3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 4/6/17

Yoenis Cespedes, OF, New York Mets

FanDuel Price: $3,700

In 2016, the oft-injured Jaime Garcia was finally healthy for a full season, pitching 171 2/3 innings, his highest total since 2011. Unfortunately, the results weren't terribly good, giving up a head-turning 26 home runs, resulting in a 4.67 ERA.

So on paper, against a lefty like Garcia, it would seem throwing a power righty like Yoenis Cespedes would be a good plan, right? Well, sure, Cespedes is always a threat for a bomb, but the matchup may not be as enticing as expected.

Garcia may have given up all those homers last season, but he's still first and foremost a ground-ball pitcher. Last year, his ground-ball rate versus righties was 59%, which was right in line with his career rate (57%).

Also, as bad as that home run problem was, it looks awfully flukey when you take into account his ground-ball profile and an astronomically high 20.2% home-run-to-fly-ball rate, which was the worst among qualified pitchers.

Home-run-to-fly-ball rate is viewed as a luck stat for pitchers that will normally regress towards league average, which is around 10%. Garcia's career rate is higher than that (11.5%), so perhaps that's closer to his true talent level, but that's still a far cry from last year's ghastly figure.

Cespedes had a .282 isolated power and 47.8% hard-hit rate against lefties last year. I totally get it if you want to take shot with him. But Garcia is a better pitcher than he was last year.