The Daily Grind: DFS, Streaming, and More for September 30

Agenda

1. My Ballots
2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard
3. Daily DFS
4. SaberSim Observations
5. Tomorrow’s Targets
6. Factor Grid

1. My Ballots

Yesterday, I cast my award ballots for a wide range of categories on another site. I figured I’d share them here too. Behold!

2. The Daily Grind Invitational and Leaderboard

Low scores and a huge night from Johnny Cueto earned TeamBergey the win. Congrats on taking down the penultimate contest. The leaderboard is updated.

We have one more left. I’m making it a 20 user affair, and we’re sure as hell going to fill it. See you there.

3. Daily DFS 

Yesterday’s Grind

Everyone plays tonight with seven stadiums are risk of a soak. Boston in particular is a postponement risk.

Madison Bumgarner is the top play today – mostly because his game matters more than any other. The Giants are clinging to a narrow one game lead for the second NL Wild Card slot. Bumgarner will be asked to go the distance. Or at least as far as he can go. The same can’t be said of Yu Darvish, Rich Hill, or Rick Porcello in their tune up outings. The Dodgers, as you know, are bad against southpaws.

Carlos Martinez is the other guy making a desperation start. The Cardinals are the team trailing the Gigantes. St. Louis is hosting a seemingly demoralized Pirates offense. We’ll see if they wake up in time to play spoiler. C-Mart has not impressed in the month of September. Nor has he been actively bad.

Technically speaking, the Mariners are still alive in the Wild Card race. In actuality, they need a miracle. It’s hard to leapfrog two teams with three games to go, especially when one of those teams is two wins ahead of you. The M’s have Taijuan Walker on the bump tonight, a guy who can single-handedly win the day or flop on his face. GPP participants take note.

Daniel Norris has pitched well lately, but what do we make of the Atlanta offense? They were so bad for so long that they still rate as a bottom five lineup. Lately, they’ve been one of the best in the league. It’s fair to note that the Twins and Padres also had temporary blips of similar production, although Atlanta has the longest such surge. Detroit needs to sweep Atlanta so they need Norris to deal. The lefty is somewhat inefficient. Don’t expect more than six innings.

Robert Gsellman spawned out of nowhere to help the Mets limp towards the top Wild Card slot. Watching this Mets roster is kind of like this video of Iron Man participants crawling to the finish line. Will they make it? Gsellman has shown decent ground ball stuff and average command. He’s a good bargain target versus the Phillies.

Years ago, Brad Peacock was one of the hardest throwing prospects to reach the majors. For that reason alone, he was interesting. Now his skill set is decidedly less impressive – mostly because everybody else has gone crazy. Mike Trout might be out of the Angels lineup tonight after getting hit on the shoulder blade. If so, Peacock has smooth sailing ahead. Count on only 5+ innings.

Stack Targets: Brent Suter, Ryan Merritt, Josh Smith, Andrew Cashner, Daniel Wright, Raul Alcantara, Edwin Jackson, Alec Asher, Yovani Gallardo, Tyler Duffey, Braden Shipley, Matt Wisler, Matt Andriese, Michael Pineda

4. SaberSim Observations

Darvish, Pineda, Bumgarner, Hill, and Carlos Rodon round out the top five arms tonight. You may have noticed Pineda in my stack target group. That’s because he allows droves of home runs and the Orioles are known to hit said droves.

Stacks include the Coors game, Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Reds.

5. Tomorrow’s Targets 

Pitchers to Start: The Blue Jays offense has really scuffled down the stretch. Meanwhile, Eduardo Rodriguez is (mostly) back on track. He’s still prone to meltdowns, but he’s also contributing good outings too. He even recently had a quality start (loss) against the Jays. E-Rod’s most recent outing included striking out all of the Rays – 13 strikeouts in 5.1 innings.

Also consider: Bartolo Colon, Chad Kuhl, Jaime Garcia, J.A. Happ, Matt Boyd, Collin McHugh, Jharel Cotton, Hisashi Iwakuma, Colby Lewis, Tyler Anderson

Pitchers to Exploit: Phil Klein was extremely good at Triple-A this season. He was practically the Clayton Kershaw of the International League. Ok, that’s hyperbole. He posted a 1.52 ERA, 10.47 K/9, and 1.79 BB/9 in 65 innings. Upon joining the major league bullpen, Klein reverted to terrible.

Also consider: Wade Miley, Albert Suarez, Tim Adleman, Edinson Volquez, James Shields, Hector Santiago, Aaron Blair, Jhoulys Chacin, Wily Peralta

Hitters (power): Whichever left-handed Padres play tomorrow should be in your lineup opposite Archie Bradley. The D’Back is susceptible to those south-sided bats.

Also consider: Seth Smith, Adam Lind, Rickie Weeks, Mitch Haniger, Welington Castillo, Brandon Drury, Ryan Schimpf, Alex Dickerson, Jon Jay, Hunter Renfroe, Corey Dickerson, Brad Miller, Kevin Kiermaier, Adonis Garcia, Dansby Swanson, Max Kepler, Tyler Naquin, Lonnie Chisenhall, Chase Utley

Hitters (speed): Raimel Tapia is overdue for an end-of-season spot start. If you have extra bench space, stash Tapia for whenever he finally gets his last hurrah.

Also consider: Manuel Margot, Travis Jankowski, Cameron Maybin, Tim Anderson, Jorge Polanco, Jarrod Dyson, Terrance Gore, Jose Peraza

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.

This post is not brought to you by any DFS platform. The current author is quite pleased to present a DFS ad free environment.