Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/11/16

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

We've got a loaded split slate today, with seven day games and nine more tonight, thanks to a Padres-Cubs doubleheader. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• FanDuel has made some adjustments to its position eligibility on a few players. Notably, Jean Segura is now listed at 2B and Brandon Drury is now OF.
• Dexter Fowler will get the day game off for the Cubs. Ben Zobrist will hit leadoff, while Kris Bryant mans right field and Jason Heyward slides over to center.
• Jimmy Rollins is out of the White Sox lineup today. He'll be replaced by Tyler Saladino, who's hitting ninth.
• Ian Desmond has been elevated to the No. 2 spot in the Rangers order for Wednesday's game, sliding Nomar Mazara and Adrian Beltre back one spot. The slumping Prince Fielder appears to be settling in at the No. 5 spot for now.
• Logan Forsythe looks like he'll be sitting until at least Friday as he deals with a shoulder injury.
• Domingo Santana continues to sit/pinch hit for the Brewers. Probably best to leave him on your DFS bench until further notice.
• Jed Lowrie and Danny Valencia were held out of action Tuesday, but could return to the lineup as early as today.
• David Peralta continues to sit for the Diamondbacks. He's scheduled to see a specialist about his bruised wrist on Thursday.
• Mark Teixeira sat Tuesday with neck spasms and is considered day-to-day.

Tournament Stacks

Arizona Diamondbacks
As always, both sides are in play in Coors Field. We're going with Arizona because they're slightly more affordable, and because the lefty vs. lefty matchups take some of the shine off of the top of the Rockies' order. The Diamondbacks will be squaring off against Chad Bettis, a pretty average dude who gets a fair amount of ground balls, but has also shown a tendency to get burned by the long ball when somebody elevates one. Not surprisingly, he's struggled at home, yielding a .374 wOBA to opposing hitters in 64 big-league appearances, including 35 starts. He also owns reverse splits, with righties posting a .365 wOBA (.399 in Coors). Depending on the order, that puts the top six or so hitters in the Arizona lineup squarely in play today, and we recommend building off of Paul Goldschmidt and Jake Lamb, whose prices aren't bad considering the venue.

Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox are the choice by a wide margin on the night/main slate. Facing Eric Surkamp, they've got the highest implied run total based on the Vegas over/under, and they're coming in hot after scoring 27 runs in the first two games of the series. Whether or not that sort of hot streak has predictive value is highly debatable (and not considered by our projection system), but perhaps worth noting, at the least. Even without factoring in their recent tear, there's plenty to like about this matchup. Surkamp is a 28-year-old journeyman with a spotty (at best) track record. He's getting bombed this year to the tune of a 6.76 xFIP, and the Red Sox have one of the top offenses in the league. They've actually performed better as a team against righties this year, but we think they'll be able to chase Surkamp early enough to feast again on Oakland's overworked bullpen.

Sneaky Pitcher

Jerad Eickhoff

We gave you Adam Morgan in this space yesterday and that worked out well enough, so we're picking on the anemic Atlanta offense again today. The Braves are at their worst against lefties, but Eickhoff is a better pitcher than Morgan, and Atlanta is pretty bad against everybody. They have just eight homers on the season while no other team has less than 25, they strike out slightly more than the league average, and they're dead last in terms of team wOBA and wRC+. Meanwhile, Eickhoff has been serviceable, if not exciting. He's turned in quality starts (yeah, I know) in four of his last five outings and has posted a respectable 34 Ks in 36.1 IP, while walking just seven. Limiting those free passes is key against at team like Atlanta that needs all the help it can get. The only major issue we see is that Eickhoff is backed up by an offense almost as bad as the Braves'. Atlanta is actually a slight favorite in this game so it wouldn't be a terrible idea to run back last night's strategy and get a little exposure to both of these cheap pitchers, but if we're forced to choose one, we're going with the Phils' starter today.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Trevor Story

We're slightly lower on the Rockies stack today, but that doesn't at all diminish the projection system's enthusiasm for Story going against Robbie Ray. The risk with Story is always in his super-high K rate, and that's part of the equation today, as Ray has the ability to miss some bats. But otherwise, he's been a league average pitcher in the early stages of his career, mostly due to his trouble getting righties out. He owns a career 4.63 xFIP in the split, while Story has displayed monster power against southpaws. Of course the sample size is tiny and skewed by his ridiculously hot start, but the Colorado rookie has four home runs and two doubles in 32 at-bats against lefties this year, so the upside is about as high as you're going to find at DFS shortstop.

Jake Lamb

Goldy is the surest bet for big points in the Arizona lineup, but from a value perspective, Lamb is our guy today. He's bounced around the order some, but should be in the thick of things with a righty on the mound. While he still hasn't figured out big-league southpaws, Lamb has been crushing right-handed pitching through the first month or so of 2016 with a .395 wOBA, .233 ISO and .934 OPS. His contact rates are also much higher in the split, which raises his floor, while hitting in Coors Field does what you would expect for his ceiling. Nobody hitting in Colorado comes cheap, but we like Lamb at these prices in all formats today.

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!