There appears to be a clear-cut ace on this slate and it’s Cole Hamels. The Rangers southpaw owns a 9.39 K/9, which is second best on this slate. He’s turned in plenty of solid fantasy outing this season and there’s reason to buy his stock for the rest of the season. Hamels is sporting a whopping 24.5% HR/FB rate. The league average usually hovers around 10% and anything over 13% is considered awful. I suspect this rate was normalize, making him a buy low candidate in season-long leagues and a potential daily stud moving forward. Today he will battle the Astros who strike out at 25.9% to LHP this season, which is the second-worst mark in the league. Hamels was solid versus Houston in their first meeting this season, scattering five hits and allowing just one run over 6.2 IP while striking out seven.
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I think Rick Porcello is really interesting tonight. It’s really been the tale of two seasons for Porcello this year. In his first five starts of the season, Porcello went 5-0 with a 2.76 ERA, striking out 36 in 32.2 innings of work. However, in his last six starts, he’s sporting a 5.11 ERA, has allowed more hits (38) than innings pitched (37) and only struck out 26 batters. So which Porcello do we get tonight? I think we can be optimistic about getting “Good Porcello”. In his defense, his last four games have come against the Royals, Indians, Blue Jays and Orioles. That list includes three of the top ten offenses during this stretch. Today he will get to travel to a National League park (that’s extremely pitcher-friendly) and battle a struggling Giants offense. Only the Braves have a worse wOBA than the Giants in the last thirty days.
Regression has finally caught up with Mat Latos. We knew he couldn’t sustain his excellent numbers to start the season as he rated poorly in nearly every advanced metric. That’s starting to show as he is sporting a 6.54 ERA over his last six starts which includes allowed 25 runs and 45 hits over those 31.2 IP. He’s only struck out 18 batters in that span and has allowed a whopping eight homers. The Nationals enter tonight as a middle of the road offense but have plenty of power, ranking 10th in ISO. They will get to add a DH tonight in Chicago which could make this lineup even more potent.
That’s all folks! Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more player analysis and news as starting lineups are released! Commentary based on DraftKings strategy and scoring.