3 MLB FanDuel Value Plays to Target on Monday 8/1/22
With production being highly variable on a night-to-night basis, daily fantasy baseball plays a bit differently than other sports.
As a result of this, the primary method of selecting hitters is to "stack" certain teams in good spots to produce. Most of the top stacks on a given day come with hefty salaries. In addition to that, a vast majority of pitchers with the upside to win tournaments are high-salaried hurlers.
Therefore, crushing your value plays -- whether it be a pitcher unexpectedly piling up strikeouts or a low-salaried batter racking up points -- can be the secret sauce to taking down a tournament.
Which budget options stand out today on FanDuel?
Jake McCarthy, OF, Diamondbacks ($2,200)
Jake McCarthy is hot, and he can keep it going tonight in a date with Cal Quantrill.
McCarthy has hit sixth or seventh for the Arizona Diamondbacks in six straight games, and he's produced six hits across his past four outings.
Quantrill is exactly the kind of pitcher we want to pick on in DFS. He struggles to miss bats (15.1% strikeout rate) and just isn't good (4.78 SIERA).
The Diamondbacks' 3.91 implied total makes it hard to full-on stack them, but McCarthy is a sweet one-off play. We project him for 10.9 FanDuel points and rate him as the slate's premier point-per-dollar hitter.
Jesse Winker, OF, Mariners ($2,400)
With Julio Rodriguez out of the lineup, Jesse Winker hit second against a righty yesterday. He'll likely be in a juicy spot in the lineup again tonight, and facing Domingo German at Yankee Stadium, Winker is a nice low-salary option.
German isn't a bad pitcher, but due to injuries, he's amassed only 7 2/3 innings in 2022. He's permitted three taters in that small sample, and dingers have been an issue for him throughout his career. That's particularly true at home as he's allowed 1.84 jacks per nine in the Bronx in his career.
While Winker is struggling this campaign, he's still got a 45.3% fly-ball rate against righties, and he thrived in this split a year ago, generating a gaudy .449 wOBA.
We have Winker pegged to score 11.5 FanDuel points, and he slots in as the number-two point-per-dollar bat.
Yasmani Grandal, C, White Sox ($2,100)
So far in 2022, Yasmani Grandal has a .252 wOBA with only a pair of homers. Yikes.
But he hasn't been that bad, and he can deliver in a matchup with Brad Keller.
Grandal's homer-to-fly-ball rate (HR/FB) is 3.5%. That's laughably low. For his career, Grandal has registered an 18.2% HR/FB rate. It was 28.4% last year -- when popped 23 home runs with a .402 wOBA.
Some of Grandal's plate skills -- including a 12.2% walk rate and 38.3% fly-ball rate -- are fairly similar to his 2021 numbers, and Keller presents a dope matchup. The Kansas City Royals' righty has pitched to a 4.63 SIERA and 16.0% strikeout rate.
The Chicago White Sox sport a 4.69 implied total, the third-best, and Grandal is a low-salary way to get a piece of it. We project Grandal for 9.4 FanDuel points, making him the 11th-best point-per-dollar hitter.
