Gary Sanchez (NYY - C) - Have yourself a month, kid. Gary Sanchez remained sizzling hot at the plate on Friday going 3-for-5 with his 10th homerun and 20th RBI. To go along with the great counting stats, Sanchez is also slashing .403/.459/.883 with an unbelievable .481 ISO. He isn't going to be able to keep up this pace, but it's definitely nice seeing Joe Girardi committing to him at the position as the Yankees begin their youth movement. He's quickly rising through the ranks at the catcher position and should be one of the first catchers off the board in next spring's drafts. Looking towards Saturday's slate in DFS, Sanchez actually looks like a value on FanDuel at $3,400 considering how locked in he has been at the plate, but his $4,600 price tag on DraftKings is a little hard to swallow on DraftKings considering a tough matchup against the resurgent Dylan Bundy.
Russell Martin (TOR - C) - Russell Martin only got two hits on Friday night, but he managed to make the most of those hits by tallying a double and a home run to drive in five runs. After being scorching hot last week, Martin cooled down a bit over the team's latest series against the Angels. Nonetheless, August has been far and away his strongest month of the year with 8 home runs and 20 RBIs. He's priced appropriately around the industry in DFS on Saturday at $3,300 on FanDuel and $4,000 on DraftKings. Ervin Santana has been tremendous over the last two months, so the Blue Jays really aren't a cash game target, but Russell is a must if you're going contrarian with a Blue Jays stack in tournaments.
Justin Upton (DET) - It's been a season of hot streaks and long cold streaks for the younger Upton brother. Right now, Justin is in the midst of a really hot streak. Upton finished with a double and a two-run home run. That makes four home runs and five two-hit games over the last week for the Tiger. He's tremendously underpriced on both FanDuel ($3,400) and DraftKings ($4,100) where he faces left-hander Brett Oberholtzer who has allowed right-handed batters a .391 wOBA with 8 home runs over just 35 innings this season.
Eric Hosmer (KC - 1B) - In the pre-season, we told you that Eric Hosmer was primed for a home run breakout if he could change some of his groundballs into flyballs this upcoming year. Entering 2016, Eric Hosmer had a goundball rate hovering between 50-53% each year of his career, but with an above average hard hit rate and elite batted ball speed, he had tremendous power upside. Unfortunately, this season he's actually hitting more groundballs and his rate is now 60%. Nonetheless, he has made even more gains in hard hit rate and batted ball speed, which has helped him hit 18 home runs, which is just one short of his career high.
Drew Smyly (TB - SP) - Since the All-Star break, Drew Smyly has quietly put up nice numbers for the Tampa Bay Rays. Heading into Friday night, in 6 starts in the second half, Smyly has allowed 2 or fewer runs in 5 of those games. During that stretch, opponents had a wOBA of just .280 compared with .337 in the first half, but the improved run prevention seems to have come at the cost of strikeouts with his strikeout percentage dipping from 25% pre-ASB down all the way to just 19% post-ASB. On Friday, Smyly continued building on his strong numbers by going 6IP, 3H, 2ER, 2BB, 8K. Unfortunately, Alex Colome blew the save so Smyly didn't get the win.
