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 a brand new 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: Kris Bryant ($4,900) – Tony Gonsolin had a 3.77 ERA in 2021, but still had a WHIP of 1.36 and allowed 10 homers in 59.2 innings. These numbers aren’t bad by any means, but we do get this matchup at Coors which always adds to the allure. Right-handed hitters actually slugged Gonsolin about .80 points higher than lefties, and while Bryant sees lefties a bit better, he still had 16 homers against righties last year. Maybe this is a gut call, but with Bryant falling under $5,000 here, it’s one I am going to make.
Zach: Luke Voit ($3,700) – Voit has not picked up a hit yet with the Padres but it is only a matter of time before it comes. I have a feeling his first hit comes tonight and it is a home run. I feel this way due to Voit’s match-up against Zach Davies who is an awful pitcher and really struggled against right-handed hitting a year ago. Last season, Davies allowed righties to slash .302/.366/.506 while having an HR/9 rate of 1.65 against them. Voit for his part also had impressive power numbers against righties last season with an ISO of .227 as well as the advanced stats I like to see from my home run picks with an average launch angle of 15.9 degrees and an average exit velocity of 90.7 miles per hour.
Jared: Eddie Rosario ($4,300) – Vladimir Gutierrez is one of the weaker SPs on the 5 game slate this evening, so I want to attack in his most susceptible split. The new rules for our column in terms of devaluing higher-priced talent is steering me away from Matt Olson (a fellow power LHB but at the $5K+ salary tier), and I’m not quite ready to bank on Alex Dickerson to have a bounce-back season. Rosario should bat leadoff, and Gutierrez allowed LHBs 13 of 20 HRs in 2021 to lefties, with a .514 SLG and .359 wOBA (6.04 xFIP) and a 2.15 HR/9. For his career, Rosario has a .227 ISO and .501 SLG against RHP with a 112 wRC+ compared to a mere 86 wRC+ against LHP. Let’s hope Rosario puts this plus situation to work for me this evening!
Overall Standings
| James | 1 |
| Zach | 0 |
| Jared | 0 |
