Daily Fantasy Strategy — June 9 — For Draftstreet

I feel like all I ever talk about when writing about daily fantasy is platoon splits. Last week I talked about the best and worst starters against batters of each handedness, and today I want to mention a few teams that have some weird splits.

No team has a bigger difference in their performance versus left-handed and right-handed pitching than the Braves who are 30% better than league average against left-handed pitching and 22% below average against right-handed pitching. To be fair, we’re still dealing with some really small sample sizes. Justin Upton and Evan Gattis are leading the way against left-handed pitching as they each have a wRC+ vs. LHP north of 300 but each have less than 50 PA against LHP. That can’t keep up, and the gap will certainly narrow as the season goes on, which is something that can be said for any teams discussed below. But only pick on the Braves with right-handed pitchers.

The Cubs are another team you might like to pick on, but they’ve got a wRC+ of 112 against left-handed pitching. Against right-handed pitching, they’re the worst team in the league with a wRC+ of 73. The Phillies are also much worse against righties. As are the Rangers. In years past you were probably avoiding the Rangers offense on most days, but right now you only need to avoid them with left-handers.

On the flip side, the Indians and Dodgers are tied for the fifth best wRC+ in the league, but they’re doing their damage against right-handed pitching. If you’re going to dominate pitchers of one handedness, right-handers are the ones to dominate since about two-thirds of pitchers are right-handed. But avoid them the third of the time when they face lefties. The Reds offense is another that might have been avoided in the recent past, but they’re the fourth worst offense in the league according to wRC+. You can use pitcher’s of either handedness against them, but their 71 wRC+ vs. LHP is the worst in the league.

The Daily Five

Tony Cingrani ($15,003), Charlie Morton ($13,645)

Look at me tying the intro into the picks for the day. Cingrani, a lefty, will face the aforementioned Dodgers who struggle against lefties, and Morton, a righty, will face the Cubs who are, again, the worst team in the league vs. RHP. I use Steamer projections as the basis for my per-game projections, and Steamer loves Cingrani. Steamer has him approaching ten strikeouts per nine the rest of the way while walking less than four per nine. His strikeout and walk rates haven’t been nearly that good so far this year, and the poorer rates are backed up by a declining swinging strike rate and declining first pitch strike percentage. Morton’s rates aren’t inspiring either. But they have the matchups, and their prices are reasonable.

Rangers Stack

More tying in with the intro. The Rangers will get left-hander T.J. House today who has been decent in his first three major league starts but is not yet someone I’m considering avoiding. As of this writing Rougned Odor had not been ruled out for Monday’s game, but the guess is that Luis Sardinas ($3,246) takes over at second and slots in the nine hole today. I’m hoping that Shin-Soo Choo goes back to leading off tomorrow as opposed to hitting third with Michel Choice leading off as it was on Sunday. If Choo leads off, you can skip him and pair Sardinas with Elvis Andrus ($6,669), Adrian Beltre ($9,584) and Alex Rios ($6,698).

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