Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 5/5/16

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

We've got a weirdly divided slate today with one true day game, one pre-main slate evening game and nine more on the docket for tonight.

Complicating matters is the fact that the go-to option for starting pitching doesn't get going until hours after lineup lock on both slates, and there's a chance of rain as Jacob deGrom takes on the Padres.

Other than that, though, it looks like we've got mostly clear forecasts across the league, so if you're rolling the dice on the all-day slate, that's definitely helpful.

Personnel

• Matt Holliday, Almedys Diaz and Randall Grichuk are out of the lineup for St. Louis today as the Cardinals go with a lefty-heavy lineup against Jared Eickhoff.
• Ryan Howard and Maikel Franco are sitting for the Phillies, which makes Cardinals starter Jaime Garcia a little more interesting.
• Billy Hamilton entered last night's game as a defensive replacement, which could indicate that the sore thumb that put him on the bench won't keep him there long.
• Jean Segura, who's dealing with a hip issue, entered last night's game as a pinch hitter and delivered a single. He's considered day to day.
• Brett Gardner was hit by a pitch on the elbow last night, but X-ray results came back negative. Keep an eye out for  updates before plugging him in your lineups.
• Steven Souza left last night's game with a pectoral muscle spasm, but the injury isn't believed to be serious.
• Hanley Ramirez was a late scratch last night due to flu-like symptoms. There's been no update on his status as of Thursday morning.
• Alex Rodriguez has been placed on the DL with a strained hamstring.
• Justin Bour sat out Wednesday due to a dislocated finger. Consider him day-to-day for now.
• Ben Revere is expected to rejoin the Nationals for today's game at Wrigley Field.
• Domingo Santana was scratched again Wednesday night due to shoulder soreness. That's twice this week the Milwaukee OF has been a late scratch, making him an iffy play until he's back to full health.

Tournament Stacks

Toronto Blue Jays
Gimme a second while I strap on a helmet and prepare myself for the beating that's sure to come in the comments section. ... Ok. So, here we are again, one month into the season and still waiting on the Blue Jays breakout. We've all been burned by the Toronto lineup this year, most of us more than a few times. It sucks. But you know how they say the house always wins? That doesn't mean they win every hand, every game or every night. But over the long haul, the percentages don't lie. Vegas wins. Maybe you've been there. Those gleaming hotels weren't built on $10 buffet proceeds. And guess what? Vegas has the Blue Jays pegged as the highest-scoring team on today's slate. Again. Despite their lackluster offense of late. Look, if you're done with Toronto until they start living up to expectations, I totally get it. I tend to put a little faith in the admittedly un-quantifiable predictive value of hot and cold streaks in baseball, and the Blue Jays' bats are definitely chilly. But I put more faith in the track records these hitters have established over years and years worth of at bats. And those track records say they can hit and that the Rogers Centre is one of the best parks to hit at in all of MLB. So while I'm scaling back my Blue Jays exposure, I'm still going to have some in tournaments when they're playing at home against the Derek Hollands of the world. Maybe you feel differently. That's understandable. But me? I'm siding with the house.

Houston Astros
Yeah, we're giving you the same two stacks we recommended in the space yesterday. Hopefully you played both, because your Astros winnings should've more than made up for what you lost on Toronto. Thursday finds Houston playing at home again against a pitcher with a so-so K rate who gives up his fair share of fly balls. That could be a problem against the Astros, whose Achilles' Heel is the strike out but have ample power throughout the order. Wade Miley isn't a terrible big-league starter or anything, but we're not afraid to pick on him. Houston should be making contact today, and Miley has been getting fewer and fewer ground balls each year since 2013. We don't like this matchup quite as much as night's against Phil Hughes because Miley stands a better chance of keeping the lefties in check. But the scenario is similar to the one that led to 14 runs last night, and we especially like this matchup for the Houston righties.

Sneaky Pitcher

Kevin Gausman 

Not a safe pick here, and we're even recommending using a couple of the Yankees lefties against him. But if you go that route, it's not a bad idea to hedge your bets and plug in Gausman in a couple of alternate lineups. He was a hyped prospect coming up through the minors, but shoulder injuries and home run issues have led to uninspiring results so far in his career. He's showing some signs of promise, however. He's still got elite velocity and decent strikeout upside, and he's recently added a curve ball to the arsenal that should help him control the longball. Pitching guru Eno Sarris recently pointed out that the curve yielded just one fly ball the first 207 times he threw it. That's significant. Of course, Camden Yard isn't going to help his home run issues, so there's some risk here. But the Orioles are a slight favorite and the Yankees are second-worst in the AL in team wOBA against RHP, so we think he's worth a flyer in a tournament lineup or two.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jacob deGrom

We don't typically list a pitcher here, but such is the separation between deGrom and the rest of the SP field today. You'll have to pay a little, but that shouldn't be a problem. And of course, if you're playing in tournaments, you'll want to mix and match some, but it's hard to imagine pivoting off of deGrom in cash games. See last night's write-up for more info, but the gist is this: he's a heavy favorite to get the win in a nice pitcher's park against a lineup that strikes out more than any other team in the National League. The one hesitation here is the weather in San Diego, which will need to be monitored throughout the day.

David Ortiz

The system is especially high on Papi on FanDuel, where he's quite a bit cheaper, but he's showing up in all of our top 10 optimal lineups on both sites. As we talked about in the picks column, Ortiz remains a reliable source of production against right-handed pitching, with more walks than strikeouts and an OPS north of 1.000 since the beginning of 2015. White Sox starter Erik Johnson also had some pretty ugly underlying numbers in an abbreviated stint last year, especially against lefties (7.30 FIP, 6.64 xFIP with more walks than Ks). And U.S. Celluar Field is a pretty nice park for home run factors, so we're liking everything about this matchup.

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!