The Daily Grind: Immaculate
You may not know this, but I moonlight as a priest of the baseball gods. There are many ways to pay your tithe.
AGENDA
- TDG Invitational
- Weather Reports
- Pitchers to Use and Abuse
- SaberSim Says…
- Immaculate
1. The Daily Grind Invitational
sjm26b only needed two top performers to defeat the rest of the field. Max Scherzer and Khris Davis provided a big chunk of his production. Several other bats served to bolster the rest of the roster. Congrats and Leaderboard.
Standard parameters for tonight’s 10-game slate on FantasyDraft – 52 entries, two entry max.
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2. Weather Reports
Should be all clear.
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
Early Slate: I can’t remember the last time we had an early contest. Or more accurately, I can’t specifically remember the last time. It was definitely this season. Anywho, Mike Foltynewicz is the second best pitcher in the slate and the most expensive at $22,400. There’s good reason for that – he’s opposite the strikeout prone Padres. Should be an easy double-yu.
Carlos Carrasco ($19,600) is better than Folty, but his matchup against the Brewers is a tad less certain to deliver value. For one, his opponent Chase Anderson ($9,100) has been throwing harder since returning from the disabled list. Not quite as hard as his fantastic 2017, but also harder than his shaky early-2018. Anderson has been dinked around in recent outings.
Cliff…
Dylan Bundy has good days. He’ll run $17,100 opposite the Mets. Tanner Roark has good days. He’s $16,300 versus “Jonny Venters” (Ryan Yarbrough ($11,000)).
Stack Targets: Miguel Diaz, Anderson, Yarbrough, Chris Stratton, Clay Buchholz, Zack Wheeler
Honestly, I hadn’t looked at Diaz’s stat page since early last season. Guy is still terrible. In 12 Triple-A innings, he posted 9.75 K/9, 8.25 BB/9, and a 8.25 ERA.
Main Slate: We have 10 games tonight headlined by some combination of Aaron Nola ($22,000), Lance McCullers ($20,500), and Shohei Ohtani ($19,700). Ignoring cost, I prefer Nola. With costs, I find myself quite indifferent. Nola is visiting Chicago where the winds are expected to be mild. McCullers hosts the Mariners. Ohtani has the tastiest matchup of the trio at home against the Royals. I suspect he’ll be the most rostered pitcher.
Jack Flaherty ($19,400) has mostly disappointed this season. He’s a wily not-yet-veteran whose parts are less than the sum. If that makes sense. I mean, he’s better than he should be. Anyway, jump on the bandwagon for a pairing against the hapless (and Happless) Marlins. Despite my best efforts to squeeze a drop of value from Wei-Yin Chen, he usually turns belly up within a couple innings.
Eduardo Rodriguez ($17,600) may be the latest victim of the massively overperforming Tigers offense. They should be incredibly terrible. Instead, they’re just kind of bad. Regression is coming.
Jose Quintana ($16,700) may enjoy the strikeout prone Phillies. They’re a high variance opponent. Daniel Mengden ($16,200) matches up well versus the strikeout prone Rangers. I like Jon Gray at sea level – even Great American Smallpark. He’s only $14,800. I’d fight the urge to reach any deeper.
Stack Targets: Chen, Sal Romano, Ian Kennedy, Sam Gaviglio, Hector Santiago, Blaine Hardy, The Great Bartolo, Wade LeBlanc, Caleb Ferguson, Sonny Gray
I have exactly zero scouting reports on Ferguson. This is the only sentence in my arsenal courtesy of Eric or Kiley.
It’s tough to pick the ball up out of Ferguson’s hand and it enables his mix (50 fastball, 55 curve, 45 change) to play up.
He didn’t exactly pass the test at Triple-A (two mediocre short starts) after performing well in Double-A.
4. SaberSim Says…
Ohtani, Quintana, ERod, Jake Odorizzi, and Jon Gray are the top rated pitchers. Nola, Flaherty, and McCullers are sixth to eighth respectively. The duds, Odorizzi, and Gray are values. Mike Trout, Charlie Blackmon, Brian Dozier, Matt Olson, and Nolan Arenado are the top rated bats. I was planning to jump on that Olson bandwagon too. Scott Kingery, Mitch Garver, and Matt Joyce are among the values.
5. Immaculate
The baseball gods approve of this offering.
The baseball gods approve of this offering.
The baseball gods approve of this offering.
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How do you come up with the stacks?
Pitchers likely to allow more than one run every other inning.
What sabemetrics do u use to target them
The eye test is usually sufficient. There’s no way to tell which crappy pitcher will have the absolute crappiest day, but the general crappiness should be pretty self-evident. If it isn’t, then they aren’t a stack target.
That’s basically how I approach it early in the day. I dig in more specifically once lineups are posted (for personal use only, unfortunately).
Doing that before lineups would add a lot of time to writing the post for very little value.