Well, I did it. I removed Jose Ramirez from my top 100 hitters rankings. He played another 5 games and only managed 2 hits. 2 runs? Sure. 4 RBI? Sure. 1 SB? Sure. But when he is hurting you this bad he is permanently in the limbo that is ranking #101. I am fully prepared to rocket him up the rankings if he turns it around — but right now? He is the wonderful 101.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Learn more about our 2025 Fantasy Baseball Subscriptions!

The best daily/weekly player rankings/projections (hitters, starters, and relievers) for each of the next 7-10 days + next calendar week starting Friday. Kick-ass DFS lineup optimizer and projections for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo!.

I don’t have enough spam, give me the Razzball email newsletter!

Weekly Razzball news delivered straight to your inbox.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

See all of today’s starting lineups

# MLB Starting Lineups For Wed 8/6
ARI | ATH | ATL | BAL | BOS | CHC | CHW | CIN | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | LAD | MIA | MIL | MIN | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TB | TEX | TOR | WSH | OAK

The nine-game FanDuel slate for today has one clear cut ace on the bump. That ace is none other than the Boston Red Sox’s Chris Sale. The Boston southpaw has been downright filthy as of late. He has struck out double-digit batters in seven of his last eight starts to improve his K% to a slate high 34.9%. On the season Sale has lowered his SIERA to an impressive 2.91. There is no reason to believe that Sale cannot continue to improve on all of his numbers in this one. The Rangers have struck out in 26.4% of their at-bats against left-handed pitching this season. Sale has also dominated this current Rangers’ roster. He has held them to a .175/.226/.285 slash line in 154 career at-bats. 53 of those encounters with Sale ended in a punchout. While he is certainly is not on sale with a price tag of $11,800 on FanDuel, Chris Sale is set up to be the top raw point scorer for Monday’s DFS contests.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

[brid autoplay=”true” video=”419696″ player=”10951″ title=”FantasyBaseball2019BuySellHold11″]

I wonder what Keith Law aka [email protected] thinks about Yordan Alvarez. *searches through transcripts of Klaw chats, which he calls a Koffee Klawtch* Hmm, that’s weird. He didn’t rank Yordan in his preseason top 100. Prospect Mike had him at 27 overall in the top 50 for fantasy baseball prospects.  “Hello, Mr. Skywriter?  Yes, can I pay you to fly above [email protected]’s home with the message, ‘Oops.’ Where does he live? Hmm, I’ve been training my dog to sniff out bad takes, so I just need a few hours and a box of Milkbones.”  On our Prospectonator, Yordan is ranked in the top 5. Again, with some stank, [email protected] didn’t even rank him in the top 100.  I get it; he’s doing real baseball vs. fantasy. The problem is real baseball has become fantasy. Do people even care about defense anymore?  The Orioles top pick overall is a catcher who is already in talks about moving off that position.  Just one more time — he didn’t rank Yordan Alvarez in his preseason top 100!  Are we even comprehending how crumby with cracker crumbs this is?  Any hoo!  Heir Yordan had 23 homers and a .343 average in 56 games of Triple-A.  I will now laugh myself into coughing fit.  Yo, Yordan, you Babe Ruth?  I know what you’re thinking, how long has he been in Triple-A, is he old?  He’s 21 years old.  No idea of the Astros’ plans for him, and, if by some stroke of the malocchio, he doesn’t hit, I guess he could get sent down. However, I think Tyler White’s done and Yuli Guli sounds like an anime character who can’t hit, so even when George Springer, Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa — damn, you wrestling gators in hopes of passing the Yanks for most injured players? — return, I think Yordan is here to stay, and, yesterday, his 1-for-3 with his 1st homer is just the start.  Get him accordingly.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

No Doubt

Team Player Opponent 1 Opponent 2
BOS Chris Sale TEX @BAL
LAD Hyun-Jin Ryu @LAA CHC
TB Charlie Morton OAK LAA
NYY James Paxton NYM @CWS

If you ask Trevor Bauer, it’s no coincidence that Charlie Morton took a big jump forward upon arriving in Houston in 2017. Then again, maybe Trevor Bauer should ask for a trade to the Astros to get himself right, but I digress.

Charlie Morton is throwing his curve more than ever before (36%) and it’s yielding phenomenal results. On the surface, he has career best ERA, WHIP, and K rate (30.4%). The curve is getting a 20% whiff rate (best of his career), 55.74% GB rate, .110 batting average against, and a .153 slugging against. Keep throwing those Uncle Charlies up there, Charlie.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

We’re all the way up to Week 11 boys and girls and it’s been a fun ride. While our picks we’re hit-and-miss last week, I’m very excited about this group of streamers. That’s why I’ve included eight selections, which happens to be one of my highest totals to date. What’s bizarre about this week’s group is that we’re going to recommend some struggling guys. That’s the funny thing about fantasy baseball though, as you have to know when and where to invest in a pitcher’s, no matter what the statistics tell you. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

As I was looking to figure out what to do with my teams and see if there were any trades/waiver moves that would strengthen my rosters I thought it was the right time to put together some positional rankings. Understanding a player’s value relative to another goes a long way in simplifying the process. The rankings that follow are a combination of year-to-date performance and rest of season expectations. The blend is about 70/30 YTD (in most cases). I live in the here and now and put a much heavier weight on what someone’s doing right now than I do on what they did last year or the year before that. Don’t get me wrong, it counts, but that’s where the thirty percent comes in.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

According to the Gregorian calendar, today is Sunday, June 9th, 2019, and we are in a universe with no specific name, because it’s the only one we know. In this vast universe we are in a galaxy we call the Milky Way, in a solar system named Our, and on planet Earth, trying to predict what specific people near us will be doing with a bat and a ball. That may sound impossible to predict, but we can usually narrow down the probabilities to identify the likeliest outcomes and relay that information here. Today is not that day. Apologies.

