3 MLB FanDuel Studs to Target on 3/28/19

Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees

Price: $4,600

2019 is shaping up to be a rough year for the Baltimore Orioles. They enter the season ranked dead-last, by a significant margin, in numberFire's Power Rankings. We project them for the fewest wins (67) and lowest probability of a playoff spot (0.2%) of any team in the Majors.

The rough shape they're in is encapsulated well by the fact that they're starting Andrew Cashner on opening day.

Cashner has pitched 28 games in each of the last three seasons. The 4.72 SIERA he posted in 2016 was then a career-worst. He blew past that mark with a 5.52 in 2017, and while he managed to avoid setting a new career-worst last year, his improvement still left him with a terrible 5.33 SIERA.

That should mean big things for the New York Yankees' offense, and when they're in a good spot it's almost always going to be worth taking a long look at Aaron Judge,

Judge didn't quite match his sophomore numbers in 2018, but he was still a killer from the dish, finishing with a .391 wOBA and .249 isolated power (ISO) over 112 games. His soft-hit rate was up slightly (to 13.5%), but his 48.1% hard-hit rate was actually an improvement from 2017.

A righty-versus-righty matchup also isn't any sort of a concern for Judge. Among the 575 players with at least 50 batted-ball events against right-handed pitching over the last two seasons, none have recorded a higher average exit velocity than Judge. He struck out at a slightly higher rate against righties than against southpaws last year, but that's more than made up for by the upside that comes with his power.

Judge is one of only four players our models project to slug at least 40 home runs on the year, and a matchup with Cashner puts him in a good spot to start working towards that mark right from day one.