DFS Lineup Picks for 7/18: Advice & Expert Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings

Real Talk Raph analyzes sleeper DFS matchups & expert lineup picks for 7/11 on FanDuel and DraftKings. These sleepers can return huge value in daily leagues.

We're Going DFS Deep! Starting Pitcher Sleepers For 7/18

Are you just sick and tired of seeing your seasonal fantasy baseball team at the bottom of the standings? Can’t seem to make up ground even though you watch the games every night, and are very active on your league’s waiver wire (and even downloaded RotoBaller's FREE iPhone waiver wire app)? Have no fear, we have the perfect solution for you fellow RotoBallers and fantasy baseball freaks.

Enter daily league fantasy baseball, where you can use your accrued knowledge of fantasy baseball to compete each and every night from scratch with a new roster. Just draft your roster (slightly different style on all three of our favorite sites) using a salary cap based system, and sit back and enjoy the games for that night! With these types of leagues, you can leave the hopelessness of your seasonal fantasy formats aside, and focus on the next three months of fantasy baseball action.

Editors Note: If you want an even greater edge over your FanDuel and DraftKings competitors, check out RotoBaller’s highly effective Expert Daily Fantasy Baseball Picks Newsletter. In this simple-to-use cheat sheet format, we provide you a minimum of 20 daily league player recommendations (usually closer to 25 players), three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday) throughout the fantasy baseball season. 

Alright fellow RotoBallers, without further ado, let’s get right to the chicken and waffles (DFS sleepers) for July 18th 2014:

FanDuel Lineup Recommendation for 7/18

Anibal Sanchez (SP, DET) $7,300 - When playing DFS on a one starting pitcher site like FanDuel, it's imperative to try to mitigate your exposure to a starting pitcher blowup, but for a fair price as always coveted. For tonight's post All-Star festivities, we are opening up our second half recommendations with an extremely skilled and reliable fantasy baseball performer, Detroit Tigers starting pitching sleeper Anibal Sanchez. This former Red Sox top prospect, and Marlins great, has been piling up ace-like numbers for the better part of the last 3 seasons, and there is no end in sight to his big league success.

Facing off against the in-division rival Cleveland Indians, Mr. Sanchez will be going to work at his pitcher friendly home park, against a well known opponent that he's succeeded against on several occasions in the past, racking up a 4-2 record, 2.34 ERA and 46 strikeouts in 50 innings pitched against. Couple these dominating career numbers with the Tigers potent offense (4th most runs scored in the AL thus far in 2014), and we like our chances for Anibal to make you some Fanduel fresh mozzarella on Friday by going deep into the game and snagging a hopeful win. Remember, on one pitcher sites like Fanduel, we still want to find a sleeper stud, but not necessarily break the bank (to save money for the big bats of the day), so finding a potential ace priced as the 17th most expensive starter on the night is like unearthing an enormous diamond in a huge pile of horse manure. Enjoy our first recommendation for tonight, on the most popular DFS site on the web, and let us know later if we were right.

DraftKings Lineup Recommendation for 7/18

Clay Buchholz (SP, BOS) $6,900 - This guy pooped the bed so badly coming out of a strong spring training (and 2013 season) that the Red Sox had to concoct a faux injury just to banish him to the minor leagues, to attempt to right the ship, and fix his pitching mechanics (and fragile psyche). In seasonal fantasy baseball formats, there is no way you could have stuck around to weather this horrible storm right? But the beauty of DFS gaming on sites like DraftKings is that we can track recent in-season trends, reference general statistics and some detailed sabermetric numbers, to help unearth a potential undervalued player on any given night, just like a successful stock broker seeks out to purchase large volumes of shares in an undervalued company.

This former no-hit tosser is facing his former no-hit victim tonight at the house that baked beans built (Fenway), so the main reason that young Clay's salary in this two pitcher format site is rather depressed is due to his unfavorable home/road splits. The thing is (in case you weren't already aware) that most of that damage came in the early stint of this season, where Buchholz was performing more like Maddux pre-retirement, than like the spit ball throwing stud that he truly can be on any given night. Just to reinforce our theory, in his last game before the break, he put up a dominant complete game, 12 strikeout performance. That certainly won a few tournaments for hard working DFS players who had the marbles to run him out with pride, so have a little faith tonight. Priced as the 20th most expensive starting pitcher on DraftKings, we'd be foolish not to recommend him as the cheaper of your two starting pitcher options, thereby leaving you with enough shekels to pair him with a studly Hisashi Iwakuma or Madison Bumgarner.

The DFS Strategic Wrap Up

On most nights, and on all sites, the key to any successful DFS gaming strategy is to try to “buy low,” to unearth some undervalued talent using split stats or favorable player platoons. Sometimes sites just miss something in their algorithm and you can find a glitchy play (like when Hunter Pence was flukily dropped to $2,200 on FanDuel earlier this season). Although predicting the outcomes of baseball games can be extremely tough (if not borderline impossible), using a smart, proven, analytical process, and good sabermetric data to back up our intuition gives us the edge we need to make incremental gains over our competitors.

We can’t stress this point to you enough so we’ll say it yet again: if you haven’t experienced the thrill of drafting a new fantasy team every night and competing for just one day, then you have no idea what you're missing! We highly suggest you join in on the fun, especially if you are one of the unfortunate souls who has had a tough go at it in seasonal fantasy baseball formats. Whether the injury bug bit your team, or whether your draft didn't live up to your expectations (and hype), you now have a fantastic option (and reason) to keep playing fantasy baseball for the rest of the year.

Good luck today playing your DFS games tonight, RotoBallers!