Josh Rutledge is back up with the Colorado Rockies, and with the injury to third baseman Nolan Arenado, this will be more than the “occasional pinch hitter” stint he had in the early parts of the season when he totaled just 15 plate appearances over 11 games in a 19-day span.

No, Rutledge looks likely to start at second while Arenado heals, moving D.J. LeMahieu from the keystone to the hot corner. Despite his flaws, this four-to-six week path to playing time (and perhaps longer if Arenado eventually opts for surgery to place a pin in his broken finger, something that won’t be determined until later this month), this makes Rutledge an interesting add for those in need of shortstop or second base help.
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“Stack Yankees lefties at home.” “Start (left handed pitcher X) against the Reds.”

Platoon-specific recommendations are frequent here and in the Daily Grind posts that Brad Johnson does such a good job with, but I find I constantly have to be reminding myself of which platoon situations are worth paying attention to. That is, there is a bit of fluidity in these recommendations, though at this point we should have a general idea of how teams perform against lefties or righties.

Still, it’s worth posting the team platoon splits here every so often as a refresher. What sticks out today when we look is that the Joey Votto-less Reds have slipped all the way to 30th in the league in wOBA against lefties, while the Braves happen to be the league’s most platoon-dependent offense, ranking first in wOBA against lefties and 29th in wOBA against righties.

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I wasn’t lying on Sunday, but apparently my “yips” persist when writing this column. There is a screengrab of my DraftStreet MLB profile after the jump because I’m starting to get self-conscious you’ll all think I’m an idiot. I mean, I am, but I’m not leading you astray, generally, I don’t think.

In any case, you probably care little for past success, and you want to know what will happen TODAY. Well TODAY is, luckily for us, a larger slate than we’re accustomed to seeing on Thursdays. There are 13 games, so a lot of our usual Thursday tips for playing with a smaller player pool can be cast aside, and you can just focus on setting the best lineup possible.

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It’s been kind of a funny week for me on the daily beat. Yesterday, I even cracked 85 points, which obviously drove me nuts because that’s enough to place in tournaments more often than not.

It’s been a successful week, but on Thursday (when I had to write the daily strategy here), I whiffed. The Indians got beat 4-2 by J.A. Happ, of all people, Wei-Yin Chen was mediocre, and my dude C.J. Cron didn’t do much. This kind of stuff happens, and having a bad day or two in a week is completely within expectations, which is why you play daily. Still, it’s frustrating that the 40-point days seem to be the ones where I write, while the 80-point days maybe aren’t helping you.

Anyway, the point is, I may have the yips in this space. Is that a thing? Let’s try and right it.

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I often cite wOBA in these daily fantasy posts, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misleading by repeatedly mentioning a stat that doesn’t mesh well with the DraftStreet scoring system.

As a refresher, here is what is included in wOBA: unintentional walks, hit by pitch, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, and plate appearances.

Here is what is included in DraftStreet scoring: walks, hut by pitch, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, runs, RBI, stolen bases and strikeouts.

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Once a hitter displays a skill, he owns it.

That can be one of the hardest axioms to remember in fantasy baseball, as down seasons or exceptionally cold stretches make us turn our backs on a player for good. Never is that harder than when the matter of skill ownership gets clouded even further by the process of aging – a skill is owned, sure, but it can also erode over time.

Given those factors, I understand the trepidation in buying into 35-year-old Jimmy Rollins coming off of perhaps the worst season of his career, one in which his home run total dropped to just six in 666 plate appearances, his strikeout rate continued inching higher and his isolated slugging all but fell off the face of the earth. But Rollins’ early-2014 resurgence is worth examining for several reasons.
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Did you have a good week? I had a good week. Unfortunately, that week could have been better, and that can sometimes be a frustrating part of daily fantasy, but it’s often a necessary evil depending on your situation in life and general disposition toward risk.

What I mean is, I had a handful of double-ups this week where I scored well enough to place in a tournament setting (not across the board but, generally, they were strong enough to expect a return). So, instead of getting the appreciable payout from a tournament format, I was left with “just” the double-up prize.

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While it’s less of a concern on Thursdays with a generally thin schedule, thinning out the player pool from which you’re selecting can be a helpful first step in your daily research. That’s not to say you should ignore values that pop up beyond these quick short-hands, but they represent an easy way of narrowing your choices, specifically when it comes to selecting a pitcher to stack against.

I’ll generally list every team in action, then I’ll eliminate teams playing with a chance of rain out (especially on a day like Thursday when an early-start league could really lower your floor with late rain-outs), and then sort them based on the over/under posted by Vegas to group them into potentially high- and low-scoring affairs.

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Here are my updated shortstop tier rankings:

Tier One: Troy Tulowitzki
Tier Two: Everyone else

Tulowitzki has been that damn good, and while Paul Swydan did a great job covering Tulowitzki’s early breakout last week, it’s worth putting the hot start – 236 wRC+ and 3.1 WAR and all – in context for fantasy baseball.
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There are people smarter than you. Definitely in general terms, but also more than likely when it comes to baseball, analysis and projections.

I don’t mean to hurt your feelings – the fact that there are people smarter than you is great. A lot of them work in Vegas, and they can be a big help when it comes to identifying players and match-ups to target on your daily fantasy team.

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