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: Darin Ruf ($3,000) – Mike Minor has allowed seven long balls in just 20.2 innings on the year and currently carries an ERA near seven. The flyball rate is incredibly high right now at 38%, which 11% higher than his career average. While the Giants have a pretty left-handed-hitting lineup, we are still taking our shot on the righty here, as righties have hit .298 and slugged .632 against Minor so far on the year. Ruf is a bit of an outside-the-box play, but he does carry a career .286 average and .548 slugging against left-handed pitching.
Zach: Evan Longoria ($2,800) – Mike Minor has struggled to keep the ball in the park since joining the Reds rotation. In his four starts, he has allowed seven home runs with five of those seven coming to right-handed hitters. Minor is allowing righties to slug .632 in those four starts. Longoria is the perfect right-handed hitter to take advantage of Minor’s struggles as he has hits in five straight games including a home run last night and has traditionally hit left-handed pitchers well. In his long career, Longoria has an OPS of .869 with an ISO of .229 and a wOBA of .364 against left-handed pitching.
Jared: Austin Slater ($2,900) – The lefty-masher should be back in the lead-off spot here tonight for the Giants, and I’m really excited to take advantage of the sub-$3,000 price point. In his last 25 PA, he has a .409 ISO, 187 wRC+ and elite 25% barrel rate. The 97.3 mph exit velocity average is a strong indicator of the kind of contact he’s able to make, and his .236 ISO / .892 OPS / .379 wOBA vs LHP over his last 3 calendar years (405 PA) shows how well he hits in the split he faces tonight vs Mike Minor. Speaking of Minor, he is rocking a 3.05 HR/9 in his last 20.2 innings with one of the highest SIERAs you’ll see (4.80) – not to mention a 13.2% barrel rate and 17.4 degree launch angle average as an extreme fly ball pitcher. That lines up really, really well for Giants’ righties tonight, and Slater is my pick to click.
Overall Standings
| James | 20.5 (17 total home runs) |
| Zach | 19.5 (15 total home runs) |
| Jared | 21 (15 total home runs) |
Did you know FantasyCruncher is on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram? Follow along and never miss out on any of our free content!
