Joel De La Cruz Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

De La Cruz could be the worst pitcher on this slate, and that is enough to put Phillies bats into consideration. De La Cruz has a 5.25 SIERA with a 12.2% strikeout rate this season and has shown no real skill set against either right or left-handed batters. Obviously, the Phillies are not loaded with hitters we to love to target against right-handed pitching, but the price tags on Odubel Herrera (121 wRC+, .354 wOBA, .159 ISO vs RHP) and Ryan Howard (.263 ISO, 46% hard hits) are very hard to ignore. Freddy Galvis (.176 ISO vs RHP)) could be added to a Phillies stack along with Maikel Franco (.161 ISO vs RHP), both of whom are very cheap. Herrera, Franco and Galvis are all especially interesting on DraftKings given an egregious pricing error that has the trio priced at minimum salary. Unfortunately the individual numbers for the Phillies bats against right-handed pitching are not great, but De La Cruz is bad enough to attack at these prices.

There aren't many times where we are intrigued by the Giants offense on a full slate, but they definitely deserve at least a mention tonight. Joel De La Cruz has struggled to a tune of a 5.31 SIERA over 14 appearances (seven starts) for the Braves, walking over three batters per nine innings in the process. He also has a minuscule 12.4% strikeout rate. These factors don’t bode well against a Giants team that has the second lowest strikeout rate and the second highest walk rate against right-handed pitching in the majors. They match up very well against De La Cruz, though their prices are all over the map on some sites. We should avoid the over-priced Denard Span and Angel Pagan in anything but a tournament stack and instead target the great value in Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford (.185 ISO vs RHP), and Brandon Belt (132 wRC+, .364 wOBA, .192 ISO vs RHP).

Joel de la Cruz has a 3.2 K-BB% with a 36.0 Hard%. The Milwaukee offense is projected for 5.1 runs, but only have two expensively priced batters who are above average hitters against RHP. Those are Ryan Braun (126 wRC+, .215 ISO vs RHP since 2015) and Jonathan Villar (112 wRC+ vs RHP since 2015, 45 SBs this year). Both have a wRC+ above 200 and with a hard hit rate above 40% over the last week and are among the top bats at their positions tonight, but no other batter has an above average wRC+ either against RHP this year or overall the last seven days.

Joel De La Cruz (4.98 SIERA) has struggled in his first three of his major league career posting a microscopic 11.8% strikeout rate while surrendering a 35.7% hard contact rate. De La Cruz has exhibited some slight reverse splits thus far but the sample size is not nearly large enough to merit any consideration from us. With that said, the Cardinals stack is still certainly in play tonight. Matt Carpenter is back and is priced down on some sites which is good for us because Carpenter has been elite against right-handed pitching this season (176 wRC+, .434 wOBA, .301 ISO). Joining Carpenter in the elite matchup tier is Brandon Moss, who has mashed right-handed pitching as well. The supporting cast to consider for rounding out St. Louis stacks would be Jedd Gyorko (135 wRC+, .373 wOBA, .333 ISO vs RHP), Greg Garcia (124 wRC+, .357 wOBA vs RHP), and Matt Holliday (.201 ISO vs RHP).

We don't know much about Joel De La Cruz as he is making his major league debut tonight against the Cleveland Indians. The minor league numbers of De La Cruz (17.7% K%, 9.6% BB%, 4.68 ERA) definitely leave a lot to be desired, and he doesn't seem to have the stuff that will translate to the big leagues. It's always a little more risky picking on a pitcher making his MLB debut because it's hard to figure out to what to expect from them, but the Indians seem to be a viable stack option on this slate. Francisco Lindor (128 wRC+, .363 wOBA, .174 ISO vs RHP) and Jason Kipnis (117 wRC+, .348 wOBA, .208 ISO vs RHP) are the clear cut options here batting at the top of the Indians lineup. Lonnie Chisenhall has been raking over the last week (253 wRC+, .548 wOBA, .440 ISO) and bats sixth. Tyler Naquin (159 wRC+, .409 wOBA, .264 ISO vs RHP) makes for a great tournament-only option solely due to his spot in order.