CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, August 19th
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Happy Friday! This slate has a Giant problem that jumps out immediately. There are loads of quality pitchers that make a majority of the offenses uninspiring. And then we find the San Francisco Giants in their own tier of projected total visiting Coors Field at extremely low prices, particularly on DK. This is likely to make for extreme chalk for such a large slate, but also one where the best pivots are far more expensive on top of being less likeable. Then just for fun, we get to add in the Giants pinch-hit risk, which is always fun and exciting! Yippee!
But before we get to all that, we have a big top tier of pitchers to look at.
Friday Night Pitching
The first thing I notice about this ace-filled slate is that the DK pricing is basically a pick ‘em tonight. There is only one pitcher over $10K, and after that, you can really play whoever you want without much concern for salary. FD puts a little more gap with the top three over $10,500. There are so many good options tonight, that I’m leaving quite a few names completely off my list that you are certainly allowed to consider. That would include Lance McCullers, Martin Perez, Lance Lynn, Jesus Luzardo, Kyle Wright and Jameson Taillon.
Aces, More Aces, And Other Things Kind Of Like Aces
Aaron Nola vs Mets – 27.9% K, 3.6% BB, 3.07 ERA, 2.93 SIERA
Chris Bassitt at Phillies – 24.2% K, 6.5% BB, 3.27 ERA, 3.52 SIERA
Shane McClanahan vs Royals – 32.2% K, 5.1% BB, 2.28 ERA, 2.52 SIERA
Blake Snell vs Nationals – 31.4% K, 10.8% BB, 3.66 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Tyler Anderson vs Marlins – 19.9% K, 4.9% BB, 2.81 ERA, 4.00 SIERA
Patrick Sandoval at Tigers – 23.8% K, 11% BB, 3.42 ERA, 4.17 SIERA
Brady Singer at Rays – 25.5% K, 6% BB, 3.29 ERA, 3.36 SIERA
Kevin Gausman at Yankees – 27.7% K, 4.1% BB, 3.16 ERA, 3.01 SIERA
Triston McKenzie vs White Sox – 23.8% K, 6.7% BB, 3.14 ERA, 3.87 SIERA
Miles Mikolas at Diamondbacks – 19% K, 4.5% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
The good Blake Snell keeps showing up, and while it just makes me nervous that the other shoe is going to drop, what if it doesn’t? He has just one bad start since June, and that was at Coors Field, and otherwise, he’s been getting his strikeouts with better than usual control. We’re looking at an un-Snell-like 4.5% BB rate over the past month, which combined with the 35.5% strikeouts would make him the clear ace of this slate. I am still not willing to call him safe or go all in, but with a matchup against Washington, I’m fully on board with Snell as the SP1 tonight.
Shane McClanahan was arguably the best pitcher in the league for the first half of the season, but he’s dropped off substantially in recent starts. He’s down at just 18% K over his last four starts, and more disturbingly, his fastball velocity has dipped with it. It’s a small dip, not enough to assume injury, but it is enough to suggest that he’s tiring a bit and on this loaded slate, that is enough to push him down off my primary list as the most expensive pitcher on the slate. It’s quite possible that he gets it back tonight and with this matchup, the full-strength McClanahan would be the top pitcher on the board. I just see enough other things to like that I don’t need to take this chance.
Meanwhile, his opponent Brady Singer has been trending in the other direction with six quality starts in his last seven games, shutting down teams like the Dodgers and Yankees and flashing double-digit strikeout upside on multiple occasions. I am still just viewing him as the 25.5% K rate that his season numbers show, but combined with strong control and 100 pitches, I’m on board with him as one of the aces on this slate. The matchup is great for strikeouts and he comes at a big discount to the top few pitchers on FD. He ends up as my 2nd favorite pitcher on this slate.
Aaron Nola and Chris Bassitt are two of the most fantastically consistent pitchers in the league. They both pile up innings with above average strikeout ability and strong control, with Nola having the 2nd lowest walk rate of any qualified starter in the league. The matchup is not great on either side, but it’s better for Bassitt. This doesn’t clear anything up, as Nola is the preferred skill set, and all these matchups do is toss them right into the same bucket. Officially, I don’t end up being super interested in either of these pitchers, or either of these offenses, but Nola is too good and too consistent to cross off. I will play Nola ahead of McClanahan tonight, but behind Snell.
