The Daily Grind: Friday Night Glob

I begin my rehab assignment today. But first, puns about Ketel Marte in today’s Streaming Wars.

AGENDA

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

1. The Daily Grind Invitational

Everything was awesome for Garrick. Tyler Anderson, J.A. Happ, Justin Smoak, Josh Bell, Mookie Betts, and David Freese supplied most of his thump. Some of those, like Freese, were impossibly far off my radar for last night. Congrats and Leaderboard.

It’s a massive 14 game contest tonight. As usual, we’re doing a 52-entry no rake GPP on FantasyDraft. See ya there.

If you have not signed up for FantasyDraft, please use this referral link for tracking purposes. If I understand properly, by using the referral, you will receive a 10 percent return on any rakes you pay.

2. Weather Reports

Cincinnati and Atlanta have non-trivial storm risks. Check reports closer to game time.

3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse

Main Slate: The pitching options can be summarized thusly: Gerrit Cole, /tier, Masahiro Tanaka, Blake Snell, /tier, 15 other guys. Cole will run you $23,900 which seems a reasonable price to pay for the obvious best pitcher. I suspect Tanaka ($20,600) may actually be more popular. He has an easier path to victory although he’s dealing with tough conditions (Yankee Stadium). Tanaka has pitched like an ace since late May. I worry Snell ($19,700) won’t throw more than five innings. That risk exists for Tanaka too. The Yankees like to get to that bullpen with a lead.

And now, the muck. Zack Wheeler ($19,500) is slightly overpriced for his matchup against the Marlins. He’ll probably underperform this price tag by a couple points. That said, he has one of the highest projections among pitchers. Sometimes it’s worth overpaying. Jose Urena ($12,800) is practically half the cost despite being only around 20 percent worse than Wheeler.

I prefer Nate Eovaldi ($18,500) to Wheeler. This par value for the hard throwing, homer prone righty. He’s very likely to pull down a victory. He might give up four runs in the process.

I’m just not on the same Freddy Peralta bandwagon as everybody else. I like him in a Zach Eflin kind of way, but I’m just not see where the $18,000 cost is coming from. He’s a $15,500 quality arm when pitching against an offense like the Braves.

Speaking of Eflin ($15,900), I’d take him at Peralta’s $18,000 today. He faces the lowly Padres which means there’s a good chance he’ll finish with a top five pitching score. Elsewhere in the $15,900 bucket, Shane Bieber is a good value versus the strikeout prone White Sox.

I wouldn’t wander below Mike Leake ($11,900) at Houston. As a reader pointed out, their injury diminished offense is just ordinary. I do love Tony Kemp in his rightful place as a first division leadoff hitter (he batted ninth yesterday versus fellow lefty James Paxton).

The adventurous could try a practically free Clay Holmes ($8,000) at AT&T Park. Holmes is coming off a 26 point outing. He’s a hard throwing ground ball pitcher who probably won’t exceed 10 points. But there’s upside aplenty!

Stack Targets: Holmes, Burch Smith, Brett Anderson, Felix Pena, Jacob Nix, Anthony DeSclafani, Mike Minor, Ervin Santana, Dylan Bundy, Kenta Maeda, Marco Estrada, Kevin Gausman

The latter portion of this list contains some occasionally good pitchers with bad matchups.

4. SaberSim Says…

Cole, Tanaka, Peralta, Snell, and Eovaldi top the charts. I see SaberSim is also on a different Peralta bandwagon than me. Holmes, Nix, Penda, DeSclafani, and Santana are the value plays. Top bats include J.D. Martinez, Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Charlie Blackmon, and Giancarlo Stanton. Brandon Lowe, Amed Rosario, David Fletcher, and Jeff McNeil look like bargains. That’s an interesting quartet of unestablished hitters.