The Daily Grind: 6-2-14 – Presented by FanDuel

Agenda

1. Random Facts
2. Daily DFS
3. Tuesday Picks
4. Table

1. Random Facts

According to our projections, the San Francisco Giants are now expected to have the best record in baseball. I never thought they could outperform the Rockies, let alone the Dodgers. There’s still four months left for things to change, but it’s a good start.

The Astros and Cubs are expected to share the basement with just 70 wins. I bet neither team actually finishes with the worst record. It’s a bold gamble with the Cubs poised to sell Jeff Samardzija.

The Royals feature the worst offense against left-handed pitchers. Remarkably, the Braves have the best offense against southpaws despite their 22nd rank against all pitchers.

The Cubs are the worst against right-handed pitchers. The Braves are second worse, hence their poor overall numbers. The Blue Jays have mashed their way to the top against northpaws.

The Athletics have stranded the most runners this season. The Twins come in with the worst strand rate.

The Pirates are once again the ground balliest team in baseball.

The Brewers, Braves, and Reds get the most innings from their starting pitchers. The Twins and Rays have received the fewest innings from their starters.

2. Daily DFS

We have eight contests today starting at 7:05 ET.

Sure, Justin Masterson has a 5.21 ERA and a few too many walks. But he also still has dead nasty movement on his pitches. He has the ability to shutdown any offense by virtue of nearly unhittable movement. So the choice is yours, do you go with the recent trends and stack Red Sox or trust his stuff and use him.

We don’t use the Mariners stack very often around here. They’re matched up against David Phelps at Yankee Stadium tomorrow. As you may know, the Mariners lineup leans left-handed and Yankee Stadium is friendly to lefty bats.

The Tampa Bay Rays don’t have the same lefty mashers as the Brewers, so maybe Randy Wolf won’t get trounced again. It’s still a good matchup with which to try a stack. Of course, Miami has one of the worst ballparks for offense, so the game isn’t an ideal target.

Kyle Gibson is a ground ball pitcher with almost no strikeout rate and an unimpressive walk rate. He needs to improve his peripherals long term. For now, he’s mostly showing up here because Miller Park is a nice offensive haven. His matchup against the Brewers isn’t actually all that bad – they’re mediocre against right-handed pitchers.

On the other side of the Miller Park game is Matt Garza. His player page says he’s the same old Garza, so don’t get too excited about targeting his two rocky months as a Brewer.

The nonexistent Diamondbacks offense torched Tim Stauffer last time out, so I don’t have a ton of faith in him at the moment. The Pirates possess a mid-octane offense, although a couple lefties could be happy at Petco Park.

3. Tuesday’s Picks

Pitchers to Start: Cardinals lefty Jaime Garcia is scheduled to oppose the Kansas City Royals tomorrow. The Royals are tied for last in wRC+ against southpaws, so the matchup is favorable in more than one way.

Maybe Collin McHugh is somebody after all. When he was pitching well earlier in the season, his peripherals didn’t line up with the results. Now they do. The projection systems expect big regression in his strikeout numbers, yet his current performance is backed by a 12.1 percent swinging strike rate. The Angels make for a difficult matchup.

Pitchers to Exploit: Jake Peavy is a plain ‘ol back of the rotation starter these days. With the Indians at home where lefty home runs are boosted 10 percent, Peavy might be a prime target.

David Buchanan has made it through two starts, but he doesn’t have the stuff to survive long term. The Nationals aren’t a murderers row against right-handed pitching, but they should be good enough to top Buchanan.

Erasmo Ramirez has some proving to do. When a young pitcher gives up a lot of hits and home runs without elite strikeout and walk numbers, there is cause for concern. Aside from the aforementioned home run problems, Atlanta isn’t a bad place to pitch.

Tim Lincecum and Homer Bailey have struggled this season. In both cases, their peripherals suggest better times ahead. With Lincecum, the issue is continued home run problems and walks. The home run issue is interesting. In 2012, the pitch getting bombed was his curve ball. Last season, his four seamer and splitter were the problems. This year, his slider is going over the wall most frequently. I don’t know if that’s three kinds of bad luck or indicative of some larger problem.

Bailey’s struggles have come at the hands of home runs and a high BABIP. With a shorter track record of poor results, regression is a safer bet. Regression be damned – the game is at Great American Ballpark, so look for those home runs.

Joe Saunders can be described in many ways. Hittable is one such way, hence why I’d consider targeting right-handed Orioles.

I have a feeling the rarefied air of Denver will come as a bit of a shock to Chase Anderson. Go ahead and target what few Rockies are available.

The Dodgers lack freely available talent, but use whoever you have rostered against Hector Noesi.

Hitters (power): Corey Dickerson is a good pick if he starts. Of course, there’s no guarantee he will.

Andre Ethier does good work against right-handed pitchers. Noesi is particularly exploitable.

J.J. Hardy will eventually hit a home run. Even Ben Revere has hit a home run.

Here’s you regularly scheduled Matt Joyce and David DeJesus.

Jonny Gomes will start against T.J. House.

Also try out Lonnie Chisenhall and David Murphy in Cleveland.

Hitters (speed): Scooter Gennett is a reasonable play against Samuel Deduno.

Tommy La Stella is a leadoff hitter in the making. Let’s see how long it takes Fredi Gonzalez to figure it out.

Denard Span has an easy matchup with Buchanan.

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.

Scattered storms in Cleveland and St. Louis could make a today’s thin contest even thinner. The DFS owner in me roots for late rainouts because there’s always somebody who gambles on those games.

The Link. There you go, some colors to target. Despite the thin schedule, you have a little bit of everything with stadium and weather.

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