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 MLB DFS lineups along the way.
As always, FantasyCruncher has 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: Max Kepler ($4,700) – Zach Plesac has allowed a home run in nine of his last ten starts. Six of those have come to left-handed hitters and lefties are hitting .299 on the year against him. While Plesac had a groundball rate of 45% last year, it has dropped to 39% this year as he currently sits in the bottom 6% of the league in Barrel% and bottom 17% in HardHit%. Match that with a low K-rate and we are getting a lot of hard contact against Plesac in 2022. He leans on a fastball that is being hit at .316 but carries an expected average of .366. Kepler’s numbers against fastballs are down, but the expected numbers are a .329 batting average and a .517 slugging. So playing with the data both of these guys are getting lucky/unlucky here. Kepler has the raw lefty power here and lets take a shot on him today.
Zach: Oscar Gonzalez ($3,400) – After not allowing a home run in each of his first four starts of the season Devin Smeltzer has allowed multiple home runs in each of his past three starts. All seven of the home runs he has allowed during these three games have come against right-handed hitting and he is allowing righties to slug .783. While Jose Ramirez would be an easy pick on the Guardians to go deep today due to Smeltzer’s recent struggles I am going with the cheaper Gonzalez. Gonzalez has an extra-base hit in three straight games with home runs in two of those games. Gonzalez has also been really good on the road this season against left-handed pitching with an OPS of .985 and an ISO of .200.
Jared: Franmil Reyes ($2,800) – Murphy’s Law will have Jack Suwinski go yard here tonight, but facing a left-handed pitcher, I’ll pivot off him for at least one day. Instead, I’ll pick on a starter (Devin Smeltzer) who is really getting hit hard at the moment and showcasing some susceptible skills. In his last 5 starts, he’s amassed a mere 5.5 K/9, 4.93 SIERA and 47.7% fly ball rate in his 28 innings of work. He’s also coughed up 7 long balls in that time, good for a 2.25 HR/9 which is worst on the slate amongst starters here today in the last month. Meanwhile, Franmil Reyes is back healthy for the Guardians after missing about a month on the IL, and went deep in his return. His raw power is as good as it gets in baseball, and his career 127 wRC+ / .358 wOBA vs LHP is his stronger split. For the power he brings to the table at a sub-$3,000 salary, I’m happy to jump in here.
Overall Standings
| James | 20.5 (17 total home runs) |
| Zach | 19.5 (15 total home runs) |
| Jared | 20.5 (14 total home runs) |
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