Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/2/16

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

No weather concerns!

It's a miracle! For the first time in what seems like months, we have nothing to worry about weather-wise. It looks like there could be some weak scattered showers in a few places, however, those are not going to stop the game.

Wind in a few places

While there are no huge wind games, there are a few games where the wind may come into play. The wind is blowing out at around 10 MPH in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, San Diego and Oakland. While 10 MPH won't typically make much of a difference, I will use it more as a tiebreaker between 2 players I am considering. However, wind can change in the blink of an eye and this is something that should be monitored up to lock.

Tournament Stacks

San Francisco Giants

The Giants are taking on Brandon Finnegan tonight in the Great American Ballpark. The Giants are receiving a huge park bump here as they are going from one of the league's worst parks in AT&T to one of the best in Cincinnati. Brandon Finnegan is a left handed pitcher that has fared better against righties than lefties so far in his career. However, his peripherals tell a much different story. With a 32% hard contact rate, 33% FB rate and a 4.38 xFIP as a starter, things are going to get ugly for Finnegan very soon. The Giants have a few guys that demolish left handed pitching in Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and to a lesser extent Matt Duffy. While those are my favorite 3, I would throw Brandon Belt and Denard Span into the stack as they will likely see a righty out of the bullpen and have huge upside.

Toronto Blue Jays

The Blue Jays are going to be facing off with A.J. Griffin here in a game with the highest over/under of the day, 9. A.J. Griffin is a pitcher who has some very good surface stats and very bad peripherals. Let's take a look at just how bad his peripherals are against both lefties and righties. Against righties, Griffin holds a 4.07 xFIP, 47% FB rate and a 40% pull rate. It is generally not a good idea to give up a lot of pulled flyballs to the Blue Jays. Against lefties we are looking at a .428 xFIP, 45% FB rate and a 42% pull rate. Another thing I look to like at with pitchers against the Blue Jays is their pitch arsenal. Griffin has thrown his fastball over 60% of the time followed by his cutter and changeup. The Blue Jays destroy all 3 of these pitches and they are not even above average on pitch f/x. I look for the Blue Jays to get to Griffin today and begin the negative regression trend.

Sneaky Pitcher

James Shields FD 7800 DK 7800
Opponent - COL (Gray) Park - @SD
FD - 31.89 DK - 17.34

While there are a few guys I don't mind using against Shields, I don't mind him either. Shields has been pretty good this year with 4 quality starts out of 5. Shields is likely going to have a great year in Petco Park and he has already begun that trend in his first 5. Shields has held a .312 combined wOBA over the past 2 years with an even better wOBA and xFIP at home. BvP truthers will be all over the Rockies bats today and while they are fine options, let's take a look at something very important. Shields has pitched against the Rockies in Coors field a few times and most damage was done there. Shields has not been great against the Rockies out of Coors but has contained the offense and delivered quality starts. Shields should be very low owned and has great upside against a team who is horrible on the road and strikes out a ton. To be clear, Shields is a tournament only play for me.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Michael Conforto FD 4300 DK 3800
Opponent - ATL (Foltynewicz) Park - @NYM
FD - 14.44 DK - 11.15
Lucas Duda FD 3400 DK 4000
Opponent - ATL (Foltynewicz) Park - @NYM
FD - 14.52 DK - 10.9

The Mets are in a great spot here against the ever elusive Mike Foltynewicz. In 2015, Foltynewicz gave up a pitiful .405 wOBA to lefties and a .365 wOBA to righties. The Mets have been swinging the bat well lately and this match up should reignite the entire offense. While I could of pt any of the Mets bats here, I went with the 2 that hit the low and away fastball best. Conforto and Duda both hold spectacular numbers against righties and hit the low and away fastball very well with only a 6% swinging strike rate on the lower left of the plate for both guys. I am very comfortable with these guys in all formats.

Buster Posey FD 3400 DK 4400
Opponent - CIN (Finnegan) Park - @CIN
FD - 11.35 DK - 8.71

While I already wrote up the Giants team as a whole, Buster Posey is my favorite. Pose has historically destroyed lefties and has showed no sign of stopping that trend anytime soon. Over the past 2 season, Posey has hit lefties to a .382 with great peripherals in a 37% hard hit rate and 44% pull rate. As mentioned above, Finnegan is a right hander with impending regression against lefties. This is a great spot for the regression to set in and Posey should be the main reason why.

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!