Rene Rivera Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

Perez is coming off of a brutal road start against the New York Yankees his last time out, surrendering seven earned runs and two home runs in just five innings pitched. Tonight, he'll be tasked with shutting down a righty-heavy Los Angeles Angels lineup that receives a significant ballpark upgrade heading to Globe Life Park in Arlington, which, in the sweltering Texas heat, has facilitated the most runs and second-most home runs in all of Major League Baseball this season. When combining those park factors and a matchup against a struggling Martin Perez, it's easy to understand why the Angels are presently tied with the Washington Nationals for the highest implied team run total (5.6) on Saturday's main slate. Not only is Perez inducing fewer ground balls against right-handed batters than left-handed batters, albeit, a respectable 48.2% rate on the year, but he's also giving up substantially more hard contact (45.0% HH%), which has led to a lofty 0.429 wOBA and 5.32 xFIP to righties. This makes the Angels righties the clear preferred targets for tournament formats, though with Mike Trout still sidelined with an injury, Andrelton Simmons is the only right-handed batter with a respectable wOBA (0.373) versus left-handed pitchers this season. However, David Fletcher has flashed occasional upside in his time since becoming a regular in the starting lineup, and both Justin Upton (43.5% Hard%, 0.258 ISO, 0.453 xwOBA) and Rene Rivera (40.0% Hard%, 0.236 ISO, 0.499 xwOBA) sport significantly better numbers against lefties when extending the sample size to include the 2017 season, making them worthy stack candidates to pair with Simmons and the other Angels at the top of the batting order this evening.

Holland is off to a surprisingly decent start to the 2018 campaign, allowing three earned runs or less in every outing and even flashing a bit of upside against the Arizona Diamondbacks, recording eight strikeouts in just six innings of work. Still, there's a reason why Holland only had the chance to sneak into the San Francisco Giants starting rotation because of injuries to Madison Bumgarner and Jeff Samardzija during spring training, making it difficult to believe this effectiveness will hold up over the long term. Holland has done a solid job of limiting hard contact through two starts, but after surrendering a hard-hit ball 62.5% of the time in his previous start, his hard-hit percentage is back up to 38.1%, a number that becomes a recipe for disaster if he continues to all fly balls at a 52.4% clip. From a matchup perspective, the Los Angeles Angels have rolled out a lineup with nine right-handed hitters for Saturday's contest in an effort to take advantage of Holland's abysmal splits against right-handed hitters, evidenced by a 17.5% strikeout rate, 12.5% walk rate, 43.2% fly ball rate, and a massive 40.8% hard-hit percentage last season. All in all, those metrics led to a whopping .408 wOBA, 5.97 xFIP, and 2.26 HR/9 versus righties in 2017, essentially, nothing out of the ordinary for Holland over the last few years. Obviously, with a full lineup of righties, there aren't many soft spots in the order for Holland to bail himself out of trouble, elevating the Angels to one of the top stacking candidates on Saturday's main slate, and makes Justin Upton (43.5% HH%, 0.340 ISO, 0.446 wOBA vs LHP), Mike Trout (0.219 ISO, 0.392 wOBA vs LHP), Ian Kinsler (42.0% HH%, 0.236 ISO, 0.365 xwOBA vs LHP), and Zack Cozart (0.261 ISO, 0.403 wOBA vs LHP) all fantastic options for all daily fantasy formats, while Rene Rivera is an intriguing salary saver at the catcher position with a 0.250 ISO, 0.489 xwOBA, and 44.1% hard-hit percentage versus left-handed pitching the last two seasons.

