Daily Fantasy Strategy – 9/18/13 – For Draftstreet

Just because your roto team is scuffling along to a ninth place finish (or you are so far out in front of your opponents it’s not fun anymore), your fantasy season doesn’t have to end!

The good news for those daily league fiends (or those who have lineups to ponder over in head-to-head matchups), it looks like a dry day across all of baseball. And by dry, I mean really dry (there’s a chance of an ever-so-light shower in Colorado. Maybe). So get all hands on deck.

Whoa. Hot (mid-80’s) and wind blowing out at 15+ mph at Kaufmann tonight. Make sure you aren’t sitting guys on Cleveland or Kansas City unless you have a very superior option blocking them. Balls should be flying today. Alternatively, wind blowing in on the South Side today, so if you were thinking really hard about those unstoppable White Sox or Twins hitters… well…

The Daily Five

Alex Wood – $5,107

He’s pretty much “must start” at this price. The young southpaw with the unorthodox delivery as a sparkling 3.19 xFIP in his first season in the bigs. He’s coming off a skipped start and a rough couple outings before that, but he racked up the punchouts the last time he faced the Nationals, whiffing nine in 6.1 innings (no walks, one run). If the old “look what he did against them last time out!” doesn’t sway you, by wOBA, Natstown is 26th in the majors against lefties.

Charlie Morton – $9,169

Morton faces off against the limp-sticked (yes, yes) Padres (26th in MLB by wOBA) at PNC. Morton’s 3.54 ERA is (somewhat surprisingly) not that far below his 3.75 ERA. A large part of this stems from an increase in Morton’s groundball rate (now over 60%). Good news? The Padres are fourth in the league in worm-burners. Except the Pittsburgh infielders to get lots of work.

Carlos Santana – $7,729

First, read above. Hot and windy in Kansas City. But even with that little plus aside, Santana has shown a remarkably consistent stick this year — his big asset in Draftstreet-type leagues is his BB%. Specifically, how his BB% is much lower than many other similarly-valued C options. He’s (somewhat quietly) been a nice value play behind big bats like Buster Posey and Yadier Molina this year.

Billy Butler – $5,532

This game is so nice, I dipped twice. Lots of owners in Draftstreet seem to miss the fact that guys like Butler and Victor Martinez are only viewable through the “DH” tab. Butler’s 2013 has been somewhat of a down season by his standards, but he’s still averaged 2.65 D/S points, putting him ahead of more expensive options like Pedro Alvarez, Josh Hamilton, and Carl Crawford. If you need to fill the UTIL slot, look no further.

Jonny Gomes – $8,099

Gomes has finally started to come around as the lefty-masher the Red Sox thought they were signing this past offseason. After a slow start against southpaws, Gomes has crushed them lately, finally seeing his season ISO against them climb above .200 last week. Wei-Yin Chen has fairly sizable platoon splits (.283/.331) so expect one of Boston’s bearded mashers to get some good looks tonight.

This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of Draftstreet. FanGraphs will maintain complete editorial control of the postings, and brings you these posts in our continued desire to provide the best analytical information on the latest in baseball.