The daily grind: 9-3
The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice based on my every-morning waiver wire search. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!
The Fanduel picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner.
A call to arms: With September games underway, playing time trends can become unpredictable. I can’t watch 30 teams at once so if you discover a trend that can be leveraged, please share.
Today’s grind
The Fanduel Daily League Players of the Day are:
Pitcher (to start):Ross Detwiler is fairly reliable and it’s hard to ask for a better match-up than the Cubs.
I don’t know much about Jeff Locke besides his minor league numbers, but said numbers are good and the Astros lineup is not.
I’m an early fan of Patrick Corbin and I expect he’ll survive his match-up with the division leading Giants just fine.
Pitcher (bum): If you’re looking for a bum today, it’s Bruce Chen against the Rangers. Alternatively, I don’t see the Brewers being too kind to Ricky Nolasco.
Hitter (power): Jonny Gomes against C.J. Wilson tops the list of power options today. That list trails off surprisingly quick, mostly because there are a lot of solid pitchers going today.
Hitter (speed): Rajai Davis will have the platoon advantage against a thoroughly mediocre pitcher. Jon Jay has a fair match-up and could score a handful of points.
Tomorrow’s grind
Kyle Kendrick is on the best run of his lifetime, allowing only four runs over his last four starts. I know some of my readers will want to ride the wave. Good luck to you, I’m going to observe from a distance.
You can try Jarrod Parker against the Angels, because he’s a solid pitcher and he at least has the Oakland Coliseum on his side to slow down the Angels’ powerful lineup.
Scott Hairston stands out as possessing a strong match-up.
Carlos Gomez and Norichika Aoki get to face Jacob Turner, who simply isn’t ready for MLB hitters.
Our old favorite David Murphy should turn in a couple of hits against Jeremy Guthrie.
Tommy Hanson has struggled lately (to the point that I cut him in a league), which is why I like Tyler Colvin tomorrow.
Reliever watch
The Phillies received an ugly combined effort from Jeremy Horst and Jonathan Papelbon that ended in a Chipper Jones walk-off home run. The Phillies will overreact in the offseason to “fix” their struggling bullpen, but clearly Papelbon is more than safe at this point.
A question
I’m thinking about taking my down time today to experiment with a subtle format change. Basically, I would be moving the table behind the scenes and going back to reporting only the top match-ups of the day. I hope to provide some additional information as well.
My question is: given that we’re in the stretch run, should I wait until next season to try a new format?
1st round of H2H playoffs:
What 2 do you like of Colvin (Hamels/Lee/T.Hudson/Hanson 4 of the pitchers he faces this week),Revere(not hitting at all), Harper,I.Davis,C.Gomez ?
This is my opponents roster who is inactie:
C – Molina
1B – Butler
2B – R.Weeks
3B – AmRam
SS – Andrus
OF – Cruz,Zobrist,Ellsbury,Jennings
UTIL- C.Davis
Well…definitely Gomez even though you have to suffer through an occasional day off.
Without looking at his match-ups, I think I’d go with Harper for the second one. He’s been a bit up and down in his age 19 season, but I expect him to start showing signs of adjusting down the stretch.
I am a Tex and Granderson owner, I am hearing possibly Tuesday for Granderson and maybe weekend for Tex.
Does that change what i should do if i may have 1 or both back by next week?Or do I grab Gomez/Harper for Colvin/Revere no matter?
C – Wieters
1B – Colvin (1B/3B/OF)
2B – Pedroia
3B – Frazier (1B/3B/OF)
SS – Hanley (3B/SS)
OF – Gordon/Revere/Morse(1B/OF)/Crisp
UTIL – Aybar
BN – Granderson/Texeira
In that case, I think I’d pick up Gomez with Colvin and hang onto Revere for a bit in case you need to push for SBs later.
First week of my 5×5 playoffs start today. My opponent and I have been neck and neck in both HR and SB, and I can choose b/t 4 guys for two spots: J. Werth, T. Frazier, C. Carter, and R. Davis. Should I try and maximize power, or play Rajai to give myself the best chance in SB? Also, Frazier and Carter might run into playing time problems this week, and Werth has missed the last 2 games w/ a bum hammy. Which 2 guys should I play for the week? Nats only team w/ 7 games.
I think I might gamble on Davis.
I wish I could say that Frazier has played his way out of any playing time concerns, but he’ll get pushed to the bench his fair share as the Reds try to keep guys like Rolen and Heisey sharp.
I’d also stay away from the injury, however minor it might be. You might get 7 days or 0 and the latter would be devastating.