Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 8/16/16

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 full 15-game slate tonight, plus an early game at Wrigley if you just can't wait. The main slate holds loads of intriguing matchups, including a solid pitching menu and some of the best hitter's parks baseball has to offer.

Personnel

• Ryan Braun is taking a seat in the early game. He'll be replaced in LF by Kirk Nieuwenheis, who's hitting sixth.
• Willson Contreras is also on the bench today, as Miguel Montero mans the backstop spot for the Cubs.
• Welington Castillo went nuts last night with four hits after being activated from a stint on the paternity list then bereavement list. In much better news, Castillo said his wife and baby are both doing fine after complications during the birth.
• Shin-Soo Choo left last night's game and is likely headed back to the DL. The Rangers are expected to call up Ryan Rua to fill his roster spot today.
• Billy Hamilton left last night's game with a knee issue. He's considered day-to-day for now.
• Miguel Cabrera was forced out of last night's game and is considered day-to-day with a biceps issue.
• Buster Posey missed his second straight game Monday due to back tightness. He's day-to-day until further notice.
• Brett Gardner sat again last night and hasn't played since fouling a ball off his ankle on Friday. Keep an eye on the Yankees lineup before plugging him in yours.
• Brandon Phillips, who is dealing with a pair of leg injuries, sat out last night's game. He's day-to-day for now.

Tournament Stacks

Washington Nationals
You know the drill. It's Coors Field, and both offenses are in play, but it's the Nats who are our pick to go off tonight. They'll be facing the mediocre Chad Bettis, who, admittedly, has been pretty respectable over the last two months. Since June 15, he's gone at least six innings in nine of his 11 starts and has really only been blown up in a couple of them. Still, during that stretch, which is easily his best of the year, his xFIP is creeping up into the 4.00 range, so he's not a shut-down guy or anything. He has been somehow better at home, holding opponents to .79 HR/9, but the long ball is only part of the allure at Coors. Even with the home run suppression, he's still yielding a .351 wOBA and .467 slugging at home, so the potential for big numbers is there for the Nationals tonight. They've been a middle-of-the road offense against RHP in 2016, but have been much better lately, the upswing coinciding with the insertion of Trea Turner as the everyday leadoff man. Turner's a fine play in all formats, and certainly don't overlook him in your stacks. Bettis does a solid job of limiting the running game, but Turner has already proven himself to be an elite base-stealer, with 12 in 123 PAs. That's a pace of 70 or more over a full season, so there's almost no pitcher/catcher combo we'd be backing down from right now. He's also posted a .523 slugging percentage, and though the sample is small, it's enough to make those spacious gaps in Coors really enticing. Most of the Nats hitters behind him also in play; Bettis actually gives up better power numbers to righties, but it's also all but impossible to overlook lefties Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper in the heart of the order.

Chicago Cubs
This pick's for the late game, and will be somewhat dependent on the lineup. With a 1 p.m. game also on the slate, who knows if Joe Maddon will decide to rest some guys in the night cap. We really hope he keeps the big boppers in there, because the wind is expected to be blowing out tonight at Wrigley, and Chase Anderson makes for one of the juiciest targets on the slate if you're home run hunting. The Brewers' righty is giving up 1.7 HRs/9 this year, and his batted ball profile tells us it's no fluke (or a product of Miller Park). He's yielding more than 2 HRs/9 away from home, and righties are the ones really getting to him, with 2.15 HR/9 and a hard-contact rate north of 40 percent. Meanwhile, the Cubs have the NL's second-best offense in terms of wRC+. Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo are the obvious guys to build from, and we'd have a really hard time fading either. We'd rather play them, and hope that the presence of Coors Field and a handful of other great hitting environments on the slate keeps their ownership levels relatively low.

Sneaky Pitcher

Blake Snell

We've got a nice selection of aces and upper-middle class arms on the slate tonight, and we're hoping that lets Blake Snell slide through the cracks to some extent, because we think he's in a nice spot against the Padres in Tropicana Field. San Diego is an interesting case; on whole, they've been pretty bad offensively this season, but have earned a reputation as lefty-killers, and it's not undeserved. The Padres rank fifth in MLB in wRC+ against southpaws this season, but without Matt Kemp in the middle of the order, they've lost one of the key pieces who helped them establish those stats. And while Alex Dickerson, Ryan Schimpf and Travis Jankowski have done good things in the second half of the season, they haven't been especially effective in their limited opportunities against lefties. Dickerson and Schimpf often sit when a southpaw is on the hill, in fact, and while Jabari Blash and Adam Rosales can make intriguing punt plays in the right matchup, they're not the kind of guys who are gonna push us to fade a guy we like. And we like Snell. He's striking out more than a batter per inning in his first 11 MLB starts, which gives him a nice ceiling when you factor in the Padres' 24% K rate against lefties. Walks have been the only thing holding the rookie back from a true breakthrough, but we're willing to eat that risk for the sake of squeezing in some better bats tonight.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Bryce Harper

If you're a frequent visitor here, you had to know there was no way the projection system could resist Harper in Coors Field, especially with a .240 batting average keeping his price in check, especially on FanDuel. Yeah, he's burned us more than once this season, but we just don't think that .247 BABIP, which is more than .120 points off last year's number and .70 points lower than his career average, is going to hold. He's getting forced into more soft contact than he has in the past, but with 20 HRs and 15 steals, the upside is still there, and with more free passes than Ks this year, it means we rarely have to swallow a goose egg. If you want to fade him outside of your Nats stacks, we humans would understand. The algorithm, on the other hand, would call all of us dumb and irrational. It's got Harper as one of only two players showing up in all of its top 10 optimal lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel for tonight's slate.

Jurickson Profar

This one comes with a couple of caveats: Is Profar going to start? If he is, can he find his way out of the eight hole? He's been playing more or less everyday at 1B lately, but he's also been buried at the back half of the lineup since the return of Shin-Soo Choo and the acquisition of Carlos Beltran. But now Choo looks like he's headed back to the DL after taking a pitch off the forearm last night, which frees up not only more at bats, but also a possible spot as the lead-off hitter atop a suddenly very potent Rangers lineup. Profar has cooled off after lighting up the league for the first six weeks after his call-up, but he still holds a .352 wOBA against RHP, and the chance to get four or five at bats in Globe Life Park carries a lot of value. He's also pretty cheap, and that's extremely important. You're going to need to find a couple of affordable guys tonight if you're paying up for pitching or for Coors bats, and if Profar gets the right lineup slot, he looks like the best place to turn for low-cost value.

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!