Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/31/16

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 15 games on tap with a short early slate and nice 12-gamer tonight. In the mix we've got such DFS favorites as Coors Field, Wily Peralta, a couple of aces, and a battle of badness between the corpse of Jake Peavy and Atlanta's own walking dead.

Should be fun. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Speaking of the undead, the Astros have activated Carlos Gomez off the DL. Colin Moran was sent down to make room on the roster.
• Chris Hermann is getting the start at catcher today for the Diamondbacks as Wellington Castillo get the day off.
• The Twins have called up Byron Buxton. The erstwhile can't-miss prospect with a 49 percent K-rate in 17 big-league games this season raked in Triple-A with a .336/.403/.603 triple slash since getting demoted. Danny Santana hits the DL in the corresponding move.
• Steve Pearce was pulled late in Monday's game due to an elbow issue. Keep an eye out for updates before plugging him into your lineups today.
• Bryce Harper left last night's game after getting hit by a pitch. He's considered day-to-day.
• Derek Dietrich saw action in last night's game after Miguel Rojas was forced out due to injury. He's obviously cleared to play after taking a foul ball off the head Sunday.
• Giancarlo Stanton sat again on Monday, but could be nearing a return.
• Ryan Braun missed his third straight game due to a neck issue on Monday. He's considered day-to-day.
• Caleb Joseph took a foul ball to the groin Monday and was sent to the hospital after heroically (stupidly?) finishing the game behind the plate. Have to think Matt Wieters gets the call at backstop today.
• Yunel Escobar missed Monday's game with a wrist injury. Kole Calhoun hit leadoff in his absence.
• David Wright reported Monday that he has a herniated disc in his neck. The oft-injured 3B is likely headed for a DL stint.
• Matt Duffy took a pitch off the wrist Monday, but X-rays came back negative. Consider him day-to-day.
• Dexter Fowler sat Monday with a heel issue. There's been no update on his status so far today.
• Stephen Piscotty was scratched from Monday's lineup due to food poisoning. Brandon Moss took his spot in RF yesterday and will make a fine play today if he's back in there.

Tournament Stacks

Colorado Rockies
I'd like to go against the grain here, but there's just no way. Not with Jon Moscot serving up meatballs in Coors Field. Moscot owns a respectable ERA, but as soon as you pull back the curtain even a tiny bit, it's a bloodbath. 3.45 Ks/9. 5.17 BB/9. 2.30 HR/9. It should be mentioned that those stats have been accumulated in just 15.2 innings of work this season, but Moscot has a history dotted with low strikeouts, iffy command and too many homers allowed. We don't need to dig much deeper than that for this pick. Of course, the Rockies will be highly owned, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to throw out one what-the-heck tourney lineup in which you fade them. But with an expected run total well over 6 tonight, you're going to want loads of exposure to the Colorado sticks. One big caveat: the forecast is looking pretty ugly around gametime. Keep an eye on that, and tread lightly if you're playing all-day slates.

St. Louis Cardinals
As always, you'll be paying the Coors premium for the Rockies and Reds, so if you need a cost-saving option for tourneys, Wily Peralta is here to help. The Brewers starter comes in with a 4.75 xFIP on the season and he's even worse in five starts at home. Miller Park is one of the best hitter's parks in the league and ranks behind only Coors Field and the Great American Ballpark in terms of home run factors. That's a potentially fatal cocktail against a Cardinals offense that's basically performing like the Red Sox of the National League against RHP. And if you needed more to love, there's soft pricing on the St. Louis hitters across much of the industry. They'll make nice plays to go with your high-priced pitchers or as lineup fillers where you're stacking Coors.

Consider: Toronto Blue Jays. Because I'm not ready to consider a world in which CC Sabathia is actually good again.

Sneaky Pitcher

Aaron Nola

With a nice menu of big-name arms throwing tonight, you won't have to scrape the bottom of the bargain bin to find a pitcher who could go a little overlooked. Nola has been excellent in 2016, striking out more than a batter per inning and holding down an xFIP of 2.59. Meanwhile, the Nationals rank in the bottom third of MLB in most metrics vs. RHP, including 25th in wRC+. Nola's win potential is diminished due to the fact that the Phillies' offense is just as bad and Joe Ross is a formidable foe, and that dings his value some on FanDuel. But for tournament purposes, we like what Nola is bringing to the table tonight. Bonus: As mentioned earlier, Bryce Harper left last night's game after getting hit by a pitch. If he sits tonight, an already shaky Washington lineup will be that much more exploitable.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Carlos Gonzalez

CarGo gets the slight edge here over teammate Nolan Arenado (and a handful of other Rockies). The projection system has him pegged as the top hitter on the board in terms of raw points, and his prices aren't prohibitive. In fact, on FanDuel, he's downright affordable. He's on a monster tear lately, with homers in three straight games, two or more hits in six of his last eight, and double-digit FanDuel points in six of seven. That's returned his season stats to the levels we're accustomed to seeing out of the 30-year-old, and hitting in the heart of the Colorado order against Moscot only multiplies his expected value. A great play in all formats today.

Aledmys Diaz

Diaz has cooled off some since torching the league for a plus-.400 batting average in April, but he's still been a pretty solid producer. A lot of that production is due to his enviable No. 2 slot in the Cardinals order and that spot and the depressed prices are among the biggest reasons he's showing up here today. The other reason? Wily Peralta, which you've probably already guessed if your a frequent visitor to this site or a moderately engaged fan of Major League Baseball. Peralta has been terrible for going on two seasons now, and Diaz should have ample opportunities to score, as the Cardinals have one of the highest expected run totals on tonight's slate. And don't sweat the R v. R matchup. In his brief time in the bigs, Diaz has posted reverse splits, featuring a .398 wOBA against RHP. That likely won't hold, but we're not fearing the regression in this matchup.

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!