Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/21/16

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

Weather Concerns

We are looking at some weather concerns in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Make sure to check out our weather article!

Danny Duffy is expected to be held to 60 pitches

Personnel

Note - I will update this section throughout the day as lineups are released and injury news is broke

• Jason Heyward left the game last night with an injury. I highly doubt he plays today.
• Shin-Soo Choo left yesterday's game as well. The Rangers have not provided an update just yet.
• Randal Grichuk is questionable for today.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jose Bautista FD 4200 DK 5200
Opponent - MIN (Dean) Park - @MIN
FD - 15.29 DK - 11.53

Jose Bautista is likely facing some insecurities currently after getting embarrassed by a 5" 11, 195 pound second baseman just last week. Since that game, he has accumulated 5 hits and 2 home runs. However, he gets one of his best match ups of the year so far against Pat Dean. Dean is a weak left handed pitcher who has struggled against both lefties and righties throughout his minor league career as evidenced by a +.400 wOBA. Now let's get back to Bautista and look at a sample size bigger than 5 games. Over the past 3 seasons, Bautista has sported a .382 wOBA alongside a tremendous 38.7% hard contact rate against lefties. While this ballpark is certainly no hitters haven, it ranked slightly above average for right handed power. This offense is going to put up runs and Bautista is the most consistent hitter on the team.

Nelson Cruz FD 4100 DK 5300
Opponent - CIN (Lamb) Park - @CIN
FD - 13.88 DK - 10.5

Cruz is moving from one of the worst hitter environments in the league in Safeco Field to a top 3 park in Great American Ballpark. Touching on Cruz for a moment, he has absolutely dominated lefties over the course of his entire career with a .392 wOBA, .252 ISO and a spectacular 37.2% hard contact rate. Moving over to John Lamb, he has struggled mightily against righties since entering the league with a .352 wOBA and 6 home runs allowed in only 49.2 innings. The combination of this match up and ballpark create as close to an optimal situation as possible for Cruz.

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!