Daily Fantasy Strategy — June 30 — For Draftstreet

Nine teams currently have a wRC+ over 100 for the season. Anytime you’re looking to stack hitters from the same team, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to just pick a team or two out of that group of nine with the best matchup for the day. But this is just a quick reminder that some of those top offensive teams are much better against pitchers of a certain handedness.

For example, the Blue Jays are tied with the Angels for the best wRC+ in the league at 112. But the Jays have a 116 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, which they see two-thirds of the time, and have just a 102 wRC+ against left-handed pitching. The simple fact that the majority of pitchers are right-handed is what makes them the best offense in the league. If the majority of pitchers were left-handed, the Jays total wRC+ might be something like 104. Long story short, they’re not as good of a stacking option against lefties. Which makes sense because their lineup features left-handers Adam Lind, Juan Francisco and Colby Rasmus as well as two switch hitters who are better from the left side of the plate in Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera.

Here is a chart showing you how the top nine offensive teams fare against pitchers of either handedness.

Team	wRC+ vs. L	wRC+ vs. R
Blue Jays	102	116
Angels	121	107
Athletics	104	114
Tigers	111	111
Dodgers	92	114
Indians	89	114
Rockies	111	102
Pirates	108	103
Brewers	95	106

 

The Daily Five

Joe Saunders ($3,658) – There is, of course, a reason that Saunders costs less than most hitters. Both his ERA and SIERA are over 5.00, and he has almost walked as many batters as he has struck out this year. But at this price he’s actually worth a gamble in GPP contests. With three pitcher slots in a Draftstreet lineup, I’ll often go with two high priced starters and a reliever as my three options in big contests. Today you can put Joe Saunders in that third slot and spend less money than Aroldis Chapman would cost you.

Steamer has Saunders projected to keep throwing 5.00 ERA ball for ten more starts this year. If you average out the Steamer projections for the stats factored into Draftstreet scoring, Saunders is projected to average 3.85 points per start. Let’s ding him a little for the Baltimore lineup being a little above average against lefties and give him a projection of 3.6 points today. If he does that at this price, you’ll essentially get one point for every thousand dollars spent. This is some obvious math here, but if you could do that with every slot on your roster with a budget of $100,000, you’d almost score 100 points. That will certainly get you a solid cash in a GPP and will often win one. And if Saunders gets a little lucky and does better than that, you’ll be getting crazy value. Take a shot.

Mat Latos ($17,023) – There is a pretty clear dividing line for starters today as 11 of the 21 options cost more than 16K while nine cost less than 14K and six guys cost less than 10K. Of the more expensive pitchers, I like Latos the best. As a word of caution, I’m really worried about his velocity and the lack of strikeouts that have been a result of decreased velocity. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t shown up in Jeff Zimmerman’s MASH report since the season started given that he had a couple of offseason procedures and has lost almost two ticks off his fastball. But this is still as good as matchups get against the Padres in the best ballpark possible in Petco. He’s made it work so far without his fastball, and this is a team that can be beat with something less than your A game.

Nationals Stack – The Nats offense has not been good enough overall for them to crack the nine best offenses listed in the chart above, but that’s because they’re best against left-handed pitching. They have a 111 wRC+ against left-handers compared to an 86 wRC+ agaisnt right-handers. That makes them tied for the third best team against left-handed pitching. Today they’ll face left-hander Yohan Flande who just recently made his major league debut at the age of 28, and he hasn’t posted a sub-4.00 ERA at any stop in the minors since 2009 at high-A. I like a four-man stack of Jayson Werth ($5,859), Ryan Zimmerman ($6,629), Ian Desmond ($6,071) and Wilson Ramos ($5,679) the most. But to save a little money you could swap out Werth for Danny Espinosa ($3,034).

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