Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks: May 12 – Wall Street Journal (blog)

• By
• Michael Salfino

The Methodology: As hard as it is to project a player’s performance in any given season, projecting his performance on any single day is even more difficult. Daily fantasy baseball is all about trying to maximize each day’s matchups using historic batter vs. pitcher performance, platoon advantages and the ballpark. Using prices at FanDuel, we’re making the lineup recommendations every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (when all teams are generally playing) based on a combination of key metrics. But always check your lineups and the current weather.

We grade pitchers in 23 statistics in eight broad categories: working ahead in count, command, finishing off hitters, off-speed effectiveness, overall effectiveness, dominance, efficiency and battle tendency (such as getting guys out when behind in the count). The stats are compiled by Major League Baseball analytics provider Inside-Edge. As the season progresses, last year’s stats matter less and less until they eventually disappear.

The hitting slate is generally determined by choosing the hitters who Inside-Edge grades as hitting the ball hard most frequently this year and who are also going against the pitchers who have the lowest composite grade that day. Platoon advantages (lefty vs. righty and vice versa) and ballpark factors are also considered.

NOTE: Everyone knows that guys like Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw are good plays, so we will only provide underpriced, value picks, which will free up more cap room for the high-priced options.

MAY 12: PITCHER

Noah Syndergaard, Mets (at Cubs, $7,100): You rarely see a pitcher making his first start cost this much. That shows how promising Syndergaard is. The Cubs are also the easiest team to strike out. Sure, you have to worry about jitters in a big-league debut, but Syndergaard is stretched out in the minors and will throw 100 pitches if he dominates like the scouting reports say he can (three plus pitches and better-than-average control, according to Baseball America). Consider playing two lineups tonight, the other featuring Syndergaard’s highly-rated mound opponent, Jake Arrieta ($9,500), given the Mets offensive woes.

MAY 12: HITTERS

Caleb Joseph, C, Orioles (Blue Jays, $2,600). He’s graded a solid 92 on the Inside-Edge 100-point hitting scale and seems to have a favorable matchup with the platoon advantage against soft-tossing lefty Mark Buehrle.

Dustin Pedroia, 2B, Red Sox (at A’s, $2,900): He also has the platoon advantage against A’s lefty Drew Pomeranz. Pedroia has cooled down considerably after a hot start but that’s why he’s being discounted despite the fact he has smacked five homers already.

Delmon Young, OF, Orioles (Blue Jays, $2,300): There’s lots of debate among fantasy scribes about the value of past batter vs. pitcher matchups. Feel free to ignore Young’s career .393  average and .661 slugging in 56 at bats against Buehrle and just view this as cheap, righty masher versus junk-balling lefty. The same argument applies for the more pricy ($3,700) Adam Jones (.432 average, .703 slugging in 37 at bats vs. Buehrle).

Marcus Semien, SS, A’s (Red Sox, $3,300): He’s one of the hottest hitters in baseball (1.345 OPS the past week) at a shortstop position that’s a real drag in fantasy this year. A Stanford University study says to play hot hitters, and we try to follow that advice when the matchup is also against one of the lower-rated pitchers in the Inside-Edge metrics. Justin Masterson fits that bill. Semien combines combo skills with power (five homers) and speed (six steals). There’s no platoon advantage but you generally shouldn’t worry about righty-righty matchups as much as lefty-lefty.

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