The Daily Grind: DFS, Streaming, and More for August 24

Agenda

1. Ya Can’t Win Them All
2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard
3. Daily DFS
4. SaberSim Observations
5. Tomorrow’s Targets
6. Factor Grid

1. Ya Can’t Win Them All

Yesterday, I pulled together a stack of Texas Rangers because:

1. They were unreasonably cheap
2. They’re really good hitters
3. They were playing at Great American Ballpark
4. Dan Straily is just meh

The Straily-Raisel Iglesias buzzsaw carried the Reds to a 3-0 shutout victory. DraftKings’ price model clearly believed it was a hard matchup for the team, so I can’t claim it was a completely unpredictable outcome. Except it was a pretty damned completely unpredictable outcome.

It’s funny, I scored 75 points – easily one of my five worst scores on DK this season – and I still finished 11 of 20 in the TDG Invitational. All but the top seven teams failed to score more than 89 points. Weird day, huh? Speaking of the contest….

2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard

Johnnyboy1852005 continued his domination of the DK leaderboard with yet another win. It was a close race at the top. Now he has a comfortable lead. He leaned on Jose Abreu, Brian Dozier, and Nolan Arenado. The leaderboard is updated.

We’ll probably be sticking with DraftKings for the rest of this week. We’re certainly playing there again today.

3. Daily DFS 

Yesterday’s Grind

Early: Five games are early. The Astros-Pirates game is so early (12:35 ET), it’s excluded from the DK early slate. No Gerrit Cole or Collin McHugh for you.

That leaves us with Kyle Hendricks as the top pitcher opposite Paul Clemens and the Padres. Should be an easy, productive win.

Since it’s a small contest, it often behooves you to go with a less obvious play – especially in GPPs. That’s probably Kendall Graveman hosting the Indians. Cleveland has a tough lineup and Graveman’s low strikeout totals should keep most owners focused on the higher potential names.

Speaking of higher potential, Trevor Bauer, Masahiro Tanaka, Hisashi Iwakuma, and Tyler Anderson are all of interest. I particularly like Anderson versus the strikeout prone Brewers.

Stack Targets: Clemens, Zach Davies

Late: We have a few acey pitchers to sort in the 10 game evening contest. Jose Fernandez has been mortal for four straight outings. With the unspoken seven inning cap on his outings, he just isn’t worth the price. Yu Darvish also hasn’t pitched beyond seven innings. He’s playing National League rules today, so he’ll be pinch hit at some point. It feels easier to justify paying for him, even at Great American Ballpark.

Johnny Cueto is a little less consistent than most aces. He’s opposed by Rich Hill in his supposed return from a blister. We’ll see. I don’t actually doubt Hill will pitch today – the Dodgers are too thin staffed to leave anything to chance.

Zack Greinke draws the Braves. He steamrolled the Padres last week. He could steamroll the Braves tonight. Or, you know, he might go back to being comically hit-prone. There’s a Carlos Martinez versus Jacob deGrom game out there too.

Digging a little deeper, Jerad Eickhoff should have an easy win against the charred remains of James Shields. But we all know the Phillies offense has a habit of skipping the game.

Stack Targets: Shields, Wade Miley, Dillon Gee, Tim Adleman, Matt Andriese, Tyler Duffey, Julio Teheran, Matt Shoemaker

4. SaberSim Observations

SaberSim says to ignore my warnings – Fernandez and Darvish are the top options today. Of course, SaberSim then goes on to project Fernandez for 7.1 innings. I doubt he reaches a new season high today. Hill, Greinke, and deGrom round out the top five.

Angels, Cubs, Twins, Rockies, Tigers, Blue Jays, White Sox, and Rangers constitute the top stacking options today.

5. Tomorrow’s Targets 

Pitchers to Start: Robbie Ray is 49 percent owned on Yahoo. You may still have a chance to grab a share. If you need convincing as to Ray’s virtues, I recommend going to the FanGraphs home page and selecting one of the 20-some articles published about him in the last day (ok, two). Here’s one now.

Also consider: Tom Koehler, Seth Lugo, Chad Kuhl

Pitchers to Exploit: So, here’s a thing. I don’t separately analyze a player every time I recommend him. For somebody like say, Daniel Norris, I’ll comb through the numbers and dismiss him as a viable fantasy pitcher. Then I put him in the exploit column until he does something to make me re-evaluate. After posting a 3.81 ERA in 28 innings, I said to myself “sure, let’s take a look.”

Norris is still an exploit. His worst trait is below average command. This year, he’s lived in the strike zone, leading to a high BABIP and line drive rate. He’s a fly ball pitcher who doesn’t suppress home runs – i.e. he’s homer prone. The stuff doesn’t have the juice to provide high strikeout rates. In short, he’s a back of the rotation pitcher.

Also consider: Jose Berrios, Ubaldo Jimenez, Jered Weaver, Edinson Volquez, Anthony Ranaudo, Wily Peralta, John Gant

Hitters (power): Seth Smith is batting .270/.358/.424 against right-handed pitchers. It’s not going to win you a league – unless it does. There are worse options for a Thursday sub. Like most of the other guys I recommended.

Also consider: Trayce Thompson, Enrique Hernandez, Josh Bell, Adam Lind, Ezequiel Carrera, Robbie Grossman

Hitters (speed): Angel Pagan has a 19-game hitting streak. He’s no Francisco Mejia (recently lost a 50-game streak in the minors), but he’s as locked in as a Pagan can get. He has four steals in seven attempts during the streak.

Also consider: Denard Span, Michael Bourn, Ben Revere, Jorge Polanco

6. The Factor Grid

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.

The Link.

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