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What’s up everybody? Hope everyone’s Thursday has started off great! It has for us because Thursday = Boom Fantasy day! This link will take you right to the site as you’ll be able to hop back and forth between different contests that they have going today! We’re only a few weeks away from football but since we’re still in the preseason, we’re going to keep breaking down the regular season baseball slates. We have 10 games today, five in the afternoon and five in the evening. We’re going to break down the latter for you today!

Hitting Questions

Jumping right into the action, the first question asks us who will have more hits between Didi Gregorius and Adrian Beltre. Gregorius hasn’t been his normal self of late, hitting just .259 over the past seven days. Beltre on the other hand has been scorching hot, hitting .500 over that same time frame. Beltre’s matchup is a little easier against rookie Reynaldo Lopez while Gregorius gets a tough lefty in Steven Matz. Gregorius is favored by Boom, so that’s definitely something to keep in mind.

We expand the hits question from two players to four for question two. Elvis Andrus is the favorite. Like we mentioned above with Adrian Beltre, the Rangers are facing off against a rookie and matchup with him in their humid hitter-friendly ballpark. Next we have Andrew McCutchen who has stumbled a little bit of late, going 3-for-16 over his last seven days. He draws Adam Wainwright on Thursday, someone he’s squared off with 59 times and has notched 17 hits (.288) with two homers. Michael Conforto and Brett Gardner round out the question. Conforto easily drew the toughest matchup of the bunch against Luis Severino, so he’s going to be hard to trust. Gardner draws the lefty vs. lefty matchup and we’re not really looking to be that contrarian by using him.

Moving right along question three puts RBI on the table. Aaron Judge is the big favorite, as he should be. Judge has 80 RBI and has begun to heat up, hitting two homers in his last three games and notching a hit or more in four straight. Next we have Jose Abreu who has the luxury of hitting in Texas tonight. He’s been better on the road this year, smacking 15 of his 22 homers. If he runs into one with people on base on Thursday, he could run away with this win. Yadier Molina and David Freese are the last two members of the question, but it’ll be tough to trust either one. Molina hasn’t driven in a run in six straight games while Freese doesn’t have an extra-base hit in 10 consecutive contests with just three RBI over that span.

Question four is the same as three but Boom just reshuffled its players. Nomar Mazara leads off as the favorite coming off a three hit, three RBI night on Wednesday. He’s driven in at least one run in three straight games and six of his last seven. The red-hot Gary Sanchez is second on the list and is definitely a sleeper. He hasn’t hit lefties well this year, but he’s hit .396 with three homers and six RBI over the last seven days. Jordy Mercer checks in at number three with a pretty big sample size against Adam Wainwright. He’s 6-for-26 with two homers and three RBI against him. He would be sneakier if he hadn’t hit .136 over the last seven days. Finally, Kolten Wong rounds out the group but don’t sleep on him. He’s hit .404 in August with 11 RBI. He hits behind a potent middle of the order and could be gifted with a few run-producing opportunities.

Heading to question five, which we’re asked, who will score the most runs, we have a questionable player. As we know, if that player doesn’t play the question is null and you don’t receive any of the points you may have accumulated. If he does play, Tommy Pham, Aaron Hicks and Asdrubal Cabrera are all favored ahead of the injured player, Jedd Gyorko. Pham has gotten the best of Pirates starter Jameson Taillon going 4-for-6 off of him. He’s a threat to swipe a bag as well, which would put him in prime position to score a run, maybe more. Aaron Hicks is fortunate enough to hit in front of Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez, so may score a run by trotting around the bases on multiple occasions. Cabrera’s gone 11-straight games without crossing the plate while Gyorko’s battling an injury, making him almost unusable even if he does suit up.

Our last offensive-based question until we move onto pitching asks us who will have the most total bases between Avisail Garcia, Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Harrison and Todd Frazier. It feels as if we’re getting Cespedes at a discount because one swing of the bat could land us four bases, which is probably going to win this question for us. Same with Todd Frazier who’s a massive underdog and gets a matchup versus a lefty, who he’s shown great power against all season long.

Pitching Questions 

As we mentioned we’re done with the bats and we move onto the arms for the final two questions. Jameson Taillon is up first and we’re trying to figure out how many strikeouts he’ll tally. Taiilon has faced the Cardinals twice this season, one solid outing and one not so much. He struck out seven and five and we should expect something around those marks again here. His average strikeouts per outing over his last 10 games is 5.6. Last but definitely not least is Luis Severino. Before getting absolutely shellacked versus Boston the last time he took the mound, Severino struck out six-plus in eight straight starts. Severino also has pitched better on the road this year. His K-rate rises from 27.4% at home to 28.8% on the road. We could get a double-digit strikeout inning from the youngster tonight.

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