I really don’t get the fascination with Patrick Sandoval. He’s basically an inconsistent, high walk pitcher whose strikeouts come and go. I certainly like the matchup, and I like that they’ve been willing to let him throw 95-100 pitches, but I sure don’t like 12 straight starts with multiple walks or only reaching six innings once in his last eight starts. The salary on DK is likely to add to the fascination, and while there is absolutely upside potential at this price, I just don’t trust this guy one iota. On FD, I vastly prefer Singer in this price range. I am not going to try and tell you that he’s a bad play on DK at just $7,200, I’m just going to tell you that my strong preference is to pay up to two pitchers ahead of him.
The early morning projected ownership numbers are not showing much love for Sandoval, but I expect that to change as the day moves on. If for some reason, Sandoval doesn’t pick up any steam and could be considered contrarian, I’ll be more willing to add him back into the pool.
Tyler Anderson is really good, and it just doesn’t matter all that much for DFS purposes. If he ever ended up on a slate without strikeout aces, he could be an SP1, but as it is, another 3-4 strikeout quality start is just not particularly helpful for DFS. But there are a couple other factors to help him here. The matchup is as good as it gets and could add at least a couple strikeouts to his ledger, and if you’re with me on being interested in fading Sandoval chalk, the DK salary is completely reasonable at just $7,900. If you’re not with me on the Brady Singer train, then maybe you put Anderson in your pool instead, but for me he’s a leftover.
Kevin Gausman is another guy who makes this slate tough to decipher. I like the skills, I trust the skills, and even in this matchup, he certainly has upside. This current iteration of the Yankees lineup does offer a few more strikeouts and he has the control to work through the patient bats up top. He’s pretty far behind Snell, Singer and Nola, but after that trio, Gausman jumps into the tournament pool.
We are not done twisting the pretzel yet, as we also find Triston McKenzie in the top tier options. He continues to pile up innings with average strikeout ability and gets a lot of easy innings with his control and fly balls. This will all come down to HR/FB, and with the White Sox continued struggles against right-handed pitching, I’m on the McKenzie side. The problem here is that he falls into no man’s land with pricing, leaving him another step behind Gausman, but still very much in my tournament pool.
The one other guy who we can mention as a direct pivot from Sandoval is Miles Mikolas. Mikolas has a nearly identical skill set to Tyler Anderson with below average strikeouts but elite control. Their SIERA’s are the same, and the real-life difference has just been a fortunate HR/FB for Anderson. Mikolas has a bit tougher matchup than Sandoval, and much tougher than Anderson, but I do trust Mikolas far more than Sandoval. Personally, if I need a sub-$7,500 SP2, I’m going with Mikolas.
Cheap Nonsense?
I’m going to simply say no to cheap nonsense tonight. On FD, Singer is as low as I’m going at $8,600. On DK, all these aces are just priced too low to want to goof around with nonsense in the $6-7K range. If you really need to pinch pennies, there’s less than $1,000 gap from guys like Sandoval and Mikolas down to nonsense like Kutter Crawford and Jordan Lyles. Cole Irvin and Jameson Taillon are more expensive than Sandoval. I suppose you can make some sort of case for a $6,100 Marco Gonzales, but there’s no world in which I am playing a 13% K pitcher on this slate.
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
This is a great pitching slate with a lot of choices that you could shuffle around in several different ways.
If we didn’t have so much to love, I’d be more willing to hope that McClanahan jumps back into shape, but as it is, I don’t see the need to go there tonight as the lone expensive pitcher on the board.
Blake Snell is my SP1, and with salary considered, Brady Singer is my favorite SP2. I’d take Aaron Nola ahead of Singer, but with the price gap, I’ll be Singing. From there, Kevin Gausman is my favorite large field tournament option, playing more for top-heavy what-if scenarios. Triston McKenzie and Tyler Anderson come next when I start spreading out.
Then we hit the Patrick Sandoval conundrum. I will re-iterate that my expectation is that Sandoval picks up steam throughout the day and becomes the chalky SP2 on DK. On FD, he’s out of my pool, but on DK, it will depend a bit on whether that comes to fruition. Either way, I’ve got Miles Mikolas ahead of him, but really, I don’t want to play anyone below $8K in my primary lineups.
Friday Night Bats
OK, the Giants pricing on DK is absolutely ridiculous and everyone knows it. FD is more reasonable, where they are priced very similar to other teams that will find themselves in Tier 1-A. I’ll talk through the Coors Game for a second, but basically, this slate is all about what chalk means to you. We can get very philosophical about that, or I can just tell you what I like outside of Coors and let you go start building lineups. Let’s do that.
