Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/7/16

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

A ton of games with slight weather problems

We are looking at a heap of games with rain chances between 30 and 60%. These games are MIL @ CIN, KC @ CLE, COL @ SF, PIT @ STL and TEX @ DET. I expect all of these games to get in, however, make sure you keep an eye out as weather can change in an instant.

Personnel

• Yasmani Grandal is out of the lineup with a regular catcher rest day
• Russell Martin and Brian McCann are also taking the day off at the catcher position.
• Jacoby Ellsbury is out of the lineup with a hip injury he sustained in yersterday's game. He is day-to-day.
• Starlin Castro is surprisingly out of the lineup although they are facing a lefty.
• Jesse Hahn and Ubaldo Jimenez will take the mound in the game that matters for us DFS'ers. tonight.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Adrian Gonzalez FD 2800 DK 3700
Opponent - TOR (Dickey) Park - @TOR
FD - 14.84 DK - 11.31

As mentioned in our picks article, the Dodgers as a team are in a great spot. R.A. Dickey has started this season horribly and it looks like he may have finally run out of gas completely. While Adrian Gonzalez does not have much history against the knuckleball, he is a fantastic pure hitter and that is what I look for in guys against the knuckleball as it tends to eat up uppercut swings. Over the past 3 seasons, Gonzalez has hit righties extremely well with a .360 wOBA and 37.4% hard contact rate. All of the Dodgers bats are in play and Gonzo is my favorite of the bunch.

Rougned Odor FD 3700 DK 3900
Opponent - DET (Pelfrey) Park - @DET
FD - 15.37 DK - 12.5

The Texas Rangers are another team that is in a terrific spot here against the lowly Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey has started the year horrendously and his peripherals do not suggest any improvement. Rougned Odor is sitting in the leadoff spot which will likely result in him getting at least 5 at bats. Odor has smashed righties since entering the league with a .338 adjusted wOBA and a 15% strikeout rate. Pelfrey on the other hand, has a wOBA over .370 against lefties and has walked more batter than he has struck out.

Corey Dickerson FD 2500 DK 3300
Opponent - LAA (Weaver) Park - @LAA
FD - 12.06 DK - 9.56

Dickerson and the Rays are facing off with Jered Weaver and are my favorite offense for the late slate. Weaver has dropped his fastball velocity even further and is now sitting around 83. This is T-ball to major league hitters as evidenced by his 5.87 xFIP and absurd 38.8% hard contact rate. Dickerson is a guy who has mashed righties over the course of his career with a .397 wOBA and 40% hard contact rate. While this is not an ideal stadium, Dickerson has the power to get it out anywhere.

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!