3 MLB FanDuel Studs to Target on 7/3/19
Just like in other sports, the focal point of your daily fantasy baseball lineups will be your high-priced studs. These guys take up by far the biggest chunk of your cap space, but they also offer the highest ceiling, and in the case of pitcher, by far the highest floors for production.
For hitters, we're looking for guys with big numbers, strong matchups, and with players around them that are likely to produce well too, increasing our chances for runs and RBI. For pitchers we want big strikeout numbers, while the ability to go deep in a game and pick up a win is also valuable.
Taking up so much salary, and playing such a big role in your lineup's ceiling, you're not going to want to whiff on these guys, so lets take a look at a few top-end options that you can count on to anchor your lineup today.
Chris Sale, P, Boston Red Sox ($11,200)
Not a lot of pitchers on this slate come close to touching Sale's numbers. His 35.5% strikeout rate is over five percentage points higher than anyone else who has at least 20 innings pitched on the year, and his 2.93 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) crushes the next-best mark of 3.52 in that group.
His early-season concerns are largely a thing of the past, and while his pitch velocity, strikeout rate and SIERA are still all down from where they sat in 2017 and 2018, his numbers in those seasons were good enough that he can afford to decline and still be among the MLB's elite. He ranks second in strikeout rate and third in SIERA among all qualifying pitchers in 2019. He's also one of only two pitchers (the other being Max Scherzer) to notch at least 70 FanDuel points in a game twice this year.
Tonight's matchup is a promising one, too, as Sale and the Boston Red Sox are huge -270 moneyline favorites against a Toronto Blue Jays squad that strikes out at a top-12 rate (24.1%) while also ranking bottom-10 in wRC+ (88) against left-handed pitching in 2019.
George Springer, OF, Houston Astros ($4,800)
We have an absurd 14-run over/under on the board for tonight's matchup between the Colorado Rockies and Houston Astros. Per Killer Sports, there's only been one other game with a total of at least 14 runs this season, so we can expect a pretty crazy amount of scoring in this one.
As favorites, the Astros have an especially gaudy 7.30-run implied total with a great pitching matchup. Rockies righty Peter Lambert has only managed a 4.70 SIERA over his five major league starts, struggling the way you'd expect from a guy that only managed a 4.94 xFIP in his 60 1/3 Triple-A innings in 2019.
George Springer has a terrific .413 wOBA and .308 ISO across 248 plate appearances in 2019, mashing career highs in both hard-hit rate (46.7%) and fly-ball rate (36.4%). Don't fret about the same-sided matchup, either. Lambert is not someone to be concerned about, and Springer actually has a higher wOBA (.420) with a .308 ISO on 49.6% hard-hits and only 10.6% soft-hits against righties on the year.
Nolan Arenado, 3B, Colorado Rockies ($4,600)
Of course, with an over/under like this, even the underdog should be one of the highest-scoring offenses on the slate. Houston southpaw Wade Miley hasn't been nearly as good as his 3.39 ERA might indicate this year, backing that up with only a 4.52 SIERA, and he hasn't posted a SIERA better than 4.20 since 2014.
He does a reasonable job of limiting fly balls, but in 2019 he's allowed a 38.5% hard-hit rate and 33.8% fly-ball rate to right-handed bats, which is still firmly exploitable in Coors Field.
Nolan Arenado doesn't exactly need a perfect matchup when he's at home against a lefty, either. He has made 559 plate appearances in that split over his career, racking up an absurd .486 wOBA and .376 ISO -- marks that jump to a .537 wOBA and .429 ISO since 2018.
Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
