The Daily Grind: Fading, Wada, Bour

Agenda

1. Fading Pt 2
2. Daily DFS – Nats/Wada
3. GB / FB Splits
4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Garcia, Cole, Bour, Panik
5. Factor Grid

1. Fading Pt 2

My afternoon roster contained one glaring mistake. First, see if you can spot it. On the left is my roster, and on the right is the contest winner.

Had I rostered Torii Hunter instead of George Springer, I would have scored 47.5 points. That would have tied for 15th in the Squeeze and earned me $75 on a $2 entry. That’s not the mistake I made, it’s just an observation. There are almost no conditions under which I would roster a $3,300 Hunter. Coors or bust.

The afternoon contest had three games. The pitchers were Dallas Keuchel and slop. Keuchel seemed like a reasonable bet to score the most points, and I was still able to build a lineup I liked. The ease of constructing a solid lineup should have been the first red flag.

I thought Keuchel might be somewhere between 40 to 50 percent owned. In that case, I’d share a pitcher with half the field which is never ideal. Since there were only three games, I decided to give it a try. As you can see, 75 percent of the field snagged Keuchel. The simple truth was, the hitter prices didn’t force anybody to go with a cheaper pitcher.

Even if I’m pretty sure Keuchel will have the highest point total of six pitchers, it’s never going to be a percentage play to share him with 4,345 other rosters (out of 5,747 total). As you can see, Jesse Hahn actually outperformed Keuchel. So did Wei-Yin Chen.

Had I selected a cheaper pitcher, the end result likely would have been the same. I probably would have upgraded from Hank Conger to Stephen Vogt. Conger outperformed Vogt by a few points.

There is a second “mistake” with this roster. It was intentional. I have Manny Machado hitting against Keuchel. I wanted to use Trevor Plouffe, but the Twins lineup wasn’t out as of five minutes before the contest started. I wasn’t comfortable with any of the alternative third basemen, so I took a risk. In this case, it paid off. Technically, Brett Lawrie was the best scoring third baseman with 4.5 points. That’s another pick I’d never make.

2. Daily DFS – Nats/Wada

Yesterday’s Grind

The Nationals have a 90 wRC+ against left-handed pitchers this season. Last year, they had a 104 wRC+. Now that Anthony Rendon is back in action, what is different about the Nats 2015 unit? Adam LaRoche is gone (but he’s a lefty too). Ryan Zimmerman is sort of healthy. Bryce Harper either ate a red mushroom or touched a star. Decent Danny Espinosa and Yunel Escobar have replaced Terrible Danny Espinosa. Jayson Werth can’t stay healthy.

Add it all together and the only negative is Werth. I expect this club to post somewhere between a 100 and 110 wRC+ against southpaws over the remainder of the season. Today they face Tsuyoshi Wada. The Cubs’ hurler is a solid command and control guy without a lot of swing and miss stuff. His career numbers reveal a standard platoon split. It’s been heavily reversed in three starts this season. Small sample warning and such.

I see this as a low-key stacking opportunity. Then again, check out the list below. You have plenty of stacking options.

Stack Targets: Jered Weaver, Jerome Williams, Roberto Hernandez, Wade Miley, Chris Tillman, Shaun Marcum, Kyle Ryan, Jose Quintana, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Kyle Lohse, Tom Koehler, Eddie Butler, Jon Niese, Jeremy Hellickson, J.A. Happ

3. GB / FB Splits

The following hitters are recommended based on the works of Shane Tourtellotte and Dan Fansworth. They show ground ball hitters perform better against fly ball pitchers and vice versa. Using three-year values for hitter OPS and pitcher GB%, here are today’s top recommendations. Use this link for Jeff’s full list.

We have 39 names for your enjoyment this evening. Listed below are some of the best.

Carlos Santana vs Chris Tillman
Garrett Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Chase Headley, and Didi Gregorius vs Jered Weaver
Ryan Zimmerman and Yunel Escobar vs Tsuyoshi Wada
Chris Carter vs Aaron Sanchez
Prince Fielder vs Edinson Volquez
A.J. Pollock vs Jon Niese
Jose Bautista vs Roberto Hernandez
Adam Jones and Manny Machado vs Shaun Marcum

4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Garcia, Cole, Bour, Panik

Pitchers to Start: I’ve said plenty about the other two guys you could use tomorrow, so let’s talk about Jaime Garcia. The oft-injured southpaw is a ground ball specialist. He’s shown strong whiff and low walk rates in past seasons. The swinging strikes are absent through three starts. Like many worm burners, he seems to carry a high HR/FB ratio.

The matchup is borderline terrible. The Dodgers have plenty of good right-handed bats. More specifically, Garcia is opposed by Clayton Kershaw. This is a desperation play if I ever saw one.

Also consider: Jesse Chavez, Chase Anderson

Pitchers to Exploit: Holy ballsacks Batman. There are a lot of exploits for tomorrow. While not the worst pitcher of the day, I want to discuss A.J. Cole. I saw him pitch against the Durham Bulls last week. The Bulls won 3-2 despite recording only one hit. That’s because Cole walked seven in 3.1 innings. His stuff will play at the major league level, but that’s not an encouraging pre-promotion outing.

The terrible start raised his walk rate to 2.67 BB/9. In other words, he’s been in control in every other outing. This should be a fun one to scout.

Also consider: Brett Oberholtzer, Drew Hutchison, Wandy Rodriguez, Matt Garza, J.R. Graham, Severino Gonzalez, Joe Kelly, Odrisamer Despaigne, Michael Lorenzen, David Phelps, Kyle Kendrick, Jeff Locke, John Danks

Hitters (power): Justin Bour is hitting a robust .333/.377/.583. A .373 BABIP has helped. However, his 42.9 percent hard hit rate is ranked among the best in the league. He’s hitting in the middle of the Marlins lineup, and they’re visiting Coors Field. Forget about the high BABIP for the duration of his stay in Denver.

Also consider: Justin Turner, Alex Guerrero, Chris Heisey, Juan Uribe, Andrelton Simmons, Yonder Alonso, David Murphy, Gerardo Parra, Danny Valencia

Hitters (speed): Well, Joe Panik isn’t really a speed guy. Or a power guy. The important thing is that he’ll bat second against Severino Gonzalez. Panik’s high contact rate and good plate patience plays well ahead of Buster Posey and Hunter Pence. He might not steal a bag, but he could score a couple runs.

Also consider: Ender Inciarte, Rajai Davis, Billy Burns

5. 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.

Colorado may have early storms. As of now, it looks like they may only delay the start of the game.

The Link. The games skew towards hitter friendly parks this evening. None of them are heavily pitcher friendly.

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