MLB

3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 4/9/18

Akash Bhatia  —  @AkashBhatia24 Apr 9th, 2018
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Joey Gallo, 1B, Texas Rangers

FanDuel Price: $3,200

Joey Gallo is always a popular option to roster in DFS, because with his power and relatively cheap price tag he can win a GPP on his own. However, while the rest of the baseball world focuses on Shohei Ohtani, very little attention has been paid to Garrett Richards return from injury.

Other than a handful of innings in 2016 and 2017, Richards has essentially been out of the game since 2015. Regardless of the time off due to injury, however, Richards has brought his swing and miss stuff back. In fact, his swinging-strike rate of 14.1% is the highest of his career. And while he has had trouble with his command, his first-strike rate of 62.5% is also the highest of his career, indicating that his walk rate could stabilize at a lower rate.

One of the reasons Richards has been so successful in his career is how tough he's been on left-handed batters. He strikes them out 21.1% of the time, but what is even more impressive is his contact management against left-handed batters. While most right-handed pitchers get mashed by left-handed hitting, Richards's curveball is the great equalizer. In his career he has surrendered just a 22.2% fly-ball rate and 25.4% hard-hit rate against left-handed batters in his career.

If Gallo isn't hitting hard-hit balls in the air, his floor and ceiling for DFS purposes are compromised. Against a pitcher who appears to be rounding back into form, this is not the matchup to take the dip with Gallo.


Akash Bhatia is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Akash Bhatia also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username tenswimrun1. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.

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