The daily grind: 4-1-13

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice for tinkers and daily fantasy players. I welcome advice to help make this column more effective, including notice of impending weather events, new injuries, and changes to platoon situations. Ownership rates are from Yahoo!

The Fanduel picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner. Use the team-by-team TDG eligible players spreadsheet for more detailed information.

Today’s grind

The Fanduel Daily League Players of the Day are:

Pitcher (to start): Opening Day isn’t really the time to find freely available pitchers to stream. Vance Worley could benefit from a very cold match-up against the Tigers, but he would also be the top guy to exploit if not for the weather.

Jon Lester is heavily owned, but I’m also targeting him in daily leagues for his match-up against the Yankees. He had a huge spring after coming off a poor 2012 season.

Pitcher (bum): Ditto the above, although there are a few bums out in the open today. Ricky Nolasco never became the pitcher he was supposed to and now he draws a tough Opening Day match-up against the Nationals. There is possible rain in the forecast, which could lead to an early call to the bullpen.

Any single Edinson Volquez game might as well be done by a random number generator. The Mets lineup is quite bad, but they may need only patience to score a few.

Jhoulys Chacin was a favorite sleeper of mine last season, but the gamble did not pay off. This is another game where I would heavily favor the Brewers lineup if the game time temperature wasn’t projected to hover around freezing.

Hitter (power): Lucas Duda has the power to take a mistake deep. That team is carrying a lot of marginally talented outfielders, so it will take time to figure out how they’ll be used.

Domonic Brown is my pick of the day, but he’s been a trendy late round/wire selection leading up to the season.

Hitter (speed): Carlos Gomez and Norichika Aoki would be my top picks if they were widely available. I still expect their ownership rates to reduce to around the 50 percent level.

If you really only care about steals, Eduardo Nunez can contribute them. The only other thing he contributes is shortstop eligibility, so take this recommendation with a grain of salt.

Tomorrow’s grind

Pitcher (to start): Hyun-Jin Ryu is talented enough that he should be able to outperform his opponents until they get better scouting reports.The Giants aren’t exactly an offensive powerhouse.

Pitcher (bum): Justin Masterson is a fine pitcher, but I’m excited about the Blue Jays’ new lineup. Jose Reyes, a healthy Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion should spell HUGE offensive numbers.

Jorge de la Rosa could be a fine sleeper this year, but I’ll take the Brewers over a guy who has spent most of the last two seasons on the disabled list.

Call me crazy (you will), but I think the Mariners lineup is going to be surprisingly powerful this year, at least in regard to home runs. Jarrod Parker had some home run problems this spring and I could see new additions like Kendrys Moralesand Michael Morse exploiting that tomorrow.

Hitter (power): Justin Smoak is another guy who might like batting against Parker tomorrow.

I expect to be calling Adam Lind’s name fairly frequently. He matches up well against mid-tier or worse right-handed pitchers, yet he’s so bad against lefties that it’s hard to roster him.

Mitch Moreland is also a fan of mid-tier righties, and Lucas Harrell qualifies as one of those.

Hitter (speed): Maicer Izturis or Emilio Bonifacio should start at second base and provide value on the bases. If someone could clue me in as to how Toronto will be handling that platoon, I would appreciate it.

Lucas Harrell’s first start is my first opportunity to try out Leonys Martin.

Reliever watch

It’s Opening Day!

Weather watch

A few teams are playing in cold conditions. After training in Florida and Arizona, these temperatures could lead to some unexpected performances. The Cubs, Pirates, Angels and Reds will deal with temperatures below 40 degrees while the Tigers, Twins, Brewers, Rockies, Royals and White Sox will not see any temperatures above freezing.

I went to college in Minnesota. We didn’t play if the temperature was below about 35 degrees. It’s not a good way to play baseball…