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: Trey Mancini ($3,200) – Carlos Hernandez is sporting a 6.00 ERA and a 1.89 WHIP. While Hernandez has only allowed two homers on the year, his location and his fastball have been big problems. Hernandez’s fastball is being slugged at over .800 and righties are slugging nearly .700 and over .320. Mancini hasn’t found his power stroke yet this year, but this on-paper matchup and his raw power puts him in a favorable spot in my eyes tonight.
Zach: Jordan Luplow ($3,600) – Luplow only has 25 plate appearances this season but in those plate appearances he is slugging .500 with a .273 ISO. Those raw numbers are enough to put him on my radar at his salary for this article but what sets him apart for me is his career numbers against lefties. Luplow has a career OPS of .905 with a career ISO of .298 against left-handed pitching.
Jared: Mike Zunino ($3,600) – Marco Gonzales continues to struggle with the long ball this year, with a 2.7 HR/9 and 6 deep flies coughed up in just 5 starts (20 IP). When he makes a mistake, it’s often quite costly, and that’s the kind of slant we’re looking for when it comes to picking homer candidates. Zunino has been fairly quiet to start the year, but should be in the lineup here tonight against a LHP. He is a classic boom or bust hitter, with a bit more ‘boom’ lately as he’s gone deep 3 times in his last 6 games. Let’s not forget how prestigious he is against LHP, too. Last season he rocked a 242 wRC+ and .519 wOBA in the split against lefty arms, with an insane .526 ISO and 1.287 OPS (16 long flies). Look for him to put forward a good showing here tonight, and let’s cross our fingers that he’s able to leave the yard against his former team, too.
Overall Standings
| James | 11.5 (10 total home runs) |
| Zach | 10 (5 total home runs) |
| Jared | 16 (9 total home runs) |
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