TIER ONE OFFENSE IN COORS
SF Giants at Jose Urena
Colorado Rockies vs Alex Wood
Well, this ought to be interesting. The Giants in Coors Field against Jose Urena will jump off the page as the obvious top offense on the slate. The always present pinch-hit risk goes down a touch with the Rockies using Austin Gomber for multiple innings yesterday, so presumably, the Giants will see one inning from lefty Gilbreath at some point, but otherwise it’s all righties. This does not remove the pinch-hit risk, but it makes it far more possible that several of the lefties make it through the game. Urena is terrible against lefties, but also basically terrible against righties. It’s viable to just pick out a couple bats and hope that the Giants just score on spread out homers that can beat a stack. I’ll be overweight the chalky stacks here in every which way, but on a 14-game slate, I wouldn’t blame you one tiny iota for fading this much chalk. If you are going to pick out individual bats in lieu of stacking (lieu?), fly balls should be the priority. That puts LaMonte Wade, Joc Pederson, Brandon Belt, Wilmer Flores and Mike Yastrzemski all on the list. If you want to play the ‘guess the pinch-hit’ game, Wade and Pederson are the two most likely candidates to get taken out.
The first way to get different would be to go to the other side of the Coors Field game where the Rockies can throw a bunch of righties against Alex Wood. Wood is very close to an average pitcher against righties with just moderate ground balls, and C.J. Cron, Randal Grichuk and Elehuris Montero all hit the ball in the air against lefties. Like with the Giants side, it’s reasonable to just pick out a couple power bats from this game and hope all the damage comes spread out with power.
IF NOT COORS, THEN…
Well, there’s the problem. If not Coors then nothing. I will end up with these three teams as the Tier 1-A:
SD Padres vs Paolo Espino
St. Louis Cardinals at Tommy Henry
LA Dodgers vs Jesus Luzardo
The Padres were a ridiculous disaster last night, but if you can’t have a short memory on these things, then DFS is not for you. Espino is the type of pitcher that I generally prefer to play individual bats against more than full stacking. He has elite control with below 5% walks to both sides of the plate, he doesn’t get strikeouts, and he gets hit hard and in the air. This means we will see a lot of fly balls, which gives them power upside, but it will also be tough to string a bunch of hits together, and they won’t be getting free baserunners to help the cause. I will certainly get to San Diego stacks, but for a starting point, I want to spend up on the big bats here with Manny Machado, Juan Soto and Brandon Drury. Pretty much everyone in the lineup is viable as a fill in, with Josh Bell, Jurickson Profar and Jake Cronenworth making my FD primary list at reasonable salaries.
Tommy Henry is just three starts into his major league career, and we still don’t know much. But what we have seen has been low strikeouts and poor control with just a 9:8 K:BB ratio in 17 innings. Add in the Arizona bullpen, and this is my top non-Giants stack on the board tonight. I’ll never argue with Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado as a one off, but unlike the Padres, I’m much more looking to just full stack the Cardinals rather than trying to pick out the right pieces.
The Dodgers are the big wild card here. Jesus Luzardo is a far better pitcher than Espino or Henry, but he can still get wild against righties, and he gets hit hard and in the air. He’s incredibly tough on lefties, and even in stacks, it’s hard to love Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy. My lean here is just with a Mookie Betts, Trea Turner, Will Smith mini-stack. It’s expensive and has downside, which should keep it quite far off the radar. At some point, I’ll add in Chris Taylor, Justin Turner or Trayce Thompson to a full stack, but I’m going Cardinals and Padres ahead of them.
As we move down the list, everything drops further and further below the Giants. There are a lot of good teams against good pitcher situations and it’s all just very strange:
Blue Jays at Yankees – Gausman at Taillon
White Sox at Guardians – Lynn at McKenzie
Astros at Braves – McCullers at Wright
Rangers at Twins – Perez at Bundy
What a tough group of games we have here. Everything here is MME stackable, but nothing here is anywhere near Coors territory. I’m going to close my eyes and skip the Yankees against Gausman and the Blue Jays against Taillon. These teams can go nuts at any time, but this matchup is just not right at these salaries.
I love Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor, with Andres Gimenez as another possibility against Lance Lynn. I’ll use them as one offs or mini stacks.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the White Sox face a strike throwing righty with fly balls every day? I’ll say the same thing as I said when they faced guys like Garcia and Urquidy. Theoretically, this is a solid matchup for the guys like Jose Abreu, Eloy Jimenez and Andrew Vaughn, but goodness gracious, this team just can’t figure it out.
The Astros-Braves game falls into the Dodgers territory. These offenses are so good, they can win any matchup, but it’s certainly not ideal to spend top dollar against good pitchers. Because Lance McCullers is only one start into his season, who knows, but the long-term skills are just not attackable at all. Kyle Wright is extremely tough on righties, which basically just leaves Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker as the plays for me in this game.
