Daily Fantasy MLB picks for Sunday, June 25

Sunday’s Main slate on FanDuel starts at 1:10pm ET and has nine games to choose from. Right off the bat (pun intended) I would like to point out the terrible pitching options of the day. It is a Michael Pineda or bust sort of slate, if you ask me. And you must be somewhat inclined to do so if you are continuing to read further.

Target: Michael Pineda ($8,900) vs. Texas Rangers

Location, location, location. One would think Yankee Stadium would be a negative to Pineda’s outlook, but the young pitcher actually has better career numbers at home. A .225/.277/.390 slash and .290 wOBA are very good marks. On the road those numbers swell to .263/.307/.424 and a .315 wOBA. Still not bad, but definitely not as good. This is a singular example of a guy knowing and preferring his home park.

The Rangers have a large 23.4% K-rate against right-handed pitching, which is the sixth-worst mark in the MLB against RHP. However, they do hit for power (.187 ISO, 11th overall) and they do run (49 SBs, 5th overall). Still, on a day when the pitching ranks are littered with landmines, Pineda gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling. Which is really, really weird to think.

Stack Against: Parker Bridwell ($5,500) with Boston Red Sox

Bridwell held up well against the Empire in his last turn, sort of. He allowed only two hits and two earned runs through five innings, but he also walked five batters and only struck out three. Against the powerful Boston lineup today, I expect him to be outmatched. My hope here is that ownership is driven towards the Yankees (home against Nick Martinez) and the Rays (home against Chris Tillman). Given the affordability of Pineda, I think we can make this expensive group work.

If you find Bridwell on Fangraphs and toggle for “career,” you’ll see that he only has 9.1 innings against LHH and 8.2 innings against RHH. You can also see that RHH have bashed him in this extremely small sample size, to the tune of a .294/.368/.647 slash and .421 wOBA. Lefties have hit him, too (.294/.368/.394 and .334 wOBA) but righty bats have a whopping 51.9% hard contact rate against Bridwell in his extremely brief tenure. They also pull the ball 48.2% of the time and hit fly balls 44.4% of the time. You can see how this can play out in Fenway, which is probably why the Sox have an implied run total of 6.11 today (second-highest behind the Yanks at 6.37).

Like I said, I think a lot of ownership will go towards the Rays and the Yankees, so the Red Sox may not be as owned as we think. You can pretty much use hitters 1-7 in this batting order, but I prefer Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Mitch Moreland, and Andrew Benintendi. If you use those guys alongside Pineda that still leaves you with $3,000 per roster spot. I think that’s pretty super for a chance at the top pitcher and the top offense of the day. Feel free to mix it up with Moreland and Hanley Ramirez, especially given Bridwell’s hard contact rate to right-handed hitters. I like skipping over Dustin Pedroia given his lack of category juice and his recent back issues. Which means he will probably have five doubles today...

Let’s end it with a bit of a different poll. No pitchers, just stacks. Who you got, ladies and gents?