Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 6/29/16

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 another schizo split slate today, with offense galore expected in the early games and a pair of aces in good spots dominating the attention (and salary allotment) tonight. Let's get to it.

Personnel

• Oswaldo Arcia has been scratched from today's lineup due to illness. Nick Franklin will be playing LF and batting sixth, with Brandon Guyer in RF and hitting fifth for the Rays. Jaff Decker has been sent down to make room for Guyer, who was activated from the DL yesterday.
• Zack Cozart is sitting today for the Reds. Jose Peraza is getting the start at SS, and Billy Hamilton will hit leadoff.
• Justin Bour is taking a seat as the Marlins face a lefty today. Chris Johnson is starting at 1B and hitting sixth.
• Jason Heyward is out today for the Cubs.
• Corey Dickerson and Logan Morrison are out today for the Rays. Dickerson is nursing a thumb injury, while LoMo is sitting out against LHP David Price.
• DJ LeMahieu looks like a good bet to return to the lineup today after entering last night as a pinch hitter.
• Gregory Polanco returned as a DH for the Pirates last night and went 2-for-3 with a double, so it looks like he's shaking off the leg injury that sidelined him for three games.
• Curtis Granderson didn't return to last night's game after a rain delay, and Mets manager Terry Collins said afterward that he's dealing with a calf strain. Consider him day-to-day until further notice.
• Joc Pederson is dealing with a shoulder injury after crashing into the outfield wall while tracking down a deep fly off the bat of Chris Carter. He's day-to-day for now.
• Lorenzo Cain was forced to leave last night's game with a hamstring injury. He's likely to miss some time, and a DL stint is possible.
• Carlos Beltran left last night's game with a hamstring injury, but an MRI showed no serious damage. Consider him day-to-day.
• Joe Panik was scratched from last night's lineup due to concussion-like symptoms. Keep an eye out for updates before plugging him into lineups tonight.
• Yunel Escobar is expected to remain sidelined until at least Friday as he deals with a lingering knee injury.
• Ryan Raburn was scratched from last night's lineup due to illness. Stay tuned for updates on his status for today's game.
• Aledmys Diaz avoided major injury after fouling a ball off his face Monday, but is expected to miss a few games.
• Justin Turner sat last night after leaving Monday's game with a cramp. He should be back in the Dodgers lineup soon.
• Jon Jay is now officially on the DL after missing more than a week with a forearm injury. Expect to see lots more Travis Jankowski at the top of the Padres order while Jay is out.

Tournament Stacks

Toronto Blue Jays
I know. A real profile in courage here, picking the guys who put up 18 hits and 14 runs last night. But there's really no way around Coors Field right now, which is more than living up to its reputation recently. There's been at least 13 runs scored in each of the last six games there, and Vegas has Toronto slated to score about seven more tonight (and in the last week or so, the "over" has been the easiest money in town). Here's the catch: It's gonna cost you to get that exposure tonight. Prices are up sharply on FanDuel for the elite guys in this game and others, so stacking up Jays might require some creativity. To wit: if you're stacking Travis, Donaldson, Encarnacion and Saunders with the cheapest pitcher on the board, that'll leave you an average of less than $2.6K to spend on your other four hitters, not to mention Zach Eflin in your SP slot. So you might want to work in the relative bargain plays of Troy Tulowitzki and Ezquiel Carrera where you can, both of whom the projection system is high on. Or you could fade them all. I guess. Tyler Anderson has been pretty stout in his first 17-plus innings as a big leaguer, and the Blue Jays have underperformed against LHP this season. It's not the craziest thing we've ever heard of, but we still can't recommend it, even on a slate with so many stackable offenses.

Chicago White Sox
The options tonight are less plentiful (and appealing), but both sides of the Twins-White Sox game are in play at U.S. Cellular Field. We're siding with the White Sox not because we think James Shields has returned to respectability, but due to the fact that we prefer their upside for the price. Neither of these offenses have been very good this year, but then again, neither have these pitchers. Ricky Nolasco comes in with an ERA a shade under 5, and while his xFIP is marginally better (4.16), his fly-ball tendencies could burn him today. There's power in this White Sox lineup, unfortunately it's of the latent variety all too often. But we're OK with the risk at these prices in a good matchup and a homer-friendly park, because the upside is a good as anybody's on the late slate, and the affordability will make paying up for some of the aces much easier to pull off.

Sneaky Pitcher

Archie Bradley

Maybe he's not sneaky. Honestly, I'm not sure and sometimes I'm terrible at gauging public perception on these things (like, why was Rick Porcello less than 5% owned on FD last night?). But however popular or unpopular Bradley might be, we think it's worth writing him up, because you're going to need a cheap arm to squeeze in some of the high-priced bats on today's early slate. Bradley's no sure thing, and playing him in cash games might be tough, as he's given up four or more runs in half his starts this season and Chase Field is among the league's best hitters parks. But for tournaments, he's a very attractive option, especially on FanDuel where he's one of the cheapest guys available. What we like here is Bradley's ability to strike guys out and the Phillies' offensive ineptitude. They rank 28th in the league in wRC+ and wOBA against RHP, and they also walk less than any team in the majors in the split, which hopefully mitigates one of Bradley's biggest weaknesses. The 23-year-old has been a highly touted prospect since he was taken seventh overall in the 2011 draft and has shown flashes this season of making good on that promise. He owns a 9.59 K/9 rate in eight starts and when he's got his command, he can be really tough to hit. He's got three starts with one unearned run or less to his credit this season, including 6 IP with 0 ER, 3 hits and 5 Ks against the Phillies on June 19.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Troy Tulowitzki

Maybe, just maybe, Tulo's not completely washed up quite yet. Yeah, it looks like the days of a .300 batting average are long gone, but he's shown a power resurgence lately, belting four homers since coming off the DL 11 days ago. We're not fully buying back in quite yet, but you have to figure a .226 BABIP is unsustainably low, so there's some reason for optimism beyond the occasional long ball. What we really like here, though, is the price and the park. Tulowitzki didn't get the dramatic overnight bump in salary some of his teammates did on FanDuel, and that makes him an attractive way to get exposure to the Blue Jays offense in Coors Field, his former stomping grounds. And while his stats are down across the board in 2016, he has an extended track record as a lefty masher, with a career .400 wOBA and .228 ISO against southpaws, so we're happy to roll him out there against the Rockies rookie.

Max Scherzer

Given Scherzer's price point and the fact that Danny Salazar gets a hapless Braves offense on the same slate, it's a little surprising on first glance that the projection system is all in on Scherzer. And then you look at the Mets offense. Injuries and extended slumps have ravaged the second-place team in the NL East, giving them the 29th ranked wOBA in baseball in June. They also strike out nearly 23 percent of the time against RHP this season, so the upside is ample for Scherzer and his 11.57 K/9 rate this season. He's our go-to guy in all formats tonight, as the absence of must-play elite bats should make his salary more workable.

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!