Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 8/23/16

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

Welcome back, New York! Eat it, Schneiderman! We've got a 15-gamer on tap tonight, so let's dig in.

Personnel

• Yulieski Gurriel is expected to be back in the Astros' lineup tonight after exiting his debut due to a hamstring issue and appearing as a pinch hitter last night.
• Charlie Blackmon came in as a pinch hitter last night and could be nearing a return after missing four games with a toe injury.
• Danny Valencia is expected to be back in the starting lineup tonight. He sat two games following a reported clubhouse skirmish with Billy Butler. Butler, meanwhile, has been placed on the 7-day concussion DL. Arismendy Alcantara has been recalled to fill his roster spot.
• Marcus Semien sat last night as is expected to be placed on the paternity list soon.
• Jabari Blash has been placed on the DL with a finger injury.
• Jace Peterson was scratched last night due to soreness, but could return tonight.
• Josh Reddick missed last night's game with a finger issue and is considered day-to-day.
• Zack Cozart is expected to miss another game as he continues to deal with knee and heel issues.

Tournament Stacks

Baltimore Orioles
One of the interesting quirks of tonight's slate is that we've got five pitchers who we don't have much of a track record for, and they account for four of the five of the highest implied run totals on the board tonight. While we haven't seen a ton of Reynaldo Lopez, both our projection system and Vegas aren't terribly worried about the fact that his last two outings were pretty good. Maybe because those outings were against the Braves, who remain bad at hitting baseballs. Nonetheless, we'll admit this is a boom-or-bust kind of pick, which always seems to be the case with Baltimore. Lopez has swing-and-miss stuff, and the Orioles strike out a fair amount against RHP. But they also lead baseball in ISO in the split, so the elite upside is there, especially in a park like Camden Yards, which boosts power for everybody. The trick to stacking the Orioles is often finding the right combo, because they've got pop from top to bottom. The projection system is especially high on Chris Davis and J.J. Hardy at their FanDuel prices, and just about every guy in the lineup is play for GPPs.

Cincinnati Reds
Fading Vegas isn't a terrible idea in GPPs since so many DFSers use run lines for stacking guidance. If you want to go that route in search of differentiation, maybe you can find it with the Reds today (though it should be noted that I am notoriously awful at predicting GPP ownership percentages). What we like about the Reds boils down to two things: Derek Holland and the Great American Ballpark. The former serves up more fly balls and strikes out fewer righties than almost every pitcher on the slate, and the latter has a habit of turning that kind of profile into a heap of crooked numbers. The counter balance here is the Reds themselves. Not all that sexy. But there's enough right-handed pop throughout the order, and while they're priced up on DraftKings, they can be had pretty cheap on FanDuel.

 

Sneaky Pitcher

Carlos Rodon

While there are quite a few middle-to-lower-tier arms who might be worth using tonight, there aren't many (if any) we're willing to invest large sums of bankroll in. Rodon is no exception, but when it comes to GPP flyers, he might be our top choice. Of course, a big part of what confidence we have comes from the Phillies. They remain one of the worst offenses in the league against LHP, and though the recent return of Aaron Altherr gives them another solid right-handed stick in the middle of the order, Tommy Joseph and Cameron Rupp form nobody's idea of a murderer's row. Could they pop a couple into the seats off of Rodon? Absolutely. While he's improved his control significantly in 2016, the walk issues have been replaced by homer issues, and that, of course, is less than idea. But at 23 years old we still like Rodon's chances to get it figured out and he's already displayed the K-per-inning upside that keeps him interesting in the meantime.

 

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jake Arrieta

Even though the Dodgers are far less effective against lefties, we still like Arrieta's matchup with the Padres quite a bit more than Madison Bumgarner's with Los Angeles tonight. That might seem obvious, but with Arrieta coming off a seven-walk start and considering the effect recent performance usually has on ownership, we're not so sure the rest of the DFS universe will see it that way. Or maybe they will. Like I alluded to earlier, if guessing ownership were the primary driver of DFS profitability, I would've taken up chess a long time ago. Anyway, here's what Arrieta has going for him tonight: A) San Diego is a bad offensive baseball team who strikes out a bunch. B) Even though research suggests recent architectural changes have altered Petco's profile, it's still a favorable park for pitchers. C) Arrieta is still good far more often than he's bad. Yeah, we've seen some fraying of his dominance this year, but he's still fanning 8.9 per 9 and owns a 2.75 ERA, 3.33 FIP and 3.66 xFIP. That'll get the job done, especially when the matchup is right.

Josh Donaldson

Pricing is vastly different (seemingly even moreso than usual) on DraftKings and FanDuel tonight, and Donaldson is one of the few guys our projection system really likes from both a raw points and value perspective on both sites tonight. The little we've seen of Tyler Skaggs in his return to baseball after missing the 2015 season hasn't been terrible, but it takes a lot more than "not terrible" to convince us to fade Donaldson against a southpaw at home. He's made a career out of smashing lefties (.410 wOBA, .290 ISO lifetime) and he's more or less kept up the pace this year. Factor in the Rogers Centre's power-boosting properties and Donaldson's relative affordability, and he's perhaps our favorite play of the day.

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!