Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 4/12/16

Welcome to the daily MLB updates and news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it!

Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock today.

By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the batting lineup changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below!

What We Know

As of Tuesday morning, we're looking at a full day of baseball, unencumbered by Mother Nature. It's another split slate today, with a pair of early games and 10 on the docket for tonight. If you're playing an all-day slate, you'll want to be a little wary of the weather for Baltimore at Boston and San Fran at Colorado, but the risk appears minimal and by the time the late/main slate locks we should know exactly what we're looking at.

Other than that, we're good to go with mostly blue skies and reasonable temps (for April, anyway -- nothing in the 30s).

Some personnel issues to be mindful of:

• The Astros have activated Evan Gattis off the DL and he should be ready to return to duty. He's still catcher eligible on FanDuel (yeah, don't ask me), and reasonably priced at $2,600, so he might make an interesting tournament play if he's back in the lineup tonight.
• Tigers catcher James McCann is headed to the DL after a collision with John Jaso yesterday. Jarrod Saltalamacchia is donning the tools of ignorance for Detroit today and hitting out of the No. 7 hole.
• Reds SS Zack Cozart left yesterday's game early due to quad tightness. There's no update on his status as of this morning.
• Adam Jones wasn't in the lineup for Baltimore yesterday and is reportedly still not comfortable at the plate due to a rib injury, but he was healthy enough to enter yesterday's game as a defensive replacement, so a full return could be near.
• John Jaso is not in the Pirates' lineup today. Super cheap Matt Joyce will be hitting leadoff.

Tournament Stacks

Boston Red Sox
Despite the fact that baseball is being played at Coors Field today, the Red Sox look like the stack of the day as they look to get fat off of BP specialist Mike Wright. The BoSox have some nice bats throughout the lineup, but this recommendation is mostly about Wright's ineptitude. In 44 innings last year, including nine starts, he served up a 6.04 ERA, backed up by a 5.70 xFIP. He struck out less than six per nine innings while walking nearly four. That's garbage, even for a rookie. The system really likes David Ortiz and Hanley Ramirez, and you can build stacks in either direction off the middle of the order if your site forces you to choose between the first basemen.

San Francisco Giants/Colorado Rockies
Anybody playing at Coors is in consideration for stacking, even though you'll have to pay up significantly on many sites. The Giants look like the preferred option today as they go against Tyler Chatwood and his career 4.42 xFIP. Prices will be high across the board, but on a 10-game slate you should be able to find some decent bargains elsewhere to help you fit in a few San Fran hitters. Buster Posey's salary is going to make him tough to play ($4,900 on FanDuel), but our projection system also likes Brandon Belt, Joe Panik and Brandon Crawford on a raw-points basis.

Sneaky Pitcher

Clay Buchholz

Rolling with Buchholz is always a risky proposition—this is not a cash game play—but our system thinks you can take a chance on him in tournaments (and use the savings on some pricier Coors Field bats). He's especially in play on a site like FanDuel where getting a win from your starting pitcher is highly valuable, as Boston is a -158 favorite as of Tuesday morning.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Mike Trout

The projection system is all over Trout today. His prices are sagging somewhat due to a slow start, but he's a proven commodity to say the least. He'll be facing a below average pitcher today in Kendall Graveman, with below average strikeout stuff. Trout should be putting the ball in play, and when that happens, good things tend to follow.

Danny Valencia

Depsite any well-deserved skepticism regarding the 31-year-old's breakout campaign in 2015, Valencia is in a good spot here, and with a very nice price on most sites. He's always crushed lefties (.371 career wOBA), and Hector Santiago is a willing victim against right-handed hitters, where he sports a 4.83 career xFIP. As an aside, you could probably build some sneaky Oakland stacks; their cheap hitters will make it much easier to pay up for Coors and/or pitching.

One other note: There are big differences between DraftKings and FanDuel pricing so the optimal lineups are looking quite different.

These are players that show up in each of the top 10 lineups as produced by our lineup optimizer. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're "safe," it just means that their projected weighted-mean point total is a solid building block for a great lineup foundation today.

Good luck out there today! If you want access to all of our numbers, get started with a free trial below of our lineup optimizer, on us!