Today there are literally (not literally) an infinite number of best possible lineups in the FanDuel Main Slate.

What contributes to this lack of certainty? It’s all about the flux of players’ salaries in relation to their likely outcomes. Likely outcomes are determined by past events, current match-ups, and how weather conditions affect these probabilities. So, what we see here is a higher than average number of players who are fairly priced, given their likely range of outcomes, and fewer players who are likely to out earn their salaries.

For the best picks we can identify today, embrace the unknowable infinite, and read on.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’m becoming increasingly infatuated with Zac Gallen. Like any good researcher, I’ll first call attention to a significant bias. I could chuck a rock from my hometown and hit his hometown. South Jersey for the win. But home cooking aside, Gallen is currently the best pitcher in Triple-A, and it isn’t particularly close. This year that kind of dominance is especially impressive. Triple-A started using the same juiced ball as MLB, and the Pacific Coast League of Triple-A was already notoriously friendly to hitters. To quote a caller from the Mike Francesa show on Friday: “They took the juice out of the players and put it into the ball.”

We’ll dive deeper into the specifics of Gallen’s performance after the jump. In the meantime, take a hard look at stashing Gallen in all formats if you haven’t already done so. He’s begun to appear in Grey’s buy column, and has been a member of both the May and June stash lists. Consider today’s individual spotlight on Gallen similar to the giant neon sign I put up about Austin Riley a few weeks ago.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

The Donk and Don are back talking sausage and baseball again this week. Off the top they discuss the fresh signing of Craig Kimbrel with the Chubbies along with B_Don’s recent trade of Kimbrel for Noah Syndergaard in the RCL Perts League. How much risk is there with Kimbrel after missing the first 10 weeks of the season? The guys also discuss whether there’s reason for concern with Chris Paddack and Trevor Bauer moving forward.

In the profiles segment, DT breaks down rookie unknown Zach Plesac while B_Don takes a close look at Nicky Pee-pants Pivetta. There’s a lot to like about both of these youngsters, but one of them provides a decidedly higher floor; find out which!
The show is rounded out with some rapid fire pick ups for 10-12 team leagues as well as deeper formats, including Jay Bruce, Garrett Cooper, Ramon Laureano, Bryan Reynolds, Alex Reyes, Scott Kingery, Luis Urias, Jon Duplantier, Trevor Richards, Willy Adames and many more. This June sausage is extra plump, put some in your mouth and ears now!
Please, blog, may I have some more?

Zach Plesac was on the attack again Friday night holding the New York Yankees to just two earned runs on six hits in seven innings, he walked one and struck out five for his first career win. All this coming after another seven inning one-run gem last week in Chicago where he struck out seven. I’ve now learned to have blind faith in whatever young starting pitching prospect Cleveland brings up. Zach is now rocking a 1.86 ERA, 0.88 WHIP and a 14/3 K/BB through his first three starts, two of which came against fairly potent lineups (Boston and NY). Yep, I’ve seen all I need to see here. Where do I sign? I want to own the next Bieber/Clevinger before anyone else gets wind of this. Fun fact!  Zach’s uncle Dan also won his first start against the Yankees in 1986 and even lost his first against White Sox! How cool is tha-ZZZZ. I mean, way cool! In nine starts in AA/AAA this year, Plesac was 4-1 with a 1.41 ERA, 0.78 WHIP and 56/7 K/BB! Uhh, yes please! Batters hit just .185 against him. So this isn’t exactly coming from nowhere. Sure, he has a bit of a limited arsenal which could catch up to him his second time through the league, but for now it’s all hands on deck. Uncle Dan gives him his full endorsement! He gets the weak Cincinnati Reds line up next week and I’d own him wherever I needed starting pitching help.

Here’s what else I saw in fantasy baseball Friday night:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

The glory of Rome, even now, is a wonder to behold.  The Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, the fountains, the beauty of the Renaissance everywhere you look.  But for pure 800 pound gorilla dominance, nothing tops the Colosseum.  And today Max Scherzer ($11,700) is the “Colosseo” of the FanDuel slate.  You may say he has a 3-5 record with a 3.06 ERA, how is that mighty?  Well my friends, he leads the league with 12.3 K/9, and the revamped Padres, even with Manny Machado, hit him to a minimus .188/.563 batting average/OPS slash line.  They also strike out 37% of the time against him.  Maximus dominante daverro!  Don’t judge him on my bad Italian, just start him. On to the picks.

New to FanDuel? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well, be sure to read our content and subscribe to the DFSBot for your daily baseball plays. Just remember to sign up through us before jumping into the fray. It’s how we know you care!

Please, blog, may I have some more?