The daily grind: 8-26-13

The Daily Grind provides daily match-up advice for tinkerers 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 daily picks are a mixture of Daily League specific advice and information for the more typical fantasy owner.

Today’s weather watch

New York (NL) may see some storms today.

Today’s grind

While there wasn’t a column yesterday to link to, today’s story is a short one. You can use Zack Wheeler against the Phillies or pick a side of the Astros versus White Sox. That game features Brett Oberholtzer and Andre Rienzo.

Tomorrow’s grind

Pitcher (to start): Ross Ohlendorf is a risky stretch option for tomorrow. As a positive, he’s paired against the Marlins. However, the Cubs got to him last time out and they aren’t much better than the Fish. You also have to wonder how deep into the ballgame he’ll go after lasting just 4.1 innings in his return from the disabled list.

Danny Salazar versus Alex Wood is the match-up we’re all waiting to see. Both young pitchers have excellent stuff and the raw ability to be top end fantasy producers. Both pitchers should be challenged in this one with Salazar probably the safer pick.

Jose Quintana has that always lovely game against the Astros.

Pitcher (bum): Stack Mets lefties against Kyle Kendrick. I’ve observed that he goes on runs where he has very fine command and runs where he doesn’t. As you can expect, he gets hit hard during the latter periods. This is one of those periods.

Paul Clemens struggled mightily out of the pen this season, so I expect his start to be exploitable—even by the White Sox.

Yusmeiro Petit has the difficult job of recording outs at Coors Field. He’s opposed by Chad Bettis.

Ian Kennedy has shown inconsistent results since joining the Padres. He got shelled by a bad Mets lineup then shut down a great Pirates lineup. As they say, you can’t predict baseball. In any case, I’m betting on his former team in this one.

Hitter (power): Khristopher Davis has the platoon advantage against Jeff Locke.

Christian Yelich will be a frequent recommendation down the stretch due to his upside for five category contributions.

Ryan Raburn and Drew Stubbs gain the platoon advantage against Wood.

Try Travis d’Arnaud, Lucas Duda and Ike Davis for power against Kendrick.

Hitter (speed): Rajai Davis disappointed on Sunday, but he’ll see Andy Pettitte on Tuesday for a chance at redemption.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

J.B. Shuck has a nice match-up against Roberto Hernandez.

Eric Young Jr. also sees Kendrick.

Roster Adam Eaton already. His OPS has jumped over 100 points in the last nine games and he has the ability to contribute hits in bunches.

Leonys Martin remains just below the 50 percent owned cutoff for position players. He has a mediocre match-up against Hisashi Iwakuma.

Pitchers to come

Wednesday: Ricky Nolasco against the Cubs is looking like the pick of the litter.

Thursday: With only a few teams left to confirm their Thursday starter, Gerrit Cole is the only one I’m remotely comfortable in recommending. He’s standing at 49 percent owned and presumably is unavailable in all keeper formats.

Friday: After viewing the options on MLB.com, I had no picks. I went over to ESPN, which I don’t typically use because it gets the probable pitchers wrong more frequently. Sonny Gray versus the Rays and Dillon Gee against the Nationals are the two options there worth watching.

Noteworthy news

Keep an eye on Clay Buchholz, who supposedly “felt good” after a rehab outing yesterday.


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Brandon
10 years ago

Brad, thoughts on Niese tomorrow vs Philadelphia?  Like him more or less than Quintana?  Looking for a QS, win is irrelevant.  Thanks.

Brad Johnson
10 years ago

Less than Quintana, but it’s a good match-up to chase a QS. I’m not able to reference at the moment, if you have the choice of both, pick the one that’s home. And if they’re both home, pick Niese.

S. Urista
10 years ago

I was looking at Quintana…but while the Astros are still striking out a ton, since the all-star break they’re actually a somewhat decent offense in runs scored (T-6th), stolen bases (3rd) and home runs (3rd), top-15 in batting average.

More importantly: If you had Salazar and A. Wood going head-to-head, which do you play?