Daily Fantasy Strategy — May 18 — For Draftstreet

It’s been kind of a funny week for me on the daily beat. Yesterday, I even cracked 85 points, which obviously drove me nuts because that’s enough to place in tournaments more often than not.

It’s been a successful week, but on Thursday (when I had to write the daily strategy here), I whiffed. The Indians got beat 4-2 by J.A. Happ, of all people, Wei-Yin Chen was mediocre, and my dude C.J. Cron didn’t do much. This kind of stuff happens, and having a bad day or two in a week is completely within expectations, which is why you play daily. Still, it’s frustrating that the 40-point days seem to be the ones where I write, while the 80-point days maybe aren’t helping you.

Anyway, the point is, I may have the yips in this space. Is that a thing? Let’s try and right it.

I don’t have anything to add in the way of tables or additional info, but here are a few quick notes.

CWS/HOU – O/U at 9.5
TOR/TEX – O/U at 9
CIN/PHI – O/U at 6.5
LAD/ARI – O/U at 9
PIT/NYY – O/U at 9
ATL/STL – O/U at 7
NYM/WAS – O/U at 7
BAL/KC – O/U at 7
There are no games with more than a 10 percent chance of rain.

The Daily Five
Jaime Garcia – $13,191
Garcia makes his season debut on Sunday, which may scare some off. That’s fair, as he’s thrown less than 200 innings since the end of 2011. Still, he has been solid on the occasions he’s pitched, and he worked up to five innings on his rehab, so outing length shouldn’t be too grave a concern. Now, the Braves happen to hit lefties extremely well, but they also strike out against them 26.4 percent of the time, tops in the majors, making Garcia a fairly inexpensive, moderate-upside play.

Zack Wheeler – $13,229
Wheeler’s struggled early but has decent underlying peripherals, especially if he can get the walks under control. He’s striking out nearly a batter an inning, and on Sunday he draws a slightly below-average Nationals squad that also ranks 12th in strikeout rate against righties. Between the two of them, you have a pretty decent starter core with some cash to spare.

White Sox stack – The Pale Hose draw Brad Peacock in a favorable hitting environment, and he’s been susceptible to the long ball and rather frequent blow-ups early on. He couldn’t be kinder to left-handed hitters, either.
Conor Gillaspie – $5,555
Adam Dunn – $4,438 (so worth the risk at this price)
Alejandro de Aza – $3,662
Sadly, Jose Abreu is not playing.

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