Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings – 4/18/16

Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/18/16

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 weather concern in Minnesota

We are looking at a pretty good night weather-wise, but of course there always has to be 1 trouble spot. Tonight it is in Minnesota in a game between the brewers and the Twins. As I write this, the forecast is showing close to 70% rain coverage for most of the game. Make sure to keep an eye out on Twitter for late breaking news. I will also update here if something comes out.

Tournament Stacks

Cincinnati Reds

The Reds are easily my favorite team on the day as they will be taking on a far below average righty in Jordan Lyles. Great American Ballpark is a tremendous hitters park and will only help the matters. Jordan Lyles exhibited a .380 wOBA against lefties on the road last season. The Reds are a team that can string together a bunch of hits before unleashing the homer. If I were to pick 4, I would go with Votto, Bruce, Suarez and Mesoraco.

Chicago White Sox

This is more of a pure tournament stack as Hector Santiago has the upside to dominate. He also has the downside to get destroyed and blow up. Santiago gave up the most home runs against righties last season and will likely do the same this year if he doesn't up his velocity or add a 3rd pitch. Santiago will likely struggle moving into a tough ballpark in Chicago. U.S. Cellular played as a top 10 hitters ballpark in 2015. My favorite 4 White Sox are Jose Abreu, Todd Frazier, Avisail Garcia and Brett Lawrie. If you want to be contrarian, throw in an Adam Eaton and Melky Cabrera.

 

Sneaky Pitcher

Tanner Roark

Roark will be taking on the Marlins in a game with a 7 over/under. Roark pitched well last time out and showed his upside. With plenty of good players to pay up for, if you can find a quality performance at a low price, it puts you in a great spot. The Marlins are a very strikeout prone team with guys like Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, Justin Bour and J.T. Realmuto. This give Roark plenty of upside and could end up racking up 6 or 7 strikeouts. Roark exhibited a combined wOBA of .288 in 2014, his last full season.

 

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jay Bruce
Joey Votto

Both of these guys are spectacular options for the same reason. Jordan Lyles has been horrible vs lefties and has had trouble keeping the ball in the yard. While you may think this is due to Coors field, he has actually been worse on the road. Both Bruce and Votta have hit righties to a .350+ wOBA over the past few seasons. Both Votto and Bruce are quality options in all formats.

Mike Trout

Trout is in a great spot against the White Sox and Carlos Rodon. Sure, Rodon is a good pitcher. However, his main weakness is keeping the ball in the yard against righties. Trout exhibited an astounding .434 wOBA against southpaws last year. I expect him to only improve on that this year. Rodon gave up a .350 wOBA to righties last year and has shown signs to expect improvement. I am comfortable with Trout in both cash games and tournaments.

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!

Austyn Varney

View Comments

  • Just an FYI, the optimizer is recommending Hundley, who is currently on the DL.

  • Not that anyone would play him but Swihart has shown up on list and he got a couple of hits yesterday at Pawtucket

  • Thanks for pointing out Hundley and Swihart. It brought to light an issue were having pulling player data from our feed. I've corrected for now and moving forward.

  • Suprised no mention of Eikhoff for tonight, especially for DK. I can see that Mets/Phils game being a 1-0 type of game easily.

    • I am not a fan of Eikhoff at all tonight. The Mets have been swinging a hot stuck lately. I would rather get some Mets bats than go near Eikhoff

  • I agree Anthony and was thinking the same thing, which means the game may end 14-12.

  • I've had Hector Santiago in my GPP lineups since last night and I was feeling amazing until looking at the optimizer and reading this. Santi has a career .167 against these guys with almost double K's to Hits. The ballpark is a great hitters park, though and I know some of those Righties can jack a few. What is another option at pitcher?

    I've only had 2 players in play today: Russel Martin (currently 10 pts) and Rutledge (Currently 7 pts) both were extremely low-owned and they have already paid off.

    Also rolling with Syndergod, a mini-Marlins stack and a Cincinatti stack.

    Only questions: Is Conforto a good tourny play as my last OF?

    Should I ride or die with Santiago, or go with a cheapside pitcher to add trout to my outfield with Stanton and Conforto?

    • James, sometimes best to go with gut Santiago always has been a high K upside guy with walks being downfall know it's been couple years but these guys always like to perform vs former teams. Conforto is a guy I like especially batting 3rd. I don't put a lot of stock in BvP but he's 5 for 10 with 3 xbh

    • I personally don't like Santiago. His peripherals haven't been there and he ran incredibly hot with ERA compared to xFIP last season. Bad ballpark as well.

    • Honestly, I won't talk you off of Santiago. He is definitely a GPP only option though, as he has a very low floor.

  • Maybe try Roark James is it ok to go with the top 5 reds hitter today in cash games obviously on DK, gpp it should be good but it looks awfully safe for cash or is that too risky ?