Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 6/8/16

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

Today's split slate is dominated by strong pitching and intriguing punt plays, but there are plenty of offenses projected to go off as well. We'll start with a four-game on the day shift, followed by an 11-gamer tonight. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Victor Martinez is getting the day off for the Tigers. Miguel Cabrera will slide to DH, Nick Castellanos is hitting cleanup, and Andrew Romine will play first and hit eighth.
• Ryan Howard is back in the lineup again today, giving Tommy Joseph a second straight day off. Howard, who homered last night in his return, is hitting fifth.
• Cameron Maybin is sitting again with a wrist issue. Mike Aviles will play LF and hit second.
• Devon Travis is getting a breather today. Darwin Barney will man 2B, while Ryan Goins is slotted at SS.
• Addison Russell is taking the day off. Javier Baez is at SS and hitting eighth today.
• Albert Almora is getting his first big-league start today for the Cubs. His stock has fallen since being taken sixth overall in the 2012 draft, but he was slashing .318/.335/.444 with 10 steals at Triple-A this season so he could have some value hitting out of the six hole today.
• Yan Gomes had to be taken to the hospital after taking a foul tip to the groin Tuesday night. He's likely out tonight.
• Ketel Marte was scratched Tuesday after his neck issues cropped back up, but initial word is that he should be back in the lineup tonight.
• Looks like Khris Davis could be out again tonight while he deals with numbness in his hand. He hasn't played since getting hitting with a pitch on Sunday, but was available for pinch-hitting duty last night.
• Danny Valencia sat last night due to illness but could return to the lineup tonight.
• David Ortiz is expected to sit tonight as the Red Sox deal with the lack of a DH spot while playing at San Francisco.
• Starling Marte missed the second half of Tuesday's doubleheader with an ankle injury and is considered day-to-day for now.

Tournament Stacks

New York Yankees
It's not often we find ourselves compelled to recommend one of the lamest offenses in baseball, but every once in a while irresistible forces converge; forces as powerful as Mother Nature and as impotent as Jered Weaver's fastball. Let's get this out of the way first: even though the Yankees have plenty of lefties in the lineup, they've been bad against RHP this season. Like bottom three in the AL bad in both wOBA and wRC+. So how do they end up in this article and as one of the highest expected totals on the board in Vegas today? There's a few factors in play, and it starts with Weaver. His numbers (both surface and advanced stats) have been in a downward spiral since 2011, which is about the time his fastball velocity began to plummet. In 2011, when he went 18-8 with a 2.41 ERA and a 3.80 xFIP, he averaged about 89 mph on his fastball. Five years later, the "heater" barely cuts through a stiff breeze, and registers a cool 82 mph on the radar gun. Predictably, it's getting punished, and Weaver's fly-ball tendencies have led to nearly two homers per nine innings this season. That's troublesome in Yankee Stadium, a good park for power, especially for all those Yankee lefties who will be taking target practice at the short porch in right tonight. Not to be overlooked: the weather. As of this morning, the forecast is calling for strong winds blowing out toward RF. I'm honestly not sure what kind of ownership percentages to expect tonight–Vegas says it's a chalk play, but the Yankees' poor numbers could scare some players off–but they'll form the core of a least a couple of my tournament lineups tonight.

St. Louis Cardinals
Didn't we go through this same song and dance with the underbelly of the Reds' rotation last week? We recommended stacking against John Lamb last night, and just like he did his last time out in Coors Field, he looked surprisingly decent. Actually, he was pretty dang good. Fortunately, the Reds bullpen remains the worst in baseball and helped bail us out to some degree, and as luck would have it, we'll probably get to see more of them tonight. So yeah, we're going back to the Alfredo Simon well, as we do virtually every time he takes the mound. Other than a couple of gopher balls in Colorado, he was solid in his last start, but that isn't going to sway us. He's still the bearer of an 8.94 ERA and a 5.40 xFIP, he still walks more than four per nine, and still gives up way too many home runs. Meanwhile, the Cardinals lead the NL in wOBA, ISO and wRC+ against RHP, which makes them a near automatic play tonight in the homer haven that is the Great American Ballpark.

Sneaky Pitcher

Archie Bradley

Here's the deal, everybody is going to be all over Drew Pomeranz on the early slate. You should be, too. He's striking guys out at an elite rate this season (a hair better than Clayton Kershaw, in fact), and he's got a cupcake matchup against a Braves team that's barely holding off Mark Trumbo, 23-20, in the race for this year's home run title. But give some consideration to Bradley in your tournament lineups as well, on the chance that Pomeranz's left arm suddenly detaches from his body or the Braves get to him (odds about equal). Bradley is a highly touted prospect, and in his two starts since being recalled, he's shown why, fanning 19 batters while yielding just eight hits and four runs in 13.1 innings. The ballpark hurts him, and the Rays have shown surprising pop this season, but this is a pure boom-or-bust play, and Tampa Bay's AL-worst 25.3% K rate vs. RHP gives Bradley significant upside today.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Bryce Harper

We know who Harper is. Despite cooling off since a torrid April, he remains one of the game's most dangerous hitters, and he'll be swinging in a very nice park for power tonight. He also draws James Shields, who's making his first start since coming over from the Padres. You might remember that his last time out (and if you stacked Mariners, you'll likely never forget it), when Seattle rocked him for eight hits and 10 runs in less than three innings. That has obviously inflated Shields' stats on the season, but there's plenty to pick on here beyond his 4.15 xFIP. Foremost are Shields' troubles with command and home runs. The long-ball problem isn't exactly new; he struggled with them early in his career and it resurfaced in a big way last season. The command is different, and maybe equally problematic. Shields has made a nice career out of being a durable arm who can work deep into games, but his walks hit a career high last season (more than double his 2014 number) and he's putting guys on again this season a nearly identical 3.61 per 9 in 2016. Add it up, and we've got a guy we can target freely with somebody like Harper who has a strong command of the strike zone and double home run upside.

Brian McCann

McCann is the personification of all the things we talked about earlier when we recommended stacking the Yankees. He's a projection system favorite any time he's at home, where you won't find many catchers with better potential to go deep. He's also entrenched in the middle of the order, which provides a substantial boost to his value and could make him a cornerstone in most permutations of Yankee stacks tonight. As expected, his BABIP has regressed to the same lowly level it's hovered at since teams began shifting against him, but his OBP is still .100 points higher than his batting average, so the chances of a goose egg aren't as high as they might seem. And facing Weaver with the wind blowing out, he stands a good chance of hitting one over the shift and out of the park anyway. That won't help his BABIP, but it should help us turn a profit.

Note: Jhonny Peralta is still min-priced on FanDuel, making him a great play today in all formats on the site.

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!