Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 8/17/16

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.

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

It's Wednesday, and as usual, that means a split slate in DFS Land. We've got five games on tap today, with 10 more tonight. Both slates have nice hitter's parks and intriguing options at pitcher. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Brett Gardner is back in the Yankees lineup today after missing four starts due to an ankle injury. Meanwhile, Jacoby Ellsbury is getting the day off. Aaron Hicks will man CF and hit ninth.
• Logan Forsythe is sitting again after he was a late scratch last night due to a back issue. Nick Franklin is starting at 2B and is back at the top of the lineup.
• Matt Duffy is out today after leaving last night's game due to a sore Achilles. Tim Beckham is at SS and hitting eighth in his place.
• Ryan Braun limped off last night after sliding into the wall at Wrigley. He's dealing with knee and ankle injuries as a result and should be considered day-to-day at best.
• Andrelton Simmons was scratched from last night's lineup  due to a personal matter.
• Geovanny Soto was also a late scratch last night because Mike Scioscia is out to get me with a knee issue. He was replaced by Jett Bandy, who homered, and who would've been a really great play against the lefty in the first place.
• Aaron Hill was a late scratch last night due to a forearm issue and is considered day-to-day.
• Late scratches were matched last night only by pitchers leaving early due to weather/injury and catchers going yard. Neil Walker was yet another guy removed at the last minute. His issue is lower back stiffness, and he's considered day-to-day, too.
• Miguel Sano missed another game last night due to an elbow issue (but at least we knew that before lineup lock). His status for tonight is undetermined as of this morning.
• Miguel Cabrera missed last night's game after being removed Monday due to a biceps issue. The injury isn't considered serious and he could return any day.
• Adam Duvall sat out last night after fouling a ball off his foot Monday. He's considered day-to-day.

Tournament Stacks

Washington Nationals
We're going back to the well. Yeah, the results haven't really been what we expected to get in the first couple of games of the series, and maybe the Rockies will keep the bats relatively in check for the entire series, but we're betting against it. Rookie Jon Gray is taking the hill for Colorado today, and while he's been more good than bad this season, he's been pretty awful lately, giving up 16 hits and 15 runs in his last two starts. But recent results are only of passing interest to our projection system; more pertinent here is the Coors Field effect, which rarely goes dormant for long. Also worth noting: though Gray's numbers remain pretty solid across the board, the underlying stuff suggests a little regression wouldn't be a shock. Lefties are rarely getting cheated against him, with a 36 percent hard-contact rate, with only 14.5 percent soft contact. That should fit well with the Nats bats we're most interested in: Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper.

Los Angeles Dodgers
There's no shortage of nice offensive options on the night slate, and the Dodgers will probably be a popular choice after they turned the latter half of last night's game into a glorified BP session. But this pick isn't about chasing yesterday's points. It's about the fact that the Dodgers are tied as the NL's second-best offense in wRC+ against RHP, and last month's addition of Josh Reddick only adds to their potency in the split. Also, Jake Thompson. The Phils rookie might have a fine future in MLB, but odds are against him starting to realize it tonight. He was a low-K guy in the upper minors, so we're not at all concerned with the fact that he struck out six Rockies in five IP in his last start. Citizens Bank Park also isn't going to help his cause; it's a home run booster for both hands, especially on nights like tonight when temps are expected to push into the high 80s with the wind breezing out.

 

Sneaky Pitcher

Mike Foltynewicz

Listen, we have to think hardly anybody is going to play Folty tonight. Which we kind of understand. Nobody is super excited about rostering a dude with an xFIP in the mid 4s who got blasted the last time he faced the team he's going against tonight. So yeah. There's the case against the Braves rookie. The case in favor might be comparatively thin, but that's what you get at these prices. Here goes: For starters, he's a pretty decent prospect who showed nice swing-and-miss stuff in the minors that we've seen flashes of in the bigs this season. The Twins are also better against lefties, and he's one of the few guys going tonight who's not in a straight-up hitter's park, so unless you're weirdly into Kyle Gibson, Anibal Sanchez or Yordano Ventura (hint: don't be), he's your best option when it comes to dodging offense-boosting environs. Also, he's a slight favorite. That might speak more to Vegas' lack of confidence in Gibson, but any time the Braves avoid underdog status it's worth paying attention to.

 

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Bryce Harper

Yep. Under the projection system's strong advisement, we're gonna keep putting him out there. There's an awful lot of variation between FanDuel and DraftKings in the optimal lineups today, and Harper is the only guy finding is way in on both sites. A lot of that has to do with extended track record, of which Harper's is excellent. Hitters tend to play to their established level over the long-term, so even though Harper's 2016 has been a disappointment, we still think he's likely to improve over the last six weeks. And if you're looking for anecdotal evidence in the game log, you can find it. Since taking a week off to rest an ailing neck, he's reached base in eight of 13 PAs with three extra-base hits. Yeah, we're squinting a bit, but the on-base skills are real and we think the elite ceiling remains, especially in Coors.

Troy Tulowitzki

If you're pivoting off of Coors Field on the early slate, the projection system is also really high on the Blue Jays righties against CC Sabathia, and Tulo's price makes him a really attractive option in all formats. The erstwhile superstar is still doing pretty good work, especially over the last couple of months and against lefties. His overall wOBA has been at least .374 in every month since June, and even with an ugly first two months in the mix, he's got a .349 wOBA and .205 ISO on the season against southpaws. For the price you're paying, that's hard to beat. Maybe equally noteworthy is the fact that hitters seem to have figured out the cutter than made Sabathia pretty good earlier this year. He has just two quality starts in his last 10, with a 4.87 xFIP during that span.

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!