3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 5/3/18

Sean Manaea, SP, Oakland Athletics

FanDuel Price: $9,000

After tossing a no-hitter against the then-red-hot Boston Red Sox, Sean Manaea could have done little else in April and still been deserving of the American League Pitcher of the Month award. However, he went on to pitch to the tune of a 1.03 ERA, and he is now the most expensive pitcher on the slate.

However, not a ton has changed with Manaea from previous seasons. He has cut his walk rate nearly in half (from 8.0% to 4.5%), but otherwise, his swinging-strike rate, strikeout rate, ground-ball rate, and hard-hit rate are all very similar to what he has posted in the past. This isn't to take anything away from him as it is still impressive that he has posted a 3.52 SIERA on the season, but his ERA should negatively regress.

Moreover, he has a tough matchup against the Seattle Mariners, who rank fifth in baseball in wRC+ against left-handed pitching. This is driven primarily by their contact-making ability as just one team strikes out less versus southpaws than the Mariners (18.3%) do.

It's a bad pitching slate without many enticing alternatives, so if you're playing a lot of lineups, it'll be hard to completely fade Manaea, but he's in a really tough spot tonight.