Daily Fantasy Strategy – 8/24 – For Draftstreet

Make hay while you still can.

It’s getting to be about that time where baseball gets really unpredictable, with rosters expanding and teams experimenting with young players and odd lineups. It means there might be more opportunity for bargains in daily leagues, but it also means there’s far more uncertainty.

Consider the graphs after the jump that show the amount of batters and starters used month by month over the past few years.


The amount of unique batters jumps a great deal in September compared to other months, which shouldn’t at all be surprising.

The number of unique starting pitchers used has been higher this year than in the recent past but you can still expect a pretty large uptick in September.

The Daily Five
Wade Davis – $7,600
If you can’t believe I’m recommending Wade Davis, good, because I can’t either. I’m not going to tell you I think his 5.43 ERA should be closer to his 4.22 FIP, because he’s been objectively horrible in games and I don’t think it’s been “bad luck.” However, he gets enough strikeouts to matter and has had a few good starts of late. He also gets the Nationals, who are a largely average team against righties, with a strong wind pushing any fly balls in left out past the third base line. I feel dirty.

Jeff Samardzija – $12,919
The Shark gets the Padres at Petco, if their performance against righties (.298 wOBA, 20.8% K-rate) wasn’t already juicy enough. Samardzija can pile up strikeouts without hurting ratios, so getting him at a median starting pitcher price is a no-brainer.

Jason Castro – $7,193
As with all catchers, doublecheck to make sure he gets the nod, but he just had Thursday off so he should be a go behind the plate or as a DH. Castro gets Chien-Ming Wang and if I need to tell you more than that, well….well, I guess you’re like everyone else and have just tuned out Astros and Blue Jays performances. Needless to say, it’s a friendly hitter’s match-up.

Logan Morrison – $7,329
Morrison has a .376 wOBA against righties this year and has walked nearly as much as he’s struck out. You might not love his twitter account, but drawing Jeff Manship should make you feel pretty good. Manship has a 6.44 ERA and a 12.5% HR/FB rate over 100 career innings which is either a small sample size alert or the reason he only has 100 innings at age 28.

Brett Lawrie – $6,845
You probably don’t want to watch this game so with Castro and Lawrie just set it and forget it. But it’s Wang against Brad Peacock, so you almost have to have a few hitters from this one. Lawrie’s been a house afire in the second half of the season with a 147 wRC+ and just a 9.2% strikeout rate. Maybe he’s not quite this good, but he should probably be more expensive than an average hitter given the streak and the match-up.

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