The Daily Grind: Ace or Coors?

To ace or to Coors? That is the question. Or ace plus Reds/Rangers?

AGENDA

  1. TDG Invitational
  2. Weather Reports
  3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
  4. SaberSim Says…
  5. They Lied

1.The Daily Grind Invitational

We had a bruising, high-scoring contest yesterday. While nobody crossed the 200 point threshold, yisman came close with 193.95 points. He was led by Gerrit Cole, Aaron Civale, Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, and Francisco Lindor. That latter name is the guy who put him over the top – many of us had a similar four-player core but couldn’t match a fifth thumper (personally, I had Nelson Cruz fail a coin flip for a home run). Congrats and Leaderboard.

We’re cooking with six games tonight on FantasyDraft. I’m expecting a large overlay so come take advantage.

2. Weather Reports

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3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse

Jacob deGrom ($23,000) headlines the small slate. He’ll host the Cubs. This represents an important decision point in this slate – deGrom or Coors Field hitters? The right-hander is on a hell of a heater, mostly against weak opponents. While I don’t expect the Chicago offense to supply a rude awakening, there’s enough downside here to think about contrarian approaches. Jon Lester ($16,200) is moderately overpriced as a boring mid-tier pick.

Next up is Hyun-Jin Ryu ($20,500). He’s tossed some real clunkers lately. The lone bright spot came against the Diamondbacks. Lo and behold! He’ll visit Arizona tonight. The win bonus is likely.

In fact, either Ryu or Lance Lynn ($19,500) is the most likely pitcher to earn a win. Lynn is suffering through his worst stretch. We’re only talking about three games so if you bought into him earlier in the season, it’s probably premature to abandon ship. Oddly, he’s suddenly throwing more curve balls, although I think that was a change of approach mapped to his specific opponents – the Twins and White Sox. We’ll see if he continues this unusual trend. Despite the correlation to poor results, I would feel a lot better about a version of Lynn with 20 percent curves. In any case, he shouldn’t have much issue with Seattle.

Chris Paddack is finally receiving a respite from a difficult stretch of scheduling. He’ll face the lowly Giants at Oracle Park. As the Padres are still managing his workload, a $17,700 price tag seemingly prices him near his 70th percentile outcome. That’s not great from a value perspective, but there’s still some room to turn a profit. He should be a reasonably safe mid-tier play in this thin slate.

Alex Wood ($15,500) is the last and cheapest obviously desirable pitcher in the slate. Aside from a gem against the Braves on August 2, Wood has failed to exceed 10 points this entire season (which accounts for only six starts). Despite the poor performances, he’s inducing enough whiffs to hope for some positive regression. Hard contact and home runs have plagues him, and his 6.67 K/9 is oddly low for an over-10 percent swinging strike rate. More importantly, the Marlins entire lineup is Quad-A.

Marlins “prospect” Robert Dugger ($11,000) and Giants starter Dereck Rodriguez ($9,300) cheap enough to consider as risky upside plays. Duggar is coming off a his two best starts in Triple-A. He still has an over-7.00 ERA at the top farm level. And he’s homer prone. The Reds could mash. DRod has bounced between 20- and negative-point performances. The Padres, as I’ve noted about 100 times, are prone to right-handed pitching. Their best lefty bats are ground ball guys as is Rodriguez. That generally favors the pitcher. As a bonus, the Son of Ivan is hidden.

Favorite Plays: deGrom, Lynn, Wood

Stack Targets: Trevor Williams, Dugger, Felix Hernandez, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Merrill Kelly, Rodriguez

Coors Field isn’t the only place for offense tonight. Both the Reds and Rangers stacks look like amply offensive alternatives. And the Dodgers offense is always in play.

4. SaberSim Says…

deGrom leads the slate by nearly 11 projected points. He’s followed by Lynn, Paddack, Dugger, and Ryu. I think we’ll see a sharp downward adjustment to Dugger later in the day. A 6.07 innings projection is wildly optimistic. I have him projected for a hair above or below four innings. His current placement looks like a 90th percentile outcome to me. As of now, Dugger is the top value with Rodriguez, deGrom, Paddack, and Lynn in chase mode.

The hitting side is less controversial. Charlie Blackmon, Starling Marte, Trevor Story, Nolan Arenado, and Bryan Reynolds are all at Coors Field. Lewis Brinson, Jake Fraley, Nick Solak, Sam Hilliard, and Austin Dean are the bargain targets.

5. They Lied

This is a legit home run steal. But my favorite part of this is the very beginning when the announcer says “gets a good swing off here.” No he didn’t! That was a dogshit swing. You can really see just how lazy it is at the 0:59 mark.

Franmil Aquino is still rolling.

I think the daily Aaron Judge bargain is probably kaput. He has six homers in his last nine games.





You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam

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kjrushing89member
4 years ago

any thoughts on Berrios vs the Sox with the wind?