Daily Fantasy Baseball News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 6/23/16

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 long day of baseball ahead, but this much we already feel certain about: choosing your pitcher today is going to be no fun. We get these days from time to time when a light schedule is further diluted by a split slate, and it usually makes picking the right arm off the trash heap more imperative than ever. We'll help where we can (play Jon Lester!), but don't expect glowing recommendations for anybody among this smorgasbord of sadness. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte are out today for the Pirates. It's a rest day for the scuffling Cutch, while Marte is nursing a foot injury. Matt Joyce and Sean Rodriguez will fill their spots in the OF and hit fifth and seventh, respectively.
• Cameron Maybin and Victor Martinez are sitting for the Tigers, hampering an offense that might've been (and still might be) a nice pairing/pivot with your inevitable Red Sox stack. Jared Saltalamacchia is playing 1B with Miguel Cabrera at DH, while Andrew Romine fills in at CF.
• Brandon Belt is getting a day for the Giants. Buster Posey will be at 1B, while Trevor Brown catches and bats fifth.
• Yoenis Cespedes injured his wrist on a swing Wednesday night and had to be removed from the game. He's considered day-to-day for now.
• Travis Shaw is out today after leaving last night's game with a shin issue. Marco Hernandez is playing 3B and hitting ninth, and even he is in play against James Shields if you're looking for a punt.
• Anthony Rizzo was pulled from Wednesday's game due to back stiffness. Keep an eye out for updates on his status for tonight's game.
• Joey Votto sat for the second consecutive day due to illness Wednesday. There's been no further update on his status as of this morning.
•  Albert Pujols was out again last night for the Angels as he continues to nurse hamstring and ankle injuries.

Tournament Stacks

Boston Red Sox

It would take a hero's effort to recommend anybody else in this spot, and frankly, I don't think I'm up to the task this morning. The Red Sox facing James Shields has the potential for cartoonish violence, considering the White Sox starter has given up 31 earned runs and seven bombs in his last 11.1 IP. He'll have to improve at some point (or else he'll be in the independent leagues before we reach September), but facing baseball's best offense, odds are stacked against him. Unless you're just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, you're going to want as many Red Sox bats as you can get in all formats on the day slate. The trick, especially in tournaments, is going to be balancing the must-play guys with the ones that will be lightly owned. I'd expect ownership on the top four hitters to be through the roof, and for good reason. But even the bottom half of the order deserves consideration, and it would probably be wise to find some exposure throughout the lineup.

Arizona Diamondbacks

I hate to go autopilot on you guys, but these matchups are just too good. The Diamondbacks haven't been very good against RHP this season, but if they faced Eddie Butler in Coors Field more often, their numbers would probably look a lot better. Once upon a time Butler was a hyped prospect, but the shine is long since off of the 25-year-old. He owns a 6.11 career ERA and 4.90 xFIP in 141.1 big-league innings and his 2016 work hasn't been much better. And while Arizona has under-performed in the split as a whole, they've got some pieces we like, starting with Jake Lamb and Paul Goldschmidt. Those are probably your two building blocks in the middle of the order, and depending on the lineup, you can probably stack off of them in either direction.

Sneaky Pitcher

Matt Wisler

Pitching is just so bad today, you guys. If you've peeked at the sites, or if you've read the picks column, you know what I'm talking about. Ricky Nolasco (yuck) is the projection system's top option on a points-per-dollar basis, but the arms are so awful on the early slate, we actually recommended him already. So, we're gritting our teeth and going with Wisler here. It's never fun to side with a Braves pitcher, because recent winning streak aside, the odds aren't good you're going to pick up a W, and that stings on FanDuel and sites with similar scoring systems. Wisler's numbers are pretty ugly, but he's turned in some good starts when he's had decent matchups, including eight innings of one-hit ball at the Mets in early May. And that was before the Mets offense went completely down the toilet. They took another hit last night when Yoenis Cespedes injured his wrist, and if he's sitting today, there aren't going to be many guys in this lineup we're afraid of. They rank 27th in the league in wRC+ and wOBA while striking out in more than 24 percent of PAs, over the last 30 days, so they've basically become the Braves. We're still not enthused at the prospect of trotting out a guy with a 4.78 xFIP, but you could probably do worse at your SP2 slot or in tournaments tonight.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Mookie Betts

Here's your requisite Red Sox Hitter Of The Day. We've actually got David Ortiz projected to be the biggest producer, but if you're playing multiple lineups, you're probably going to want exposure to a couple of other guys at first base, including Hanley Ramirez. There's no such conundrum in the outfield, and we think you can play Betts freely. He comes with big-time upside via power and stolen base potential and all those runs Boston is expected to push across only boosts his value further. As mentioned, Shields has been an absolute mess lately, but even if he recaptures the relative magic of previous seasons, he was already trending in the wrong direction. His walks and homer issues have been on the rise since the beginning of 2015 and last year's rates were at or beyond career worsts for him. And don't sweat the RvR matchup for Betts. He's doing the bulk of his damage against righties this season, with a .374 wOBA and .882 OPS in the split.

Mike Trout

Trout is rarely a bad play at these prices, and he though Angel Stadium is one of the biggest offense suppressors in baseball, it's hardly been an impediment for one of the game's elite players. His home/away splits are virtually neutral over the course of his career, and he owns a .388 wOBA at home this season, so no worries there. Ditto for the matchup with Kendall Graveman. Trout is actually a slight reverse-splits guy, with a .410 wOBA over his career and a .402 mark this season against RHP. And most of that has been accumulated against guys better than Graveman. Now in his second full season, everything we've seen from Graveman has been below average or worse. Below average Ks, bad walk rate, homer issues—the golden trifecta of pitching badness. It's translated into a 4.28 career xFIP, which makes him an easy target, even with a ballpark cushion.

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!