Gregory Polanco Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

Quantrill has historically shown wide splits to lefties where in his career, he’s allowed a .337 wOBA to lefties compared to a .272 wOBA to righties. The weird thing is those numbers flipped this year where he’s worse to righties than lefties this season. I don’t know if something changed like a pitch type or approach, but I still am going to side with the lefties given his historical numbers. The Pirates are not a good offense so I’m not going crazy here, but they did have a decent showing on Saturday with eight runs. If stacking the lefties and hoping Quantrill’s historical splits override his 2020 splits, then I’d go with a stack focused on Adam Frazier, Colin Moran, Josh Bell, Gregory Polanco and Bryan Reynolds, with righty Ke’Bryan Hayes someone to also consider if you want his power upside.

Designated for large-field GPPs only, so beware. Woodruff is a good pitcher, Pittsburgh is a bad team, and PNC Park is quite a harsh hitting environment. So why play the Pirates? Well, if you're going to try to pair two expensive SPs tonight, the most obvious well-projected source of cheap hitting will be in the KC/DET game. While that construction may be okay for single-entry small-field contests, it won't provide much leverage for bigger GPPs. The Pirates 5-man stack comes in under $20k in salary on DraftKings and at sub-5% ownership overall and can be a useful way to utilize expensive pitching while not being stuck with the Royals & Tigers chalk bats in the process. SlateIQ currently has them ranked 12th as the top stack of the night, which is still better than 6 other teams on this slate, so it wouldn't be a complete long shot dart throw tonight.

Hudson continues to struggle against lefties, allowing an awful 1.314 OPS to that handedness. 8 of his 9 homers allowed have also been against lefties. The Pirates should have a bunch of lefties in their lineup if they've picked up on this, which includes Adam Frazier, Gregory Polanco, Josh Bell, Melky Cabrera, Colin Moran and Cole Tucker. I don't love this Pirates team as a whole, but Polanco, Bell and Frazier really make a nice three-man stack. Feel free to roll out a full-on lefty stack if you'd really like, but I really have my eyes set on Polanco and Bell, with Frazier being a valid one-off for some salary relief too.

Injuries have been a problem for Michael Wacha this year, and so have the walks. So many walks. His walk rate ballooned to just over 10% last year, and while we can dismiss some of that as variance, he’s now up to over 14% this year. That’s too much nibbling. He also misses in the middle of the zone too much, which cost him with a grand slam to a light hitting third string catcher in his last start against the Cubs. The strikeouts are reasonable and his batted ball profile looks better this year, but the walks are just a big problem. I do like Gregory Polanco as a value; now that he is healthy again, he is simply under-priced for his role as the #3 hitter in this offense, and Wacha has had some hard hit issues with LHBs.

There are a lot of good offenses facing good pitchers tonight, leaving us in a tricky situation for stacking. While the Pirates are not the most exciting team on this slate, the bats are not expensive, and they are facing the most attackable pitcher on the slate in Michael Wacha. Wacha has a terribly high 14.8% walk rate this season, leading to a 5.17 ERA and 5.14 SIERA. Dating back to last season, he has allowed 41% hard hits to lefties and 38% hard hits to righties along with average at best strikeouts and the shaky control. The Pirates are one of my top stacks tonight, starting with Gregory Polanco, Starling Marte and Josh Bell.

I'm focusing on the high end pitching tonight along with a couple of key batting spots at high salaries. Finding a few value bats will be important, and we can find them in the outfield on FD. Gregory Polanco and Yasiel Puif in particular stand out at their savings. I'll start with Polanco facing the low strikeouts of Adrian Sampson and a bad Rangers bullpen. Polanco is still working his way back from injury, but has started hitting the ball in the air, and going back to last season, has a strong .253 ISO and .361 wOBA against right-handed pitching. I also like his teammate Bryan Reynolds for more outfield savings.

Our PlateIQ tool really likes Gregory Polanco today, and he provided a much needed boost for this Pittsburgh offense. He has three hits and a pair of extra base hits over the last two games, and he profiles very well against a league average RHP in Frankie Montas. The appeal is particularly enticing on FanDuel, where Polanco's sub-$3,000 price tag is just too cheap -- but I like him as a potential core option on all sites today. Don't forget that he had a .360 wOBA and .265 ISO against RHP a year ago.

Perhaps a trip to Texas will be able to cure what ails the Pirates offense. Pittsburgh went 0-for-last week and has now lost eight games in a row to fall to 12-14 on the year. A breakout spot awaits against one of the worst pitchers in baseball, as Sampson has no prayer of success in Arlington with his profile. He never even logged a strikeout rate above 19% at any full minor league level, and it’s no surprise that he can’t miss bats at the MLB level. He allows a lot of hard contact and really isn’t that good at pretty much anything. The entire Pittsburgh lineup is in play here. I have tagged Gregory Polanco as a core play, as he sports the best overall data over the last two seasons with a .360 wOBA and .259 ISO against RHP.