Daily Fantasy Baseball News & Updates for FanDuel & DraftKings - 9/1/16

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

One game today. Three games tonight. Grab a barf bag and let's get started.

Personnel

• It's sounding like Neil Walker will undergo surgery and miss the remainder of the season after being diagnosed with a herniated disc in his back on Wednesday.
• Marcel Ozuna left last night's game with a wrist issue and is considered questionable for tonight.
• Robbie Grossman sat for the second straight game last night due to an oblique issue. He was available to pinch hit, however, and could return to the lineup any day.
• Michael Conforto is expected to recalled today as the MLB rosters expand.
• A.J. Pierzynski has been activated from the DL, but he'll be on the bench today. Anthony Recker is starting behind the dish and hitting sixth.
• Danny Santana will miss the remainder of the season with a shoulder injury.
• Byron Buxton is back up with the Twins after another strong showing in Triple-A. Of course, we've seen this before and it's yet to translate into Major League results. Nonetheless, look for Minnesota to give the prized prospect plenty of chances to get it figured out at the big-league level down the stretch.

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Tournament Stacks

Chicago Cubs

Looks like the wind is going to be blowing in, which will probably put a significant damper on the fun at Wrigley tonight, but this is the best lineup on the slate by a good margin, so the projection system is loading up with Cubs almost by default. Also, Jeff Samardzija isn't that good. His K rate is well below league average and his xFIP is over 4.00 for the second straight year. And it's worth remembering that he's made half of his starts this season in one of the majors' best venues for pitching. When he's on the road, he's giving up nearly 1.6 HRs/9. So even with unfavorable weather conditions, we like the Cubs to make some noise tonight.

New York Mets

This one's almost as simplistic as the last pick. Jose Urena is probably the worst pitcher going today, so even though the Mets haven't exactly been crushing in 2016, they're in a pretty good spot to keep up their recent hot streak. We don't put much/any stock in the predictive value of things like hot streaks, we don't really need to to see the value in this lineup tonight. They'll probably be loaded with left-handed sticks, and that's bad news for Urena. The book on the 24-year-old right-hander is pretty thin, but in his first couple of seasons, he's struggling badly against lefties (3.16 K/9, 3.8 BB/9, 5.99 xFIP).  Every Mets hitter on that side of plate (and Yoenis Cespedes) is firmly in play tonight.

Sneaky Pitcher

Mike Montgomery

Finding low ownership levels on a guy in a decent spot is all but impossible on a slate this size, so we're just going with the cheap guy we like the most here. The price on Montgomery is extremely favorable on both FanDuel and DraftKings, especially for a guy who's turned in some pretty solid work (3.59 xFIP) this year. Of course, the vast majority of that came out of the bullpen, but now in his third time through the rotation with the Cubs, he should be relatively stretched out. The Giants don't strike out much, so the ceiling is limited, but we don't need big points at these prices, and a strong breeze coming in from center should help him return nice value tonight.

The "Every Lineup" Guys

Jacob deGrom

If you're playing the late slate (or any slate on DraftKings), deGrom is our go-to guy. He's the best arm taking the hill today (unless you're really buying in to Jose Quintana's wizardry when it comes to outperforming his xFIP), and as a -190 favorite, he should stand a great chance of walking away with the W, which is always a big deal on FanDuel. Yeah, he hasn't been quite as dominant as he was last year, but he's still fanning nearly a batter per inning, and he's the only guy on the slate other than Montgomery with an xFIP on the right side of 4.00.

Kris Bryant

Rizzo or Bryant, Bryant or Rizzo? Rizzo's got the platoon advantage, but Bryant's got a major edge on the rest of the field at 3B in terms of true talent and projected points. He's also been really good against RHP this season (.408 wOBA, .270 ISO), and the matchup with Samardzija isn't intimidating.

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!