The best part about fantasy baseball daily gaming is that the strategy you employ has to change from day to day with each set of new matchups. Today, I’m playing the MLB $1K Moon Shot [$1,000 Guaranteed] for just a $2 entry. First place gets a whopping $200, one hundred times your entry. Don’t forget to claim your deposit bonus!

For this set of matchups, I found value in cheap pitching, deciding to not go with a total $10,000 combo of Jose Fernandez and Tony Cingrani solely because they’re playing each other. Instead, I allocated some of that budget on a reliable stud in Adam Wainwright and focused on finding good hitter matchups at relatively low costs.

Adam Wainwright | P | Cardinals | $10,900 Since last season’s All Star break, Wainwright has made 18 regular season starts. He pitched less than six innings in only three of those outings, and pitched seven or more innings eight times over that span. In daily formats, innings pitched matter more than anything else, and against the Phillies’s mostly free-swinging lineup, I expect Wainwright to last a long, long time.

Tony Cingrani | P | Reds | $5,000 New pitchers always present a market inefficiency in daily fantasy games because they nearly always start out at the minimum price (in this case $5,000 for a pitcher). After following Alan Harrison and other Bakersfield scouts’ comments last year, I’m willing to buy into the idea that Cingrani can manage five or more quality innings against a pretty putrid Miami lineup. Either way you can’t beat the production for the price.

Carlos Santana | C | Indians | $4,100 Lester is shoving right now, but he has actually only faced Santana for four total at bats so far in his career. In daily formats, Santana is the highest scoring full time catcher so far because of his power/walk rate combo, and I believe he’s taken a step forward this year.

Paul Goldschmidt | 1B | Diamondbacks | $4,700 There’s one thing that Phil Hughes is really good at: allowing home runs. There’s one thing that Paul Goldschmidt is really good at: hitting home runs. I like that combination in Yankee Stadium.

Dustin Pedroia | 2B | Red Sox | $4,300 The guy is having a weird season—going from barely walking or striking out last year to being at his career highs in both so far this season—but I like the idea of someone as experienced as Pedroia going up against someone as raw as Zach McAllister.

Martin Prado | 3B | Diamondbacks | $4,600 Consistently one of the most underrated players in baseball, his swing is beautiful and his plate discipline is even better. I’m clearly not a Phil Hughes believer, and 3B was really shallow for today.

Alexei Ramirez | SS | White Sox | $3,400 R.A. Dickey looked rattled in his last start, and Ramirez, who is usually a slow starter, has actually begun this year red hot, with 5 extra base hits, a .306 average and a .352 on base percentage through 14 games. I’m willing to gamble for that cheap.

Andrew McCutchen | OF | Pirates | $4,900 I’m still a Julio Teheran defender, but even his starkest supporters wouldn’t argue that Teheran has a matchup advantage against McCutchen—the Pirates outfielder destroys both fastballs and changeups and has a tougher time against breaking stuff, which is exactly what Teheran lacks. Yes please.

Justin Upton | OF | Braves | $4,800 There is nobody in baseball who is more locked in than Justin Upton right now, and he’s going up against Jeff Locke at a very reasonable price.

Daniel Nava | OF | Red Sox | $3,200 Perhaps this success is a small sample fluke, but Nava is hitting 25.0% line drives so far this year, with a 54.2% fly ball rate. If he can keep those up, he could easily be a top 40 outfielder this season.

Noteworthy Wednesday Performances:

The Tigers defeated the Mariners 2-1 in fourteen innings late last night. I hope Prince Fielder feels like a flamboyant Cary Grant (or a Mexican Kevin Goldstein), because he gets to wear the famed ‘Golden Sombrero’ two days in a row—striking out four times Tuesday night and five times yesterday. This is clearly just a blip on the radar, but it shows that in baseball, when a guy doesn’t have his rhythm, sometimes he really doesn’t have his rhythm for a short span.

A cheerful ‘almost!’ to A.J. Burnett, who took a no-hitter against the Cardinals into the seventh, finishing with a line of 7.0 Innings, 8 Strikeouts and 1 Hit Allowed. Burnett is frustrating to own because he’s prone to blow-up outings, but it’s days like today that make you remember just how special Burnett can be when he’s on, as well as just how putrid he was that one season with the Yankees (the Red Sox fan inside me is still gloating about it).

I know Great American Ball Park is considered a hitters haven, but in one of their two games last night, Zack Cozart and Todd Frazier both slugged their fourth homer of the season respectively against the Phillies. Frazier has shown the upside to keep this up, but I think Cozart is going to crash down to earth and if you can sell high on him and his current 2.0% walk rate, I’d do so in a heart beat.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Miguel Cabrera! Yesterday Miggy finally turned 30. He has the 16^th most home runs of all time for a player 30 years old or younger, and has a ridiculous .395 On Base Percentage and .561 Slugging so far in his career. Hopefully Miggy can keep this ridiculous pace up for another few years at least. It’s been an absolute treat so far.