Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 8/24/16

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

You guys know the routine by now. It's Wednesday, and that means a split slate. Today we've got five early games, followed by a 10-game slate tonight, and both come with plenty of interesting possibilities for both cash games and tourneys. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Carlos Correa is back in the lineup today after an early exit due to illness last night.
• Yulieski Gurriel is sitting again. He hasn't played since leaving his MLB debut with a hamstring issue on Sunday.
• Andrew McCutchen is taking a seat today. Matt Joyce will get another start and is hitting second, to the delight of bargain-hunting DFSers every where.
• Chase Utley is day-to-day with a foot issue. He left last night's game after entering as a pinch hitter.
• Charlie Blackmon returned to the Rockies lineup last night after missing the previous four games with a toe issue.
• Josh Reddick was out of the starting lineup again last night as he continues to deal with a finger issue, but did enter the game as a pinch hitter.
• Yasmany Tomas was removed from last night's game due to a back issue. He's considered day-to-day for now.
• Marcell Ozuna left last night's game early to deal with a family emergency. Stay tuned.
• Marcus Semien has been placed on the paternity list and is expected to be out until Friday.
• DJ Lemahieu was scratched from last night's lineup due to a wrist issue and is considered day-to-day.
• The Blue Jays are hopeful that Devon Travis will be able to return to the lineup today after missing last night's game with a finger issue.
• Derek Dietrich has been placed on the DL with a knee injury.

Tournament Stacks

Chicago Cubs
Petco, Schmetco. The algorithm can't get enough Cubs today. Like, literally. Especially on FanDuel where their prices aren't prohibitive, if the four-man cap were removed, I wouldn't be stunned to see the projection system roll out everybody in the order. What does that say about Paul Clemens? Uh, nothing good (or surprising). Despite an 80 percent strand rate, he's flirting with an ERA in the 5s, which is part of the reason why is FIP (6.95) and xFIP (5.72) are hovering in the stratosphere. The sample size in 2016 is small (37.1 IP), but this is a guy who's always had problems throwing strikes, missing bats and keeping the ball in the park. The trifecta of pitching badness, as we like to call it. So yeah, pick a Cub, any Cub, but start with Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant because they're awesome.

Texas Rangers
It's really Cubs or bust as far as the projection system is concerned today, but sadly they're not available on the evening slate. The good news is there are plenty of offenses in good spots. We're siding with the Rangers, on the heels of an improbable pitching duel last night. The hope is that recency bias and the Great American Ballpark do their respective things, with the former tamping down ownership rates and the latter boosting power upside from everybody picking up a bat tonight. Cincinnati is sending 28-year-old rookie Timothy Adleman to the hill, and while his results have been respectable in his first five big-league starts, they probably won't be much longer. That 88 percent strand rate ain't gonna hold, and he's due for some home run regression, as well. That's why his xFIP (5.45) is about 2.5 runs higher than his ERA. The track record on Adleman is pretty thin (24.1 career innings), but the fact that he took this long to reach the bigs tells us plenty. Digging into his minor league numbers we don't see anything to fear. One interesting note is that he owns pretty significant reverse splits in more than 240 minor league innings, so don't be afraid to plug in righties against him.

 

Sneaky Pitcher

Tanner Roark

The projection system really likes the value on James Shields, but that's mostly because he's dirt cheap ($4K on DraftKings), and I just don't know if I've got the stomach for him, even against the Phillies. I'd rather pay up a bit for the steady, if unexciting, Roark. Julio Teheran is also in consideration here, but the win expectancy is low, and that hurts on sites like FanDuel. Meanwhile, Roark is a -154 favorite at home against the Orioles, and his track record of working relatively deep into games raises his floor. He's reached the seventh inning in 10 of his last 12 starts, which helps cover for the fact that he doesn't rack up a ton of whiffs. Even so, he's not much of an upside play, but he does a great job of limiting home runs (.72 per 9 this season) and that's big against a team like Baltimore that relies pretty heavily on the long ball.

 

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jose Fernandez

Ok, so Roark is boring. Got me there. Luckily, we've got Fernandez going tonight, and he rules. Yeah, you could save a little by opting for Yu Darvish, but we wouldn't recommend it, because there's nobody in the game with upside to match Fernandez. Even when he puts up a dud (of which he's had a couple recently), the fact that he strikes out well over a batter per inning means he's rarely going to do irreparable harm. His 12.96 Ks/9 leads baseball by 1.74, and now that Clayton Kershaw has fallen below the innings requirement, his 2.36 xFIP is also an MLB-best. Noah Syndergaard, by the way, is the only other guy with an xFIP below 3.25, so the distance from the field is substantial. Kansas City is still clinging to its reputation as a team that doesn't strike out, but this is a far different lineup than the one that ran through the Mets last October. Their K rate in 2016 is hovering around the league average, and is higher away from Kauffman Stadium, which reduces strikeouts (for some reason -- superior batter's eye, maybe?). At any rate, no lineup is baseball is immune from Fernandez's ability to miss bats, and we'll be slotting him at the top of our lineup in all cash games tonight. Given the upside, he's worth tournament consideration, too.

Anthony Rizzo

First the obvious stuff: Paul Clemens is terrible, and Anthony Rizzo is great. Really great against righties: .415 wOBA, .274 ISO in 2016. What's a little more under the radar is that Petco Park isn't actually a bad spot for lefty power. It ranks 12th in MLB over the last three years in HR park factors for lefties, which isn't amazing or anything, but is a heck of a lot better than its reputation.

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!