Colorado Rockies' Carlos Gonzalez, right, reacts after hitting a walkoff home run as Los Angeles Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis looks on in the ninth inning of a baseball game Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, in Denver. The Rockies won 8-6. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
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!
All the bad weather!!!
We have 8 games on the entire day with 5 of those having weather concerns. In the early slate, all 4 games have weather concerns. As of now, the Phillies @ Nationals game is looking the worse. I will update this 1 hour before early lock with the current weather and how I am attacking it.
Jake Arrieta is pitching
The Chicago Cubs have confirmed that Jake Arrieta will be starting on Thursday instead of Jon Lester. While I'm sure Maddon would love to let Arrieta skip a start for health purposes, the Cubs bullpen is not rested and Maddon will need his ace out their to eat up some innings. Arrieta is a pitcher I will be targeting in every format as long as the weather allows me.
NOTE - The Rockies and Pirates do not need to be listed here as anyone in Coors Field is a great tournament stack.
Philadelphia Phillies
I am a fan of Roark today and a fan of stacking the Phillies in tournaments. Baseball. Weird. Sure, Roark is a talented pitcher who is on the up and up and looks to be making a name for himself in the rotation. However, let's take a look at something real quick. Pitch count. Roark has primarily been a bullpen arm throughout his career and when he has started, has usually stuck around 90 pitches. In last week's outstanding performance, Roark threw an outlandish 121 pitches. There is a serious risk that Roark comes out here with a tired arm and his velocity is down a few MPH. If that happens, the Phillies could be in for a huge day against Roark and the bullpen. My favorite part of this stack is it let's you pay up for Jake Arrieta easily. With the best bats in this lineup being close to the minimum on most sites, you are able to pay up for pitcher and a couple bats. While the Phillies could certainly get shut down like normal, they have a chance to take advantage of a pitcher that could possibly be worn out.
St. Louis Cardinals
While Chase Field is no Coors Field, it is pretty darn close. Chase Field was the number 2 park overall last season for hitters. The Cardinals will be going from the 21st hitters park to the 2nd. Rubby De La Rosa was absolutely atrocious last season against lefties with 20 home runs and a .404 wOBA given up. You will not find many pitchers with worse numbers than those. While the Cardinals do not have a ton of lefty bats, the lefties they do have can hit. Matt Carpenter, Jeremy Hazelbaker, Brandon Moss and Kolten Wong are certainly my favorite and I would throw in Matt Holliday and Stephen Piscotty in there as well with hopes that they will get some damage done once the bullpen comes in. With so many weather concerns on the day, it feels good to be able to load these guys up with no worry of weather.
Opponent - ATL (Chacin) Park - @BOS
FD - 37.53 DK - 19.97
While Kenta Maeda and Jose Fernandez are the obvious guys to target in cash games, Buchholz has some upside here. The Red Sox enter this game at -194 favorite in a game with an 8 1/2 over under. This puts the Braves at low scoring projection of 3.5 runs. The Red Sox lineup has been swinging the bat lately and should certainly be able to put up some run support against Jhoulys Chacin. In 2015, Buchholz held both righties and lefties to a combined wOBA of .290. The Braves lineup is far from frightening with only 1 good bat in Freddie Freeman. Buchholz has shown some strikeout in the past with games over 10 strikeouts. Buchholz is a great tournament play if everything lines up.
Opponent - PIT (Nicasio) Park - @COL
FD - 15.19 DK - 11.65
Opponent - PIT (Nicasio) Park - @COL
FD - 12.98 DK - 10.55
Carlos Gonzalez and Gerardo Parra will be taking on Juan Nicasio in Coors Field. While Nicasio is making a name for himself after being a horrible pitcher for so many years, he is still below average. Nicasio has been horrible at Coors Field over the course of his career with a wOBA over .400 against both righties and lefties. CarGo and Parra on the other hand, have destroyed righties as evidenced by their 2015 wOBA's of .415 and .345 with Parra holding the ladder. I look for the Rockies to get to Nicasio early and often and these two guys should be a huge part of it.
Opponent - CHW (Danks) Park - @BAL
FD - 14.35 DK - 11.43
John Danks is consistently one of my favorite pitchers to pick and I could of put a number of Orioles here. However, I went with the best righty in the lineup and that is Manny Machado. In 2015 at age 22, Machado hit lefties at a .330 wOBA. Every peripheral statistic as well as his age are pointing to improvement and that will only add to the already great hitter. John Danks gave up 16 homers and a .353 wOBA to right in 2015 and the same could not be said for his peripherals. I look for the Orioles to get to Danks and Machado is my favorite of many.
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!
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View Comments
weather seems to be the most important factor today for the early slates. above matchups
Could be rain issues in every single early game which is nuts.
Are projections on Hazelbaker in optimizer correct? Doesn't seem to remotely reflect your write ups from last night and today
Apologies. We had some leftover batting lineup data coming in from yesterday. I've fixed and it should be reflective of him projecting to hit leadoff.
No worries, makes much more sense now. In optimizer I trust!
Awesome. I went to bed so excited for this early slate of games but the weather has me bummed.
Weird, the article says that Arrieta is the pitcher to target and Roark could have a tired arm. But the optimizer recommends Roark and not Arrieta? I don't get it.
Does anyone think the Nats game will be postponed or does it have a chance of starting later in the day?
I have withdrew all of my early slate entries because of weather. Bummer. One thing I have learned though...You don't have to play every day in DFS. Being a mostly cash player, the weather makes for more tournament gambles that I am not too comfortable with. Good luck to those braving the Weather this morning.
Another 5 dollar cash in a GPP last night. Woulda been more, but missed the news about the rainout. Anyway, looks like today is more of the same and its going to be a very boring DFS day if these games are postponed as well.
Nobody laugh this is a serious question out of Bassitt and Nacasio does either one of them have a chance to provide ANY fantasy points today? Having a difficult time putting together a lineup on DK early slate without sacrificing some bats or a pitcher
This is a good question. Short slates like this are tough and it can feel weird paying up for pitching at the expense of bats, especially when one of the games is at Coors. That being said, these two guys are in really bad situations. To me, it's not worth it in a cash game.
This weather is a real shame. Arrieta + Cubs + Coors should have been a great cash game short slate. But the weather is so iffy that I can't justify much in the way of buy-ins.