4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 5/10/17

Stephen Strasburg, SP, Washington Nationals

FanDuel Price: $10,600

Last week, I made the mistake of picking what I thought was the "safer" play in Stephen Strasburg over Chris Archer, only to see the cheaper Archer outscore him 46 to 38 on FanDuel. Tonight, despite him being about the same price -- along with Yu Darvish and Danny Salazar -- I don't plan on making the same mistake twice.

As mentioned earlier, the other three all possess plus matchups, while Strasburg gets the Baltimore Orioles, who only have a 99 wRC+ against righties, but are probably capable of more as shown by their 107 wRC+ against them last year.

Perhaps more concerning than the opponent is that Strasburg's strikeout numbers are down from 2016. He has a 22.1% strikeout rate and 10.5% swinging-strike rate, both career lows. However, he has a ground-ball rate above 50.0% for the first time since 2013 (52.6%), and his contact rate is the highest of his career (79.6%).

Is this a small sample size, or is Strasburg intentionally pitching to contact more often? For someone who has often struggled with health, it wouldn't be the most surprising development, but it doesn't help us gain points in DFS.

It's not like Strasburg's upside has completely evaporated, as he does have a 55.0-FanDuel-point outing on his ledger. But when lined up against the other top hurlers on this slate, the numbers don't favor outscoring them.

It's also worth noting that Strasburg tied a career-high 119 pitches in his last outing, and it's fair to wonder if that could negatively affect him, given his history.