Bill Buckner passed away yesterday at the age of 69.

Pitching Performance of the Day

Gerrit Cole struck out 12 while only walking one in a win over the Cubs yesterday. But Cole is owned in all leagues, so he’s less fun to talk about. Instead, we’ll give the nod here to Matt Strahm . Strahm allowed three runs in a losing effort yesterday, but he struck out 10 Yankees on the road. Strahm now has a 3.21 ERA through 10 starts with a near league average strikeout rate and a walk rate that is well below the league average.

Strahm has a 4.45 xFIP, which belies his ERA. The main culprit is an 82.4 percent strand rate that is unlikely to remain that high, especially since Strahm isn’t a high strikeout pitcher. As a result, Strahm isn’t a pitcher you can add and start every time out, but he is a viable streaming option. Strahm has heavy splits as lefties have a .400 wOBA against him compared to a .269 wOBA for righties. When he’s facing a lineup that doesn’t include too may tough lefties, that’s the spot to stream him.

Hitting Performance of the Day

Orlando Arcia went 2-for-3 yesterday with a home run and a double while driving in three and scoring twice. He got a hold of the home run ball.

Arcia now has six home runs on the season, and he has had a solid month of May. His walk rate is up five percent compared to March/April while his strikeout rate is down 3.2 percent. Arcia has an issue elevating with a career groundball rate of 53 percent, but he has improved in that regard as well this month with a 47 percent groundball rate. Arcia’s 114 wRC+ in May is 12th best in the league at his position, yet he is owned in less than five percent of ESPN.com leagues. He has middle infield viability in all but the shallowest of mixed leagues and is worth a look if you’re struggling up the middle.

Game of the Day

Often the game of the day referenced here features a late-game comeback, but yesterday’s D’Backs-Rockies game affords us the opportunity to feature a different kind of game. Until the bottom of the ninth, no team’s win expectancy had topped 80 percent. The D’Backs got close with a 3-1 lead in the top of the seventh, but that lead was erased in the bottom half of the inning. The Rox finally cracked the 80 percent mark when they got a runner to second base in the bottom of the ninth with no outs in a tie ballgame, but they failed to get him home. The D’Backs got a runner to third with no one out in the top of the 10th but somehow failed to bring him home as well. The Rockies finally ended it in the 11th with an Ian Desmond double followed by a Raimel Tapia single.

This was an extremely tight ballgame throughout as it was within onerun for all but five of 64 total outs. Here’s the game graph courtesy of Fangraphs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to Watch for Today

There is weather to keep an eye on in the northeast today with rain chances in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Those games feature pitchers like Masahiro Tanaka andDavid Price who could be viable DFS options if rain delays don’t make them too risky to roster. Those two pitchers have two of the six opponents with a projected run total under four runs per Vegas as of this writing. The other four are (in ascending order) Rich Hill , Trevor Richards , Jeff Samardzija and Lucas Giolito . Samardzjia and Richards both have xFIPs north of 5.00, but Hill and Giolito have ERAs under 3.00 and xFIPs under 4.00.