Daily Fantasy Strategy — July 9 — For Draftstreet

Park factors are not made equal across all days. Yes, Coors Field is Coors Field every damn day of the week, but different ballparks play differently depending on the temperature and wind.

That’s why it’s not always enough to simply rely on general park factors, useful as they may be, from our Guts pages. Park factors generally take about three years to stabilize, and so how parks perform in specific conditions is something we may never get reliable samples on, since we’re splitting that data even thinner.

ParkFactors.com can be a big help in this regard, crunching the numbers for us and giving us a quick indicator of how a park may play on the day. There’s also DailyBaseballData, which gives you all the raw material for you to make your own decisions (not to mention hour-by-hour forecast information).

At this point in the season, there’s not going to be anything changing your entire strategy in this space, but knowing how to handle daily weather fluctuations instead of relying on year-long park factors is yet another tool for the utility belt, especially as temperatures pick up and the differences between parks get narrower in some instances.

The Daily Five
C.J. Wilson – $15,444
The Toronto Blue Jays exploded for four runs against Tyler Skaggs on Tuesday, which is incredible for the lineup they currently trot out against lefties, considering Edwin Encarnacion is hurt. Wilson shouldn’t have much trouble beating his 4.00 rest of season Steamer ERA in this one given the opposition quality, and his strikeout rate is healthy enough to make upside a possibility. The warm temperature is partially cancelled out by a high air density index, too, though Vegas still has an 8.5 over-under.

Roenis Elias – $13,989
I’m not a huge believer in Elias as a rest-of-season play, but I think his set-up on Wednesday is on the better end of what goes into his 4.13 ERA projection from here. He’s at home, which certainly helps, as does drawing the Twins and their 92 wRC+ against lefties. Add in their 21.8 percent strikeout rate against southpaws, plus the value of having two mid-tier pitchers with a cheap stack below, and he’s worth rolling the dice on.

Padres stack – Yes, the offense is pretty brutal, but that’s enough to lower prices for a strong match-up. Jair Jurrjens doesn’t miss bats and he doesn’t coax ground balls, an incredibly dangerous proposition at Coors Field, such that the over-under is 11.5 and the game is a pick-‘em.
Seth Smith – $6,291
Yasmani Grandal – $4,932
Cameron Maybin – $4,111
Chase Headley – $5,141

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