Every day this season, our team shares who we believe has the best chance to leave the yard. From one-off plays to core parts of daily stacks, we hope this fun article will help you build winning lineups along the way.
Welcome back MLB DFS grinders to the 2022 season! As always, FantasyCruncher will have several daily articles from pitching to stacking, to home run picks, to general cheat sheets to help you build your daily lineups. And the best news, it is all free! This year for 2022, we are changing up the scoring for the home run calls to be weighted based on the player’s salary. If one of our writers chooses a player with a salary over $5,000 it will be worth 0.5 points. Between $4-$4.9k is 1 point, $3-$3.9k is 2 points, and anyone $2.9k or below is worth 3 points. In terms of salary, we are going off of DraftKings salary for this article. Again, the scoring system is just a fun and friendly competition between our MLB content writers.
Today’s Picks
James: Matt Chapman ($3,700) – The Blue Jays draw a great home matchup here against the A’s and a pitcher with just one MLB start under his name. That one start did not go well, allowing two homers and five earned in just 1.1 of an inning. While we aren’t looking for a ton of length from that starter, we are looking to the A’s bullpen that despite a 3.48 ERA boasts a 1.48 WHIP. This implies some early season luck that will likely average out that ERA to a higher number. I really feel like we could grab any Jay here, but for the sake of who I think will go deep I am looking at Matt Chapman. Chapman hasn’t had a great start to the year, but I love a matchup against his old foe and a weaker arm could be what helps shake off the small early season slump.
Zach: Rowdy Tellez ($2,800) – I could have played it safe on this slate as there are plenty of stud hitters in great spots today but I decided to take a risk on Tellez. The reason I am taking the risk on Tellez is due to the fact he has been hitting the ball well this season. Tellez comes into today’s game with an ISO of .217 and a slugging percentage of .522. Tellez also has the Statcast numbers I like to see with an average exit velocity of 91.6 miles-per-hour, a 10.5% barrel rate, and a 42.1% hard-hit rate. Did I also mention that Dakota Hudson the pitcher he is facing today allowed two home runs in his first start of the season.
Jared: Giancarlo Stanton ($4,500) – This seems like a near “too good to be true” situation for Yankees RHBs today, as Bruce Zimmermann has really struggled in the split against him over the course of his career, and he’s going to have to face a talented bunch of those this afternoon. Stanton is my pick to click from the Yankee lineup here, given his team-best 25% barrel rate and elite .402 xwOBA that has yet to manifest itself in the “surface stats” (.347 wOBA; a difference of 55 points). We all know how the ball screams when Stanton makes hard contact, and he has as good a shot as any to get me on the board here today.
Overall Standings
| James | 5.5 (4 total home runs) |
| Zach | 4 (2 total home runs) |
| Jared | 0 |
