Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks for ScoreStreak 8/8/14

DFSR has partnered with ScoreStreak: a new, innovative style of DFS play. Gone is the salary finagling, mixing and matching, and hair-pulling that goes into setting lineups. ScoreStreak simplifies the process in an easy-to-use interface. Employing a prop-pick style, ScoresStreak leagues are specific outcome dependent with three categories: Total Bases, Hits, and for pitchers, Strikeouts.

New users who deposit through DFSR will get an extra $10 to play with. We are putting in picks every night and giving you some of our top plays each day. Two are on us, the third is all you. Or go your own way.

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Total Bases

Mark Trumbo
Going a little off board with the total bases today, but contrarian plays when they are +EV is a way to really gain separation in a set up like ScoreStreak where the margins are razor thin. Trumbo is much better on lefty platoon side of the split facing off against lefty Tyler Matzek. Chase Field in Arizona lends itself to power upside for righties. It's no Coors, but not too far behind. Trumbo rates out near the top of our system today and I almost guarantee you're the only person in your match playing the dude (unless they read this as well).

Chris Davis
Justin Masterson is absolutely horrific against lefties. Just one of the worst you'll ever see. He's always struggled but this season has been some next level shit. He's allowing a .412 wOBA and .950 OPS to lefties on the season. That's insane bad even with some bad luck thrown in there. Davis has been an abomination of course but I'm willing to run it on the contrarian tip as well, especially in the bigger leagues.

Hits

Michael Brantley
Jason Kipnis
I'm not totally buying the "Esmil Rogers Strikes out Tons of Guys" scenario coming through in his early season numbers. Things like strikeout rates tend to follow historical averages (until they decline at least) and Rogers is more a 7 K per nine guy. Brantley and Kipnis both stand to have the ball in play today where the Indians make interesting plays nearly across the board. I'm on both these guys, Brantley especially, and want to target pitchers who struggle over the long term. That's Rogers in a nutshell and both Brantley and Kipnis, hitting at the top of the order no less, will be in my top three for hits.

Strikeouts

Stephen Strasburg
This one's easy. Almost too easy and will be at or near the top of everyone's list today. Strasburg has been a stud this season with an xFIP in the mid 2's and a strikeout rate well over 10 per nine. He faces the Braves who rank very near the bottom of the league against righties with a strikeout rate close to 22%. I get the sense there's a negative feeling surrounding Stras this season. You can use it to your advantage and if you see any squads without Stras in the top two spots know they are coming in near dead money.

Honestly, our system has the rest the group ridiculously tightly-knitted and it's hard to find a distinction among them. I'll most likely run Ian Kennedy in one of the spots. But I don't feel great about any of the guys.