3 MLB FanDuel Value Plays to Target on Monday 5/16/22
With production being highly variable on a night-to-night basis, daily fantasy baseball plays a bit differently than other sports.
As a result of this, the primary method of selecting hitters is to "stack" certain teams in good spots to produce. Most of the top stacks on a given day come with hefty salaries. In addition to that, a vast majority of pitchers with the upside to win tournaments are high-salaried hurlers.
Therefore, crushing your value plays -- whether it be a pitcher unexpectedly piling up strikeouts or a low-salaried batter racking up points -- can be the secret sauce to taking down a tournament.
Which budget options stand out today on FanDuel?
LaMonte Wade Jr., OF, San Francisco Giants ($2,900)
There's a gaudy 11.5-run total at Coors Field today. With 53 runs in three games over the weekend, the Rockies' pitching staff isn't in a spot to ignore the ballpark today.
The Giants are in Denver, and they're actually slight favorites taking on Antonio Senzatela. Senzatela is what he is at this point -- a groundball maven (27.6% flyball rate for his career) who has a better career xFIP at Coors (4.50) than on the road (4.58).
Still, Senza's strikeout rate is an impossibly-low 6.2% this year. Balls will be in play, and LaMonte Wade Jr should get the first crack at putting them there for the Giants.
He's likely to lead off for San Fran, and lately, he's been doing his thing against right-handed pitching. Wade has a .852 on-base plus slugging (OPS) since returning from a knee injury earlier this month.
The Rockies' bullpen also holds a 4.48 expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP), so things won't exactly get harder for S.F. as the game progresses. Wade is a crucial value piece to get to the better parts of their stack.
Patrick Wisdom, 3B, Chicago Cubs ($2,900)
Outside of Coors, Wrigley Field might be the best place to turn for some offense.
Winds are out to right field tonight, and there are two poor hurlers on the bump for both the Cubs and Pirates. Out of respect for longtime worm killer Wade Miley, I'd prefer to stack against Dillon Peters on the other side.
Peters' 1.83 ERA is sweet, but a 4.36 skill-interactive ERA (SIERA) means regression could be on the way. Peters' fly-ball rate is higher than it was last season, but his hard-hit rate is lower. All of that noise feels like a product of the 19.2-inning sample size, and oddsmakers agree.
The Cubbies hold a 4.68 implied team total tonight. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to get low-salaried access to them. My favorite is Patrick Wisdom. Wisdom just continues to eat southpaws for breakfast, posting a .333 isolated power (ISO) and a 50.0% hard-hit rate against them this season.
Frank Schwindel, Yan Gomes, and Jonathan Villar could also have interesting batting spots against Peters, making Chicago an easy choice for the top value stack of the night.
Yonathan Daza, OF, Colorado Rockies ($2,700)
Power is the name of the game in MLB daily fantasy, but there can be value in the right spots just getting on base and scoring. Yonathan Daza is doing plenty of that.
Despite just a .067 ISO, Daza has posted 138 weighted runs created plus (wRC+) and a .408 expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA). He's definitively raked at the top of the Rockies' order.
With that gaudy run total on deck at Coors, he'll likely hit second platooning for the powerful Sam Hilliard, whose strikeout issues against lefties prevent him from seeing the field often against them.
Elias Diaz and Jose Iglesias could also find decent spots in Colorado's order at salaries below $3,000 in salary, but Daza's recent work at the plate towers over both of them.
