The Daily Grind: The Daily Decision
It annoys me that baseball writers are expected to produce a couple dozen fresh puns per season while making liberal use of existing puns. It’s a contractual obligation. After years of writing professionally, I can no longer help myself. And so…
AGENDA
- The Daily Decision
- Weather Reports
- Pitchers to Use and Abuse
- Hitters to Use
- SaberSim Says…
- TDG Invitational Returns!
1. The Daily Decision
It feels like Aaron Judge has homered pretty much every day of the season. Here he is tying a Yankees rookie record with his 29th blast. You can be damned sure that any Yankees record is pretty close to the major league record. Surprisingly, he’s only tied 27th all time for rookie homers. However, he’s just 10 more from sole ownership of second place. Mark McGwire’s 49 blasts are still a ways off.
All these home runs are good for DFSing.
2. Weather Reports
Storms lurk on the horizon in Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
Four games are early, seven are late, and one is stuck in limbo.
Early Slate: Let’s rename a classic movie. The afternoon crew can be called the middling, the bad, and the ugly. Blistery Johnny Cueto has pitched like a $7,800 starter. It may be worth paying the premium for the relatively high floor in this contest. Your best alternatives are Michael Wacha hosting Miami and Mike Montgomery at home against the Brewers. Wacha is coming off two solid starts following a long slump. Monty is kind of like a left-handed Zack Godley. You can count on 30 points most days.
Stack Targets: Sal Romano, Tom Koehler, Tyler Chatwood, Anibal Sanchez, Zach Davies
Main Slate: Tonight’s contest is star studded on the pitching front. Chris Sale does work. He’s well worth the cost of admission ($11,800), especially when facing the Rays. Tampa has the second highest strikeout rate against left-handed pitching. Sale is at least partially to blame for that statistic – he’s averaged seven innings and 12 strikeouts in two starts against them.
If Sale is too expensive for your tastes, set your sights on Lance McCullers, Jose Berrios, and Robbie Ray. They’ll run between $9,300 and $9,400. McCullers works in short, high effort bursts. He’s a high floor guy who should have a high ceiling. Unfortunately, he rarely makes it out of the sixth inning. He’ll face the Blue Jays.
The Orioles are visiting Berrios and the Twinkies. The righty has made several lengthy starts, making him a better candidate than McCullers to match a Sale performance. He’s also a riskier play than McCullers. He’s coming off two of his worst starts.
Ray hasn’t faced the division rival Dodgers since April. The southpaw is the high end volatility play. Forget keeping pace, Ray is capable of outperforming Sale. However, he isn’t immune to the occasional disaster.
If you don’t want one of the big guns, a few alternatives can be found. I’d steer clear of Jake Faria versus the Red Sox. His performance to date is better than his actual talent. This is Sale’s game to lose. Mike Foltynewicz has a tough matchup against the Nationals. The only clunker he’s tossed in his last six starts was against his division foes. Dylan Bundy could take advantage of the Twins lineup. He already has one 40 point performance against them. Last but not least, Dinelson Lamet has posted some extreme point totals, ranging from negative three to 55.
Stack Targets: Paul Blackburn, Francisco Liriano, Sam Gaviglio, Josh Tomlin
4. SaberSim Says…
Sale, Ray, McCullers, Gio Gonzalez, and Berrios top the list of pitchers. I have to be honest, I haven’t given Gio a moment’s thought since the beginning of this decade. I don’t even notice his name in a list. Assuming the game is dry, he could be a solid alternative to the bigger names.
Nolan Arenado, Joey Votto, Charlie Blackmon, Billy Hamilton, and Andrew McCutchen are the premium hitters. Coors Field for the win. If we ditch the early slate, Bryce Harper, Miguel Sano, Brian Dozier, Manny Machado, and Edwin Encarnacion rise to the surface. The best bargains include Kyle Seager, Jarrod Dyson, Max Kepler, and Machado.
5. The Daily Grind Invitational
Yesterday’s contest didn’t fill. Poor Sawyer77 gets the dubious distinction of winning the free contest. Alex Wood did the heavy lifting. We’ll play on FanDuel again today.
If you happen to notice the contest isn’t full within a few hours of run time, feel free to ping me via the comments.
You can follow me on twitter @BaseballATeam
Been thinking about homer surge in relation to DFS recently, do you think it devalues stacks for tourney play? Like instead of finding the team that provides value via stacked runs and RBIs, now you just have to luck into picking the 9 guys who happen to homer that day?
Well, I’ll tell you this much. I came to the same conclusion in early April. My scattered lineups have pretty much lost every single time while the stacks are performing fine. I think the natural conclusion is that you need stacks to place in the money with any frequency, but you won’t win with them very often.
Matt brought up a great point and I’ve thought about it all season. Home runs are up, sure, but overall hits are down as well.
Still, the probability of getting 8 non teammates to dong on the same night, is ridiculously low. Stacks still win the GPPS but non stacked lineups are becoming increasingly common.
Overall, does it change the meta? Probably not.