Good Sunday to you!
We have eight games on the FanDuel Main Slate today. There are a few potential rain concerns, so we’ll need to keep our eye to the sky and avoid those PPDs.
We need to always avoid PPDs. But what’s the best way to do this? Abstinence? Sure, that’s always the safest way to go. At the same time, you’ll miss some opportuntiy there, which can lead to regret. Sometimes we need to take risks, we just need to be smart about it.
We need to have a process.
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We’ve already laid out some basic strategies to help our baseball DFS performance these past few weeks, but just as important is the process we use when constructing our lineups. Fortunately, baseball teams seem much better about posting their lineups well ahead of their games, so we generally have plenty of time to prepare using accurate lineups. The missing piece is great weather info, and Razzball offers this handy link, which has most of the important info we need in one place: http://dailybaseballdata.com/cgi-bin/weather.pl
Here we can see wind speed and direction, temperature, precipitation across a range of times before and after the game. Also key here are the Air Density Index, which is a scale to 100 used to indicate how dense the air is in the game environment. This is important for how a ball moves through the air – the lower the ADI, the less resistance to travel through the air, the further a ball will fly off the bat, but also, the lower resistance will decrease pitch movement. The degree to which this pitch movement is different than what players are used to in recent games is expressed by the Visual Memory Index, where positive values tend to favor hitting (up to a certain point in the upper teens and above), and negative values tend to favor pitching.
Incorporating this information into your daily process will help improve your lineup construction by avoiding players who are facing environmental headwinds or the dreaded PPD.
Now let’s get to the best of the players from the safe games today, below.
Rick Porcello, SP: $7,400 – Porcello is coming off an eight inning gem against Oakland and faces an even weaker lineup today in Chicago. A handful of strikeouts and a decent shot at a win and quality start is all that’s needed to make Porcello the best of the starters today. Not exactly a stud filled slate.
Cody Anderson, SP: $5,500 – Avoid this value play. Though his fantasy production on a per-inning basis may warrant consideration, he poses far too great a risk of not lasting five innings. He needs to be avoided.
Julio Teheran, SP $8,500 and Pablo Lopez, SP $7,100 – This coinflip game offers the lowest implied run total of the slate. Both pitchers have double digit strikeout upside here, and both stand a good chance of a quality start. Mix in both of them.
Jesus Aguilar, C/1B: $2,900 – Go ahead and pencil in a couple walks. High upside and safe floor.
Cleveland Indians – Though the weather in Cleveland today favors pitching, the value is there with several Indians hitters against Erik Swanson. Order of preference: Francisco Lindor, SS: $3,600, Jose Ramirez, 3B: $3,500, Carlos Gonzalez, OF: $2,500, Jason Kipnis, 2B: $2,300, Jake Bauers, OF: $2,600
New York Mets – Playing in the friendlier hitter environment in Milwaukee yields plenty of value here. Order of preference: Robinson Cano, 2B: $3,000, Michael Conforto, OF: $3,600, Todd Frazier, 3B: $2,800, Jeff McNeil, OF: $3,200
Boston Red Sox – These stacks are expensive, but it’s a beautiful day in Chicago, and the Sox face Dylan Covey. Sign me up. J.D. Martinez, OF: $4,100, Eduardo Nunez, 2B: $2,000, Mookie Betts, OF: $4,000, Andrew Benintendi, OF: $3,800, Rafael Devers, 3B: $3,500
I’m Only Happy When It Rains
Sad rain and mean storms in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and potentially Pittsburgh. Avoid Tampa Bay at Baltimore and Washington at Philly for now, probably safe to play your A’s and Pirates.
Doing Lines In Vegas
Wind blowing in, cool temperatures, let’s go for the under in Cleveland.
