The following Spotlight Hitters were selected by Awesemo.com writer Jake Hari. For more analysis on the slate, check out Awesemo’s Rankings and Ownership Projections.
Paul Goldschmidt ($5,300 DK/$4,500 FD)
Goldschmidt has a fantastic chance to continue his scorching hot streak in a mouth-watering matchup with Dan Straily. Straily is struggling mightily with righties, posting a 4.63 xFIP, a 46% fly ball rate, and over 50% hard-contact on the year. Even with a miserable 2 month stretch for Goldschmidt, he’s still up to a .211 ISO, .358 OBP, and 44.3% hard-contact rate against righties. Despite this matchup, our ownership projections don’t even have him near the top of list, so he’s a nice GPP one-off at the very least.
Adrian Beltre ($4,300 DK/$3,300 FD)
3rd base is usually a stacked position, but we can make a good argument that Beltre is in the best spot of any of them tonight. Since the start of 2017, Beltre has a team-leading 165 wRC+, .196 ISO, .445 OBP, and just 13.3% K-rate against lefties, so a matchup with southpaw Joey Lucchesi looks about as good as it gets before we add in the park factors. This game in Texas will be in the mid-90s, and with Lucchesi allowing 43% hard-contact with a .350 wOBA to righties, Beltre has a solid chance to square him up which should lead to great things in these conditions.
Lonnie Chisenhall ($3,300 DK/$2,600 FD)
Chisenhall has hit righties well in his short sample this year, posting a 40% hard-hit rate with a .355 wOBA. More importantly, though, is that he’ll get a couple opportunities to hit against John Gant, who is allowing almost 65% hard-contact this year. Gant can miss bats at times, but Chisenhall is striking out under 20% of the time against RHP over the last year and change. Hitting 5th and behind guys like Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez, Chisenhall has a good chance to get at-bats with men on base, making him someone we should be targeting even if he has healthy ownership.