Touted rookie Addison Russell of the Chicago Cubs is starting to live up to his scouting reports and is one of our daily fantasy plays for Tuesday.
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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 5: PITCHERS

Drew Smyly, Rays (at Red Sox, $7,600): The model does not fully support any pitcher today as a value play. Smyly comes closest but his opponent and park (Red Sox, Fenway) are very tough and we don’t have much data on his 2015 performance because he missed nearly the first month of the season. So I’ll focus on cheap hitters in case you want to go chalk with Zack Greinke ($10,100 in Milwaukee). It’s looking like a two-lineup day.

May 5: HITTERS

Oakland Athletics’ Stephen Vogt, front left, is one of the hottest hitters in baseball at the moment.
Associated Press

Stephen Vogt, C, A’s (at Twins, $3,500): He’s the hottest hitter in baseball and the latest information out of Stanford is that we want to play hot hitters. So even though he comes in over average, he’s still way underpriced. Vogt the past week is .450/.560/.950 with three round-trippers and 11 RBI.

Addison Russell, 2B, Cubs (at Cardinals, $2,800): Finally hitting like the scouts said he could with a couple of bombs in the last week. Russell’s power is real. He has been batting low in the lineup but has the leadoff hitter behind him, not the pitcher, plus gets a platoon advantage tonight against inexperienced lefty Tyler Lyons, making his first start of the year.

Kelly Johnson, OF, Braves (Phillies, $2,800): We want to pick on Chad Billingsley, who is making his first start since 2013, when he logged only 12 innings. Johnson is the Braves hottest hitter (three homers in the last week) and also one of their cheapest, if your eye is on Greinke.

 Yasmani Tomas, 3B, Diamondbacks (at Rockies, $3,000): It’s tough to find cheap power in the thin, mile-high air.  We must assume the 255-pound righty has that since Arizona handed him $68.5 million out of Cuba. Tomas gets to try to display it, finally (zero homers in 36 at bats), in the game’s most ideal setting in Colorado and against a lefty in Tyler Matzek.

Follow Michael Salfino on Twitter at @MichaelSalfino 

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