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: Eric Hosmer ($4,500) – Kyle Hendricks has made six starts on the season and has allowed six big flys, though five of them have come across his last two starts. over his last two starts, Hendricks has covered 10 innings, allowing 14 hits, 10 earned, and five home runs. While Hendricks is a sinkerball guy who tries to live on the ground, Hendricks has allowed 18 flyball outs compared to just 13 groundball outs over his last two starts. Home runs hurt Hendricks last year too as he allowed a career-high 31 in 32 starts. While both sides of the plate have knocked him around recently, lefties carry the slugging advantage here. While Hosmer’s name was thrown around in trade talks this offseason, his .351 average ranks second in the MLB among guys who have started 25 or more games.
Zach: Eugenio Suarez ($4,400) – I have full faith that Eugenio is going to win over Ranger in the battle of the Suarez tonight. I believe this due to the fact that Ranger is not very good. Ranger has an HR/9 rate of 1.54 this season with three home runs allowed over his past two starts. Ranger has especially struggled against right-handed hitting allowing righties to slug .545 with a .416 wOBA. Eugenio on the other hand despite some bad numbers against them this season has been really good against left-handed pitching throughout his career with an OPS of .840 and an ISO of .227.
Jared: Christian Walker ($3,400) – This is a bit off the board here today, but hear me out. Walker has a 20% barrel rate and 19.1 degree launch angle over his last 22 AB, but has a mere .214 BABIP to speak for himself. He’s also rocking a pretty great 14% BB% / 18% K% in that time – a very healthy breakdown of these particular stats. He’s always been a bit better against RHP as well, even though the LHP vs RHB approach may be one of those things that makes you want to stay away from this matchup. To that extent, Elieser Hernandez has actually given up the most HR (7) on the year amongst starters on this slate, and sits with the highest HR/9 rate as well YTD (2.6). For a fly ball pitcher who struggles to keep the ball in the yard, and a hitter in Walker who is putting the bat on the ball nicely these days, I’m happy to invest. If Walker happens to sit, I’ll pivot to fellow Diamondback Ketel Marte who has also been seeing the ball exceptionally well of late and is strong vs RHP.
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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