The Daily Grind: Utley, Strasburg, Ray, Jennings

Agenda

  1. Utley is Back
  2. Daily DFS – Strasburg
  3. GB / FB Splits
  4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Ray, Simon, Jennings, Dyson
  5. Factor Grid

1. Utley is Back

Chase Utley is once again a fantasy relevant player. Go ahead and pick him up where available or trade your ugly tidbits for an upgrade. He won’t be a superstar, but he should be able to match what he did last season. I’d value him comparably to Daniel Murphy or Addison Russell. Put another way, I’d take him over Scooter Gennett, Wilmer Flores, or Cesar Hernandez.

Jeff Sullivan did a spot of video analysis yesterday when it came out that Utley made a mechanical fix related to his ankle injury. Follow the link if for no other reason than to view the two GIFs. The first is injured Utley, the second is current Utley.

Utley has always had a…fascinating…swing. It’s quirky. The lower body is very standard, but his arms look weird. I’ve probably seen Utley take thousands of swings. I jumped off the bandwagon this year because his cut looked even more truncated than normal. You can see that in the GIF, and the side angle shows that his bat speed is down too. In the second swing, he has much better extension resulting from a more active lower half.

Mechanically, the pieces are there for a big finish from Utley. Since he won’t reach his vesting option, he can now be retained on a valuable $11MM club option. The Phillies should get a decent prospect in return for Utley – possibly a better player than they received for Jonathan Papelbon. Until then, he’ll bat leadoff for the Phillies. He’ll probably have a prominent role in his new offense too.

2. Daily DFS – Strasburg

Yesterday’s Grind

Early: Not only is it a Thin Thursday, the games are split with four early and five late. The first group offers some obvious studs and duds among the pitchers. Noah Syndergaard and Jon Lester should be popular starts. Sonny Gray is also available, but he’s opposed by the Blue Jays. I suspect the faders in the crowd will target him.

Yesterday’s recommendation, Mark Buehrle, got pushed to today. All the same advice applies except the win is far less certain against Gray.

Late: The evening crew also has its share of aces and blobs. Stephen Strasburg was in vintage form in his return from the disabled list. He posted 22 points on FanDuel and he’s just $9,400 tonight. He induced 18 whiffs with his three pitch mix. Even against a solid Giants offense, he should be popular. And deservedly so. He’s opposed by Ryan Vogelsong.

Stack Targets: Eddie Butler, Chi-Chi Gonzalez, Ervin Santana, Tyler Cravy, Nathan Eovaldi, Trevor Bauer, Jeremy Guthrie, Keyvius Sampson, Mat Latos, Vogelsong

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.

It’s a thin list for a Thin Thursday. Jeff performed some updates to include more 2015 data. The result is a few more player like Addison Russell.

Russell, Jorge Soler, and Dexter Fowler v Tyler Cravy
Eddie Rosario and Aaron Hicks v Alex Gonzalez
Jose Bautista v Sonny Gray
Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira v Trevor Bauer

4. Tomorrow’s Targets – Ray, Simon, Jennings, Dyson

Pitchers to Start: Robbie Ray looks like one of the Diamondbacks few good trade acquisitions. He has a 3.13 ERA with 8.23 K/9 and 2.43 BB/9. I fear regression is around the corner. His stuff doesn’t really support such a solid strikeout rate, and he usually posts high walk rates. It’s possible the 23-year-old improved his command, but the strikeout issue remains a worry. Against a weak Braves offense, I’m not concerned.

Ray seems like the kind of young pitcher fantasy owners go bonkers over, but I’m finding tepid interest in his services. I own him in several leagues including some keeper formats, but few of my rivals view him as valuable.

Also consider: Jaime Garcia, Tom Koehler

Pitchers to Exploit: Alfredo Simon has suffered through a couple bouts of longballitis. His season numbers don’t show it because he started the year by allowing five home runs through his first 12 starts. In his next nine starts, he’s coughed up nine home runs. As we know, the Astros are a team of power and strikeouts. Since Simon doesn’t rack up many punch outs, we could see a fireworks show.

Also consider: Ivan Nova, Joe Kelly, J.A. Happ, Bartolo Colon, Martin Perez, Adam Morgan, Phil Hughes, Yohan Flande, Anthony DeSclafani, Matt Cain

Hitters (power): Desmond Jennings is due to be activated from the disabled list tomorrow. He’s a career .272/.358/.451 hitter versus southpaws. While I’d expect rust, that should be mitigated by his matchup against Martin Perez. The Rangers’ southpaw looks terrible right now.

Also consider: Andre Ethier, B.J. Upton, Yangervis Solarte, Preston Tucker, Khris Davis, Utley, C.J. Cron, Adonis Garcia, David Peralta, Jake Lamb,

Hitters (speed): If it were up to me, Jarrod Dyson would start against every righty while Alex Gordon is out. As it is, Ben Zobrist (or more accurately, Omar Infante) occasionally steals his starts. If he does start, I love the matchup against Jered Weaver. He’s the kind of pitcher Dyson should be able to hit.

Also consider: Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, Rusney Castillo, 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.

Dry baseball and neutral parks.

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. 





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Sean
8 years ago

Why doesn’t Ray’s stuff support his strikeout numbers? He averages 93.1 on his FB and is rocking a 17.4% swstr% on his slider. His stuff is better than people realize.