Daily Fantasy Strategy – 9/25/13 – For Draftstreet

Last week of the season? It’s time to chase those final categories. With only five full days left in 2013, your team pretty much is what it is. It’s time to begin a targeted attack for those last few roto points. And by a “targeted attack,” I may mean “mass waiver wire purge.” We have 3% of the season left. It may emotionally hurt to kick top-40 players to the curb (especially if your team name is a pun on one of their names that you think is pretty freakin’ clever), but 5 not-so-shiny pennies in a bag of 162 doesn’t dull the other 157.

In less bad-currency-analogy terms, I offer some examples. I’m leading in ERA and WHIP (by a considerable margin) but am trying to run down our first-place guy in strikeouts. Suddenly, whether or not a pitcher has a good matchup or great peripherals doesn’t matter to me; whether or not he can punch out more than a couple guys does. Jordan Zimmermann? Adios. David Hale? Yeah, I can give you a shot. In that same league, I’m in a seven-person cluster, all within 8 home runs. While I’m not winning stolen bases, I’m eight up and 15 behind. Not a lot of room for movement there. Goodbye, Jacoby Ellsbury (actually, he’s been gone for a while now), Eric Young, and Billy Hamilton. Hello, Josh Rutledge, Mitch Moreland, and Darin Ruf. Could you guys just run into a couple over the next few days? That’d be great.

The Daily Five

Danny Salazar – $12,376

Salazar actually fits perfectly with the strategy above. There’s a fairly sizable chance he doesn’t work deep into this game. If you’re looking for wins, you better look elsewhere. However, if you care about whiffs (Draftstreet rewards them, too) — Salazar has the gas and the opponent (White Sox) to pay dividends.

Randall Delgado – $9,493

Delgado has somewhat quietly put up 3.96 ERA in the desert, a number that nearly matches his 3.93 xFIP. He’s managed to significantly cut down on the walks this year, nearly halving them. At around 175 innings, he’s right near the top of his innings cap, but he’s got a good shot of posting a quality start in Petco against the struggling Padres.

Chris Owings – $7,149

Owings has gotten off to a fast start in the big leagues, posting a .766 OPS over his first 50 plate appeareances. While he strikes out a lot (and doesn’t walk enough), both things I’m not a huge fan of in Draftstreet formats, he’s shown decent pop in the minors as well as OK speed. His BABIP is a little inflated, but his cost is a little deflated, thanks to the fact that he’s new to the scene. If you can use him to save $3,000 for someone else, do it.

Victor Martinez – $8,862

Finally, someone over at Draftstreet has been listening to me, and V-Mart isn’t nearly as criminally undervalued as he was for the last couple months (not that I was complaining). Martinez’s cost is up, but he’s still behind many names with higher costs that are driven by positional scarcity, not raw abilities. In your DH slot, you are just looking for a guy that can put up the best numbers and, since the all-star break, Martinez falls in that category. Don’t forget about him (and Billy Butler) in snake drafts, either.

Matt Joyce – $5,764

Yes, Matt Joyce has slumped lately. Yes, Matt Joyce hasn’t been quite as prodigious against righties as usual this season. But sub-$6,000? He gets Phil Hughes at Yankee Stadium with a short porch. He already abused it yesterday. Abuse his cost today.

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