The Daily Grind: 6-14-14 – Presented by FanDuel

Agenda

1. Some Picks From Scott Spratt
2. Daily DFS
3. Sunday Picks
4. Table

1. Spratt Picks

In the interest of getting this posted ASAP for the early games, let’s have Scott Spratt’s column on The Boys of Summer serve as section one. Enjoy.

Do note, I have an early game tomorrow, so I might not get the column up.

2. Daily DFS

Early: Two games are to be played before the early contest begins, which leaves seven to choose from today.

Bud Norris allows his share of home runs, while the Blue Jays swat more than their share. Camden Yards is always a smart place to target offense.

With ground balling lefty T.J. House on the mound for the Indians, the Red Sox will be aiming to launch seeds off the Green Monster. In two starts, House has featured extremes in ground ball rate and HR/FB ratio. We’ll see which force proves stronger today.

While Fenway isn’t as friendly to left-handed hitters, Jake Peavy isn’t particularly special this season. He’s declined to a back of the rotation quality arm. The Indians have plenty of stout lefty bats to deploy against him.

By virtue of being a relatively unknown, soft-tossing righty, it might be worthwhile to target a couple Giants against Christian Bergman. The game will be played at San Francisco’s notoriously hitter friendly park. In his first outing, Bergman reminded me a bit of Colby Lewis.

Much like the recommendation against Kyle Gibson yesterday (can’t win ’em all), Samuel Deduno is a mediocre righty and the Tigers hit those just fine.

I’m not sure Jesse Hahn is really a starter. He started 42 of 45 games in his minor league career, but he’s never averaged more than five innings a game at any level. He’s a lock to pitch fewer than six innings.

Randy Wolf makes for an easy target against the Pirates. Two out of three starts have been bad. The Pirates have one high profile hitter who may be the best in baseball against lefties.

Late: Six games will be played late, with three falling into the late-late bucket.

Mat Latos makes his return against the Milwaukee Brewers. Returnees are difficult to predict. In five rehab starts, Latos’ strikeout rate was well below his career average while his walk rate was up. Milwaukee happens to be the only hitters park tonight.

Hiroki Kuroda is a perfect adequate pitcher. The Athletics will occasionally tee up such pitchers. This isn’t a top notch stacking option, but it’s out there if you want variety.

The gutted Rangers will face supremely hittable righty Erasmo Ramirez. This might actually be the game for Ramirez to get his nearly 6.00 ERA down to a less damning figure.

3. Sunday Picks

Pitchers to Start: Personally, I’m not keen to use Brandon Workman against the Indians. However, I need to recommend somebody to start, and Workman is the best of the freely available options.

Pitchers to Exploit: Continuing the theme of ignoring the platoon advantage with the Detroit Tigers, they’ll face Ricky Nolasco tomorrow.

The Cubs teed up Daisuke Matsuzaka recently (and by “teed up” I mean they walked a lot). He’s had a problem with the free pass this season, which makes every start an adventure. Against righties, the Padres offense is similar to that of the Cubs.

J.A. Happ and Chris Tillman have their good outings and their bad outings. Who knows what to expect at Camden Yards tomorrow.

Rarely will I recommend the Royals offense, but Andre Rienzo is a hittable, back-of-the-rotation arm. He hasn’t been as bad as his 5.25 ERA, but he hasn’t been much better either (4.90 FIP). Home runs have been a problem in parts of two seasons. Of course, home runs are a different kind of problem for the Royals.

The Athletics could enjoy a matchup with Vidal Nuno. The lefty seems to avoid getting truly hammered. He faced the Athletics recently and allowed one run over 4.2 innings.

After a couple quiet games against lefties, the Braves are still the best club against southpaws – they just aren’t way better than the next best team. Hector Santiago is particularly exploitable.

Hitters (power): Andrelton Simmons and perhaps even Dan Uggla are stretch plays for tomorrow night. On the other side of this matchup, C.J. Cron will probably start against Mike Minor.

Derek Norris will have the platoon advantage, which is always a good thing.

Here’s Matt Joyce and David DeJesus. Have you been missing them?

Marlon Byrd’s ownership is climbing. Tomorrow is a good day to dust him off against Travis Wood.

Hitters (speed): James Jones has an easy assignment against Nick Martinez.

Norichika Aoki could score a few runs against Rienzo.

4. Table

The table below indicates which stadiums have the best conditions for hitters today. The color coding is a classic stoplight where green equals go for hitters. The weather conditions are from SI Weather’s home run app. A 10/10 means great atmospheric conditions for home runs. A 1/10 means lousy atmospheric conditions.

Surprisingly, the league is more of less clear today. Which is funny because weather.com is acting like the entire nation is going to flood today (sorry, Minnesota, it’s just going to be you).

The Link. Remember, two of the five green games aren’t actually available in FanDuel.

This post, covering one of the leading sites for daily fantasy, is sponsored and made possible by the generous support of FanDuel. 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.