway. MLB swept up yesterday.
Like in H.S. when you pay your friend to copy their homework bc you were busy doing other things lol…no offense was meant by my comment Doug…you guys have helped me along with others cash in and I along with others appreciate it!
No your advice is spot on! lol…i was talking about that i see users of your site daily make comments how they cant win etc etc…if you added what i mentioned that might help them bc some people just want to plug and play and have no clue what theyre doing and want to pay for a quick something and not have to read and research etc etc…
Nicasio is the only pirate showing up in the optimizer?
Fixed. Pirates not showing in optimals either way, but sorry about that. Something glitched with their lineup
Having issues using stacking feature. Tried to stack Washington and it would not give any lineups. Using Drafhings for early games only. Also never had 2 team stack feature work as well. Never gives me more than 1 player from second team stack. Is this a known issue?
I went no stack in early slate except for 3 Blue Jays in one line up and am looking at actually winning some tourney $$ for the first time in about a week.
Anthony, Nice but why I don’t recommend stacking especially cash unless you’re playing 10 lineups like Doug which I’m assuming a lot of people here don’t have the bankroll to diversify that much. The cubs were a big stack in most of my cash tourneys and basically killed their lineups
Thanks John….that is what I was saying. I am abandoning the stack. I am 100% with you. I have done it all season with little success and I didn’t today and wound up in some $$$.
That Cubs stack looked tasty too. I played Baez and Rizzo in one line up, but thankfully stayed away for the most part. After losing my ass all week, I started thinking about stacking. It is almost like punting if the opposing pitcher has his stuff, and we have seen some pretty mediocre pitchers bring it so far in this early part of the season. I decided to go with pitchers that go deep into games and the most valuable player at each position regardless of his team and it paid off for me today. We will see how this works in the future, but I am anti-stack at this point.
Anthony, I’m not totally against stacking but feel most people that are here or are new to dfs baseball are only playing 1 or 2 lineups and those are who I was giving advice to but believe me when a stack goes off especially a contrarian one you can pad your bankroll nicely
Because I stayed away from full cubs stack which I liked as did most others I’m in the money in half and a hit or 2 from grandal from cashing all
Nice…good luck with Grandel. That is why I love this site. We are actually here to help each other. I have seen other sites with people actually giving false info about a player being out, rainouts, etc…enough $$$ to go around and Doug and company have a nice thing here.
Anthony, thanks looks like grandal put me in money in all but one. I agree the forum is a big part of this site because many are willing to offer opinions what works for them which is very helpful because many people use different strategies that end up with same results of cashing
In terms of many of you using the Cubs stack, I only used Fowler in my 50/50’s and won, particular thanks to Bautista and Pat Corbin. The anti-stack really came up clutch today.