MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 7/18/17

Kenyatta Storin  —  @KenyattaStorin Jul 18th, 2017
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Michael Wacha, SP, St. Louis Cardinals

FanDuel Price: $8,100

If you take a look at Michael Wacha's game logs, you'll find he's struck out nine batters in each of his last two starts. At a salary that's cheaper than even Mike Clevinger, is now the time to buy Wacha?

Impressive as those punchouts are, there isn't any noticeable change in velocity or pitch usage to think this is a different Wacha than the one we've seen the rest of the season. His strikeout rate is up from 2016 (23.5%), but his 9.8% swinging-strike rate is about league average among starters, and across his career he's been closer to an average strikeout pitcher (21.0%).

You could take a chance on this improved rate in a good matchup, but New York Mets don't provide many favors, with an active roster sporting a 19.1% strikeout rate and 35.4% hard-hit rate against righties. They have a 4.68 implied team total.

Coming off a down year, Wacha has shown improvements in 2017, but unless we see a larger sample size of high punchout performances, he remains a better real-life pitcher than DFS one.

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