The Cubs are in the middle of the pack with 4.24 implied runs against Sean Newcomb. The rookie lefty has a 22.6 K% and 4.36 ERA with a forecast of guts up to 25 mph inward from right/right-center at Wrigley tonight. However, Newcomb has just an 8.0 SwStr% over the last month, while his walk rate has exploded to 15.7% over his last nine starts over which he's allowed eight HRs. His 87.7 mph aEV and 35.1% 95+ mph EV are both highest on the slate. The Cubs have an 11 BB% and 17.2 HR/FB vs LHP. If the run line is any indication that the Cubs will be low on the radar or most players tonight, they might be the team to stack. Rene Rivera (132 wRC+, .333 ISO, 42.3 Hard%, 53.8 FB% vs LHP) and Albert Almora (148 wRC+, .174 ISO vs LHP) provide excellent punt plays, while among those with more plate appearances, Javier Baez (143 wRC+, .299 ISO vs LHP has the highest ISO on the team against southpaws. Kris Bryant (158 wRC+, .229 ISO, 34.1 Hard%, 42.4 FB% vs LHP) is a top three projected bat (RotoGrinders Player Projections) on either site. Anthony Rizzo hits same handed pitching extremely well (145 wRC+, .268 ISO vs LHP). He has a 276 wRC+ over the last week and Newcomb doesn't even have much of a platoon split (15 points wOBA with similar hard hit and ground ball rates). The main concern there may be the wind. Ian Happ (83 wRC+, .176 ISO vs LHP has a 196 wRC+ and 70 Hard% in 18 PAs over the last week.

The Chicago Cubs have an implied run line of 5.35 that's second highest on a six game slate and one of just four above 4.8 tonight. Sal Romano has just a 17.8 K% (7.8 SwStr%) with an ERA and SIERA above five through nine starts. The redeeming quality is an 85.8 mph aEV, keeping RHBs on the ground 57.2% of the time on batted balls. Yet, the wOBA (.396) is much higher to that side of the plate with four of his six HRs allowed, despite LHBs owning a .334 wOBA on a 37.5 Hard% and 40.3 GB%. While it would seem ideal to target him with Chicago batters from both sides of the plate, Kris Bryant (138 wRC+, .245 ISO vs RHP) may be dealing with a lingering hand issue that kept him out of yesterday's lineup and could be cost prohibitive for those looking to afford one of the high end pitchers on this slate. The same could be said about Anthony Rizzo (130 wRC+, .233 ISO vs RHP), minus the injury issue. At least some exposure is warranted here for multiple lineup players, as he's one of the top hitters on the slate. This is an entirely stackable lineup from top to bottom with Rene Rivera a potential punt necessity at a very low cost. Kyle Schwarber (102 wRC+, .258 ISO vs RHP) has a 52.9 Hard% over the last week (best on the team), while Ian Happ (123 wRC+, .302 ISO vs RHP) leads the confirmed lineup with a 197 wRC+ over the last seven days. Ben Zobrist (87 wRC+, .134 ISO vs RHP) is another cost saver at the top of the lineup. Javier Baez (81 wRC+, .192 ISO vs RHP) and Jason Heyward (90 wRC+, .134 ISO vs RHP) are here too?

Marc Simon, an ESPN writer, who does a great job covering the Mets, tweeted an interesting little tidbit concerning the umpire drawing the home plate assignment for tomorrow's National League Wild Card game. It seems that Mr. Winters occasionally opens up the strike zone on the outside corner to RHBs. While this would appear to be a small benefit for Madison Bumgarner, he also notes that overall, Winters has a strike zone slightly smaller than average. A later tweet also showed a graph of Bumgarner's strike calls outside the zone this season, mentioning three to four per game due to Buster Posey being the top framers in the game this year according to StatCorner.com (+26.8 RAA). Bumgarner was far from infallible in the second half of the season though (3.80 ERA, 4.11 FIP) and allowed 19 HRs on the road this season. Citi Field is a pitcher's park, but plays more neutrally towards power. Another concern, especially for FanDuel players, who have to have their lineup locked tonight, is that the Mets lineup is probably the more uncertain of the two. We have to figure that Reyes, Cabrera, Cespedes, and both Riveras will be in there from the right side with Granderson and Bruce from the left, but Terry Collins last week even mentioned the possibility of using Eric Campbell at First Base tomorrow night. The Mets scored four runs the last time they faced Bumgarner a month and a half ago in San Francisco. All four of those runs came on a Grand Slame from Justin Ruggiano, who won't be available in this game.