Every day, people on Twitter ask us some variation of this question: “Who are your top plays for the main slate?” When people ask that question, from now on we will refer them to our Plays of the Day article, which we will publish every weekday for MLB and every Wednesday for PGA.
In every MLB Plays of the Day post, several FantasyLabs writers will use our Trends and Player Models tools to highlight each one player to roster heavily in cash games and/or tournaments for the day’s main slate.
Here are today’s plays of the day.
John Daigle: Alex Rodriguez, NYY, 3B
It’s an extremely small sample, but the Yankees have accumulated a bottom-three Weighted On-Base Average vs. left-handed pitching this season. Even so, Eric Surkamp’s slate-high 2.36 HR/9 remains exploitable. The wind blowing out to right in New York doesn’t particularly help Rodriguez (who bats right-handed), but he’s a steal at FanDuel given his Bargain Rating of 90 percent.
Additionally, while Surkamp has allowed an aforementioned whopping HR/9 over the last 12 months, Rodriguez quietly has an Isolated Power of .258. Looking at the advanced data, we see that A-Rod’s fly ball percentage against said handedness also had a positive differential of 8.1 percent last season.
Read more of John’s recommendations for today in his slate breakdown.
Bryan Mears: Carlos Beltran, NYY, OF
Let’s do a quick Trend query: How have hitters performed when they have an ISO greater than .200 against that day’s handedness, have a Park Factor Rating of 80 or higher, and are projected to score 4.5 or more runs? Let’s also add in a top-six-in-the-batting-order filter to eliminate any small ISO samples and see what we get. Drumroll . . . the answer is a +1.95 Plus/Minus and some huge nights in the past.
Allow me to introduce you to Beltran, who is interesting tonight for a couple reasons. The first, of course, is the Plus/Minus trend above. The second is that he is projected to hit sixth for the Yankees. Batting sixth is a really interesting spot for DFS purposes, I think. Because DraftKings limited their stacking rules this year to five players from a team (and FanDuel remains four), that sixth guy is often left out of a stack. Beltran’s advanced stats this year are definitely down from his typical averages — his 34 percent hard-hit percentage, for example, is down to 27 percent so far this year — but his situation is really intriguing for today’s slate.
Also check out today’s upcoming Fantasy Flex Podcast, in which Bryan will talk about other notable batters.
Jay Persson: Jose Bautista, TOR, OF
On the surface, Bautista provides the necessary peripherals to vault himself into top tournament consideration. The Blue Jays are currently projected to score 4.6 runs, which is the most on the slate. Opposing pitcher Mike Wright has allowed the second-highest HR/9 out of any pitcher on Tuesday and had a 3.63 BB/9 in 2015. We know that Bautista regularly enjoys flipping bats after long, terrorizing home runs as well as drawing walks at a top-five rate in the league.
What separates Bautista from other high-priced studs and moves him into strong cash consideration, though, are his advanced stats. A .399 wOBA and .310 ISO against right-handed pitchers, for example, propel him toward the top of the ratings. In fact, 35 of his 40 home runs in 2015 came against right-handed pitching. When we dig deeper, we can see that Bautista has a Hard-Hit Percentage of 60 percent this season, which is the highest out of any regular player on the slate. Bautista’s upside alone is worth a flier in tournaments, but his advanced stats are what move him into the highest tier of cash options.
Bill Monighetti: Corey Dickerson, TB, OF
Dickerson started the season fast, homering twice during Opening Week, but his surface stats have since come back to earth, as shown by his .222 batting average on the season. A look at our advanced stats, though, shows that he is still scorching the ball, with an average Exit Velocity of 93 MPH and Average Distance on batted balls of 229 feet over the past 15 days. Each of those figures compares favorably to his averages over the past year, indicating that he is making solid contact that just hasn’t resulted in many hits lately.
That could change with a trip to Fenway and especially with Joe Kelly on the mound. Of pitchers who’ve accumulated at least 100 innings since the start of the 2015 Season, Kelly is second to only Travis Wood in Hard Hit Percentage Allowed, at 35.9 percent. Very few batters have been better against righties than Corey Dickerson over the past calendar year, as evidenced by his .393 wOBA and .299 ISO. With a reasonable price tag of $3,700 on DraftKings and $3,100 on FanDuel, Corey Dickerson presents a good opportunity to match strength against weakness.
Tyler Buecher: Vincent Velasquez, PHI, SP
Matthew Freedman: Alex Wood, LAD, SP
Alex Wood isn’t a strong tournament play, as he has very little Upside, but he is an undervalued cash option as a mid-priced pitcher with a high floor, especially on DraftKings, where he has a Bargain Rating of 87 percent and is a match for seven Pro Trends. As of writing (8:30 AM ET), Wood is a top-10 pitcher for the main slate in both the CSURAM88 2016 and Bales 2016 models. His 1.38 WHIP and 6.77 K/9 aren’t particularly special, but his 0.76 HR/9 is low and his opponent (ATL) has a slate-low 0.258 wOBA. Pitching in Atlanta, facing a team with an implied total of only 3.6 runs, Wood has a respectable Park Factor of 68 and should have decent weather. (The humidity is a slate-low 0.37 and there is a zero percent chance of precipitation.)
Per our advanced MLB data, in Wood’s recent starts opponents have batted balls an astoundingly low average of 176 feet, and their Exit Velocity has been a low 85 mph. In those starts, only 14 percent of batted balls have been line drives, 19 percent have been hard hits, and 21 percent fly balls, all of which are among the best percentages in the slate. Wood is pitching very well right now, with Distance and Exit Velocity Differentials of -17 feet and -3 MPH, both of which are the slate’s second-best. Finally, he has the slate’s third-best Speed Differential, at 1.2 MPH. With an average velocity of only 90.2 MPH in his recent starts, Wood lacks massive strikeout potential, but his floor and salary are respectively high and low enough to make him a good cash option and source of salary relief as the second pitcher in a lineup.
Read more of Matt’s thoughts on other mid-priced Pro Trend pitchers in today’s Trend of the Day.
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The Plays of the Day series is our answer to the question, “Who do you guys like today?” We publish a Plays of the Day article every weekday for MLB and every Wednesday for PGA.
