Every day this season, our team will share who we believe has the best chance to leave the yard. We’re calling it the “Dinger of the Day”. From one-off plays to core parts of daily stacks, we hope this fun article will help you build winning lineups along the way.
Today’s Picks
James: Aaron Judge – “Eduardo Rodriguez has been tagged for 15 earned runs and 23 hits over his last 13.2 innings and while he hasn’t been giving up a ton of long balls, he has allowed one in each of his last two games. Judge is currently slugging left-handed pitching at a .656 clip and batting .377 against them on the year. Judge sits in the top of the MLB in almost every major category for hitting the baseball hard – that includes the very top for Average Exit Velo and the top 1% for Max Exit Velo, HardHit%, xwOBA, xBA, xSLUG, and the top 3% for Barrel%. Judge has an 18.5% Barrel rate and the only thing potentially keeping the ball in the park a bit is his Launch Angle is down about 2 degrees from his career average. Judge has hit 11 of his home runs on fastballs and Rodriguez throws his 4-seamer 32% of the time and some variation of a fastball over 53% of the time. I have picked Judge a few times with no luck, but when it lines up and sounds good, you try and try again.”
Zach: C.J. Cron – “With a small slate and plenty of solid pitchers taking the mound I am going to play it safe by picking a hitter at Coors Field. While I feel there are about ten hitters that have a chance to go deep in this game I am going to go with Cron based on the way he has hit left-handed pitching. Cron has had an ISO over .200 against lefties in six of his eight seasons. This season at Coors, Cron has an ISO of .375 against left-handed pitching.”
Jared: Rafael Devers – “I was tempted to pick on Kyle Freeland here today with the likes of Mark Canha, but instead I’m pivoting to a more fly ball oriented pitcher and a hitter that’s seeing it exceptionally well right now. Jameson Taillon is a talented pitcher, but has given up far too much hard contact this year (11.5% barrel rate) and 10 long balls to date. Meanwhile, Devers has a 19.2% barrel rate in his last 11 games (44 PA) and an EV of 93 mph. In a hitter’s paradise (Yankee Stadium) where fly balls leave the yard at a great clip, I see high potential for one of the more talented hitters in the game to connect for dinger tonight.”
Overall Standings
| James | 8 |
| Zach | 10 |
| Jared | 17 |
