Daily Fantasy MLB picks for Monday, June 26

Welp, it was Michael Pinata who showed up yesterday. My lineups busted despite having shares of home run heroes like Mancini, Schoop, Moreland, and Bonifacio. The Red Sox fell flat, too, which is awesome. I basically set a few bucks on fire yesterday. But I didn’t play beyond my means and it made watching baseball more fun, so it was a good day.

FanDuel has a weird two-game early slate that I am going to completely ignore. Instead, it is the Main slate at 7:05pm ET that we will zero in on. This slate has six games to pick from. Here goes nothin’.

Target: German Marquez ($7,000) @ San Francisco Giants

Marquez is a mere $100 more expensive than some dude named Ricky Nolasco who has allowed 23 home runs this season. I do not understand this. Marquez has allowed two runs or fewer in seven of his last eight turns and faces the Giants—a team that has lost 12 of its last 13 games. The Giants have lost Samardzija’s last three games, due in large part to the Shark allowing six home runs over those three starts. The Rockies are on a five-game losing streak of their own, but I have to think that Colorado has greater odds of prevailing in this one. The Giants have scored the fourth fewest runs of any team in the MLB this season.

The only knock here is that the Giants don’t strikeout a ton, with a 19.3 K% (6th-best in the MLB). However, they don’t score runs, either, as the league-worst marks in ISO (.130) and wRC+ (78) can attest. Basically, we are hoping for a strong six innings, a quality start and a win for Marquez today. If he can pull that off for only $7,000 in salary, he will not be the problem with any of your lineups.

Stack Against: Eddie Butler ($7,100) with Washington Nationals

Saving all that dough by using Marquez will allow you to pay up for the bats of your choosing, and I am going to ignore the most popular unit of the day in the New York Yankees. I’ll still have a bat (or two) from the Empire but I am trying to differentiate a bit. The Yanks aren’t infallible and they do have a healthy 23.9% K-rate against southpaws. We can pick and choose from them. Anyway, the Nationals do not strikeout against right-handed pitching, as evidenced by the 19.4 K% (7th-best in the MLB against RHP). They also have a .200 ISO (4th) and 111 wRC+ (4th) against right-handed pitching.

Their opponent, Eddie Butler, has a very low 15.1% K-rate and a high 12.7% walk rate. Opposing hitters have a .265 BABIP against him and his ERA of 4.19 is lower than his 4.48 FIP, both suggesting that some correction is imminent. Butler has a career 15.7% HR/FB rate, but this season that mark is abnormally-low at only 7.1 percent. You get the idea. Regression should hit this guy pretty soon.

Butler has allowed hard contact 38.3% of the time to left-handed hitters and only has a 4.5% HR/FB rate against them despite allowing a lot of fly balls to LHH (46.8%). More of those balls HAVE to start leaving the yard. Against right-handed bats he has a solid 54.2% ground ball rate and 28.8% hard contact rate—but that is fine since we want the dangerous lefty hitters from Washington, anyway. Bryce Harper ($4,500) and Daniel Murphy ($4,000) obviously lead the way, but don’t forget about the #2 hitter in Brian Goodwin, who is still reasonably-priced at only $2,600. After those three I’ll be mixing and matching with Ryan Zimmerman (4,000) and Trea Turner ($4,300). Zimmerman has 14 home runs and a .289 ISO against right-handed pitching this season and Turner has seven home runs but the legs to do some major damage on the basepaths. Finally, if I neglect to mention Anthony Rendon he will slug three home runs in this game, so work him in as well. It’s all about the 1-6 hitters for me.

Final Thoughts:

If I am not paying down for Marquez I actually like the Shark on the other side for only $8,300. If If I am paying up at pitcher I am hoping that Brian Dozier or Miguel Sano (who have BvP on their side) can do some damage against Chris Sale...so I’d go down to Carlos Carrasco and hope yesterday’s onslaught by Texas drives some ownership away from Carrasco. Lastly, Rich Hill is interesting against a watered-down Angels lineup. I also like the Dodger bats in that one against the homer-prone Nolasco, but I like Hill’s upside if his curveball is working. There are a couple of ways to pay down today, and that’s the route I am leaning towards choosing at the current time (with Marquez first and Hill second). Good luck out there, ladies and gents.