Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 6/2/16

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

Happy Alfredo Simon Day, everybody! We're going to be picking on the Reds starter a lot today, as pitching on tonight's eight-game slate is going to be cheap (and not very good). Meanwhile, the pitching choice is clear on the three-game early slate, but where to turn for offense is much less clear. It should make for an interesting day of DFS. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Prospect Julio Urias is getting the start today for the Dodgers with Kenta Maeda pushed back to Friday.
• Hunter Pence has been placed on the DL with a hamstring injury today. Jarrett Parker has received most of the playing when he's been out this year, and he's in RF and batting seventh today.
• Gordon Beckham left Wednesday's game with an apparent hamstring issue and is headed for the DL. Chase d'Arnaud took his place and is back in the lineup and hitting second today.
• Ben Zobrist is getting a day off today. Javier Baez will play 2nd and hit seventh for the Cubs.
• Derek Dietrich was removed from Wednesday's game after getting hit by a pitch. X-rays came back negative and he's considered day-to-day.
• Marlon Byrd has been 162 games by Major League Baseball after failing a second PED test.
• Brandon Phillips sat again on Wednesday with a foot injury. It doesn't sound too serious and he could be back in the middle of the Reds order soon.
• Ryan Howard will be riding the pine for a few days with Tommy Joseph taking over at first. Phillies manager Pete Mackanin didn't rule out the possibility of Joseph supplanting Howard as the every-day first baseman.

Tournament Stacks

Colorado Rockies
If you read the picks column, you knew this was coming. If you've watched Alfredo Simon ply his trade in the last two years, you knew this was coming. Everybody in the industry will be all over both sides of tonight's game in Coors Field, and that's the only real drawback we expect here. The Rockies own a .375 team wOBA at home this season, along with a .222 ISO. Meanwhile few big league starters have been as crushable as Simon, and to make matters worse, he's backed up by the worst bullpen in the league in terms of walks, home runs, ERA and xFIP. Every bat in the Colorado lineup is in play. If you want to pivot to Cincinnati in search of differentiation from the field, that's a fine option, too, but we can't recommend fading the Rockies completely in any lineup today.

Boston Red Sox
I fully recognize these are chalkiest of chalk picks, but I couldn't bring myself to write up the Yankees and the Red Sox have the highest run expectancy other than Colorado tonight. We've mentioned often that Boston leads the league across the board in most of the offensive metrics we like to look at, but maybe greater context is needed. Consider: Though the Yankees came close to matching it in '09 and '07, if the Red Sox .366 wOBA were to hold for the full season, it would be the highest mark in 17 years (pause here to remember the fondly the '99 Indians, who had four dudes with 100-plus RBIs, including 165 from Manny Ramirez). So that's the kind of pace the Red Sox are on. You can comfortably play their 1-7 hitters in most any matchup, and Ubaldo Jimenez is anything put a deterrent. They're not coming cheap, of course, but the prices aren't that bad, especially for tonight's slate, where you likely won't be spending on pitching.

Sneaky Pitcher

Jerad Eickhoff

Eickhoff isn't the type of guy who's typically going to carry you to great riches, but he's been a competent and serviceable starter through the first 18 games of his career. Competent and serviceable. Is your blood pumping yet? He's actually in decent spot here, because there's an awful lot of swing and miss in the Milwaukee lineup; no team strikes out more against RHP than the Brewers this season. That provides a lift to Eickhoff's ceiling. Now, if the Phillies offense would only cooperate. Despite respectable peripherals, Eickhoff has been credited with only two wins on the year, due largely to the fact that he's supported (in theory) by one of the lowest-scoring offenses in baseball. The good news on that front is they'll be facing Chase Anderson and his 4.64 xFIP today, increasing the chances Eickhoff delivers those W bonus points tonight.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Carlos Gonzalez

Pick a Rockie, any Rockie. Well, not really, but the projection system does like anybody with a pulse and a bat against Simon in Coors Field. And it's pretty close to a toss up between Gonzalez and Charlie Blackmon, especially on DraftKings, where Blackmon is the slightly cheaper option. But Gonzalez is the choice here, as he's the top projected player in terms of raw points and is affordable enough to fit in most of your lineups. You can probably guess all the factors that play into the projection. Cargo's .372 wOBA, Simon's 5.45 xFIP, Coors Field, etc, etc. Not included is the fact that Cargo has been on a tear recently. Sure, hot streaks come and go without rhyme, reason or predictability, but five HRs in the last seven games probably shouldn't be completely ignored either.

Madison Bumgarner

As we talked about in the picks column, Bumgarner is the runaway choice today, regardless of the slate. His numbers are typically ace-like in 2016, and while he needs to bring the walks under control, the Braves don't have the kind of bats we expect to make him pay for his mistakes. They rank dead last in the majors in wOBA, wRC+ and plenty more categories against LHP this year. In fact, their slugging percentage in the split is so low (.303), if it were their OBP it would still rank 25th in MLB. They're like the Alfredo Simon of offenses. If you want to go contrarian with some tournament lineups and pivot off of Bum, sure, why not? But we can't imagine looking anywhere else for cash games (or the bulk of our GPPs) on any slate where Bumgarner is available 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!