MLB

4 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 8/2/17

The pitching options are limited on tonight's FanDuel main slate, but it's still hard to justify using Jake Arrieta.

That cruel mistress, variance, reared her ugly head in a big way last night, wrecking havoc upon any lineup that used Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, or Carlos Carrasco, among others.

Rather than a grinding pitcher's duel between Sale and Carrasco in Fenway, we got a back-and-forth, thrilling 12-10 slugfest. And following a surprise three-run jack by Scherzer, we were met with his abrupt exit prior to the second inning -- because he slept on his neck wrong the night before. Sigh.

Even guys who weren't total fails -- like Jon Lester, Carlos Martinez, and Aaron Nola -- didn't surpass 30 FanDuel points. Let's just say, not many went into the evening thinking that Kenta Maeda and Dylan Bundy would be the highest scoring arms of the night.

As they say, baseball is a funny game. Sometimes no amount of sabermetrics, advanced stats, scouting reports, eyeball tests -- you name it -- can predict what's to come. But I guess that's what keeps us coming back, right?

We have a limited selection of hurlers tonight -- although we saw how having a bunch of so-called aces went yesterday -- but Dallas Keuchel ($9,600) and Zack Godley ($8,800) look like the safest plays. Relatively safe, anyway. Keuchel has a 3.26 SIERA and 66.3% ground-ball rate, but struggled in his first start since returning from the disabled list, adding some risk to an otherwise good spot against the Tampa Bay Rays. Godley is sporting a 3.52 SIERA and 26.2% strikeout rate, but the Chicago Cubs have a 4.41 implied team total against him.

The slim pickings at pitcher do leave us some extra dough for the bats. As always, it's important to narrow down your short list of DFS players to target and avoid the suboptimal plays who are overpriced or in tough spots.