3 Daily Fantasy Baseball Players to Avoid on 5/9/18

Rafael Devers, 3B, Boston Red Sox

FanDuel Price: $3,400

Fading a left-handed batter facing a right-handed pitcher in Yankee Stadium may feel like blasphemy, but hear me out.

Rafael Devers has a very small sample size since he was called up late last season, but early returns are that, if anything, he has reverse platoon splits. So far in his career, he has a 142 wRC+ against left-handed pitching compared to a 94 wRC+ against right-handers. While it is still too early in his career to make any sweeping generalizations, we certainly have enough data to at least say that he is not worth targeting purely for the fact that he is facing a right-handed pitcher.

And Masahiro Tanaka is no ordinary right-handed pitcher.

There's no doubt that Tanaka's best stretch of baseball came before he partially tore his UCL in the middle of the 2014 campaign, but he's still been an exceptionally effective pitcher this year, as indicated by his career 3.41 SIERA. Moreover, thanks to his nasty splitter, Tanaka has actually been tougher on left-handed hitters than their right-handed counterparts.

In his career, Tanaka has held left-handed batters like Devers to a .288 wOBA and just a 28.1% fly-ball rate. Devers could struggle to get the ball in the air and take advantage of the short right-field fence in Yankee Stadium.