Colorado Rockies' Carlos Gonzalez fouls off a pitch on the way to striking out against San Diego Padres starting pitcher James Shields in the seventh inning of a baseball game Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, in Denver. San Diego won 10-4. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
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!
Technically, it's a split slate, but with only two games on the docket today, most of the action centers around the seven games tonight. As of this morning, Vegas has half of the teams in action tonight slated to score more than five runs, so it should be a fun slate ... as long as you find the right pitcher. Let's get to it.
Personnel
Colorado Rockies
If you're looking for off-the-board picks, I'll have to admit this ain't the place today. Though we actually like a lot of the offenses tonight, if we've got to whittle it down to two, the choices look pretty clear. Not surprisingly, we're starting in Coors Field, and while even the Braves bats are in play today, the Rockies look like the safer choice. That's not to imply there's no risk here. Colorado has struggled this week with hard-throwing righties, and they're getting another one tonight in Mike Foltynewicz, who held them to four hits in seven innings last week in Atlanta. "In Atlanta" are pretty important words in the preceding sentence, however, as Coors Field changes everything. And though Foltynewicz has shown signs this season that he's going to live up to his acclaim as a prospect, he's also prone to the occasional barnburner (see four homers in 5.2 IP at Philly earlier this month for proof). Also working in Colorado's favor is the fact that Atlanta's bullpen is one of the worst in baseball, so even if Folty limits the damage, the Rockies could rack up big points in a hurry tonight.
Boston Red Sox
Look, we're not trying to re-write the book on winning DFS tonight. In a sport with as much night-to-night variance as baseball, there's no such thing as a sure thing, but we really like what we see when we dig into these numbers. Tyler Duffey's 3.90 xFIP tells us he probably isn't actually as terrible as his 5.23 ERA would have us believe, but we're still eager to pick on him due to his pretty extreme reverse splits. Right off the bat we see that righties have posted a wOBA (.377) nearly .80 points higher than lefties, but that's just the beginning. As mentioned in the picks column, right-handed hitters make significantly more hard contact, hit fewer grounders, more fly balls and pull more of them. All of which adds up to a greater likelihood for homers (or shots off the Green Monster, as the case may be). Now consider the fact that each of Boston's top four hitters do their best work against RHP, and at least one Red Sox stack becomes practically unavoidable.
How's your tolerance for risk? I ask, because if it's low, picking a pitcher is going to be a painful experience tonight. There's no clear-cut choice that doesn't come with some baggage. I suppose Steven Wright might be the closest thing to a safe play given his strong odds for a win, but the projection system hasn't fully bought in yet, and personally, I'm always reluctant to go heavy on a knuckleballer. Instead, we're suggesting you take on possibly more risk but at a deep comparative discount. And for what it's worth, our algorithm prefers Gray to Wright regardless of price. I can feel your skepticism, and I completely understand it. Gray hasn't been good this year, but he has shown improvement since a quick DL stint after posting a 5-plus xFIP in May. He's turned in quality starts in four of his last five, with two runs or fewer allowed in three of them. Of course, Gray's prior form wasn't exactly a DFS gold mine. Even in back-to-back nice seasons in 2014 and 2015, his mediocre strikeout rate made him a mostly unexciting play. But at these prices, we're not looking for Gray to carry us. A decent outing that results in a win should be plenty given the salary relief he provides.
I apologize for all the chalk today, but there's just no way around it. Even if you're fading the Rockies in general, you're going to want to take a long look at CarGo today, because when Foltynewicz has struggled it's been against lefties. His fly ball and home run rates in the split (53 percent and 2.42 per 9) are monstrous, and while they're somewhat inflated due to a couple of bad outings, they don't appear to be a fluke. He had the same issues last year, and with 328 lefties faced in his big-league career, we feel pretty confident that the stats aren't a small-sample anomaly. Meanwhile, Gonzalez is crushing righties this season with a .399 wOBA and .220 ISO. Sometimes when we say "every lineup" what we really mean is "most lineups." Not today. Give us all the CarGo we can get.
As mentioned earlier, what we've got here is the rare case of reverse splits vs. reverse splits, and it should result in big production from the Red Sox righties. Look no further than the leadoff man for your foundation, whether you're stacking or not, as his .370 wOBA and .211 ISO, combined with solid stolen base potential make Betts a great play in all formats tonight.
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!
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