Lonnie Chisenhall- 3B- CLE- Idea- Having James Shields on the mound will give some Indians' hitters a chance to feast. Chisenhall owns a slash line of .308/.346/.471 against RH pitching to take against Shields' .287/.376/.507 slash line against LH hitting. Value play- Draft Kings salary $3800
Dioner Navarro- C- TOR- Cold- A waiver deadline trade to Toronto didn't do much to get Navarro going this year. His average now stands at .207, a point lower than he had on July 10. Regression to the mean never kicked in for Navarro, either. His BABIP is .248, only 7 points higher than July 10. That's still well below his career mark of .275. Navarro's soft-hit ball % has risen from 14.4% last year to 19.9%. That has come from both his medium-hit % dropping from 55.5% to 52.7% and his hard-hit % falling from 30.1% in 2015 to 27.4% this year. At age 32, Navarro may be showing signs of a rapid age-related decline that sometimes hits catchers. His outlook for 2017 is guarded.
Kevin Gausman- P- BAL- Hot- Gausman has allowed the opposition to score in only 1 of his last 5 starts. They got 3 runs in that outlier, meaning all of them were quality starts. It boils down to 3 runs in 33 IP. Yesterday he went 8 IP, allowing 4 hits and a walk while striking out 6. These kinds of performances are showing that Gausman has definite potential to be, at the risk of trademark infringement, The Real Thing. Similar production in the last couple of weeks of the season will put Gausman high on the starters wish list next season.
Adrian Beltre- 3B- TEX- Great Player- Beltre went 1-for-4 with a double last night. The double was the 586th of his career, moving him into sole possession of 19th place all time in that category. With 30 homers and a .297 average the 37-year-old is showing no signs of age-related decline. Beltre's FB% has jumped from 35.7% last year to 40.8% in 2016. That's the level he was at when he was consistently hitting 30 homers per year. Beltre will still be an elite 3B in 2017.
Michael Pineda- P NYA- Injury- Pineda left yesterday's game after 2 rain delays and rolling his ankle finishing off a 3-6-1 double play to end the 4th inning. He hadn't allowed a run and gave up 2 hits and 2 walks while striking out 5. Pineda wasn't particularly efficient, needing 82 pitches to get through those 4 IP, with 50 of them strikes. It was his 3rd straight start of less than 5 IP and at least 77 pitches.
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