If I’m going power hunting, I’ll always look to get in play against Dylan Bundy. He’s a solid pitcher, but it’s still just strike throwing with fly balls. Adolis Garcia and Corey Seager top the list as always, with Nate Lowe and Marcus Semien tagging along for stacking.
There are two bats for the Twins who jump off the page against Martin Perez. We know Perez is real-life good, but all he does is look to keep the ball on the ground without a lot of swing and miss. Byron Buxton and Jose Miranda are both extreme fly ball hitters with power and hard-hit ability and I love them both as one offs tonight.
From the good teams against good pitchers, we move next to this nonsense:
Reds at Pirates – Ashcraft at Wilson
Red Sox at Orioles – Crawford at Lyles
LA Angels at Matt Manning
Mariners at A’s – Gonzales at Irvin
Honestly, what is this slate? It is such mediocre nonsense after the very obvious top offense. I do not like it one iota. All this stuff is completely stackable in the ‘hey, it’s baseball, why not’ category. But the ‘why not’ is because it’s all just weird and not great.
I am mostly just looking to pick out a handful of bats to get into the primary pool, and that will be mostly Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout. Assuming Trout makes it back tonight, this does make the Angels stackable again, but it’s still the Angels and I’d rather just play the big two.
I guess Bryan Reynolds has to be on the list since he is apparently the best player in the world today, but other than that, this Reds-Pirates game is just not hitting my list.
I kind of like Cedric Mullins and Adley Rutschman with Kutter Crawford allowing 50% fly balls and a .273 ISO to lefties, but he’s still a guy with strikeout ability. I also like lefties against Jordan Lyles, with Rafael Devers being the obvious spend up, and Alex Verdugo again as a strong salary saving option.
Mariners at A’s? Two low strikeout lefties with good control in a pitchers park, yippee! If you really want to play something like Julio Rodriguez, Eugenio Suarez or even Sean Murphy, sure have it, but why?
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
Today is going to be a nightmare with the back and forth of deciding where to fade the Giants vs where to load them up vs who gets pinch hit for vs why are they so cheap. I dread the rest of the day already.
Officially, here is my stance on this slate. This is the ideal place for my all-in / all-out strategy, but it’s also the ideal place to one-off or mini-stack the chalk rather than full stacking. More dread. The all-in / all-out is to go 100% chalk Giants stacks in certain tournaments and a full fade in others. The idea here is that if everything goes according to the most likely scenario, you won’t be able to win without Giants, and at high ownership, the only way to win there is to have more combinations than everyone else. But then if baseball happens and the Giants bust, then you don’t want to be matched with the field, you want to be completely off of them.
I know a lot of people have a firm stance one way or the other on Coors Field chalk nights, but I play it slate by slate, depending mostly on what the pivots are. Tonight, the pivots are nonsense. There is no way I’m going full fade everywhere, but I don’t think you are at all crazy to go that way on a 14-game slate. Just remember this – you don’t win anything if you fade the Giants and they only score three runs. You still have to find the thing that does well, and therein lies the problem.
For my all-out Giants fades, this is my order of preference for stacks – Cardinals, Rockies, Dodgers, Padres
Further down the list into nonsense territory stacks – Astros, Rangers, Angels, Guardians, Red Sox, Orioles
We’ve got salary, and this is who I prefer to spend it on -Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Jose Ramirez, Rafael Devers, Yordan Alvarez, Byron Buxton, Manny Machado, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Corey Seager
A Few Standouts in the Mid-Tier and Beyond – Jose Miranda, Adolis Garcia, Kyle Tucker, Josh Naylor, Alex Verdugo, Bryan Reynolds, Adley Rutschman, Jake Cronenworth
MORE CLIFF NOTES AND THINGS PEOPLE SAY
How many times this season have you heard someone, maybe even yourself, say that the first game in a Coors Field series is going to disappoint and is lower scoring than later games in the series? I hear this nonsense all the time with absolutely no reasoning behind it. Someone, somewhere must have all the data with all the relevant info, and that person is not me. What I know for sure is that a lot of people just say that like it’s a fact, when they in fact have no idea. Maybe there is something to this, maybe there isn’t, and I am not the guy who knows how to gather all the data and sort it correctly.
With the caveat that I spent 5 minutes on this with a calculator and notebook, this is actual runs scored numbers from this season in Rockies homestands. There is nothing scientific here, it does not account for who was pitching or what the teams were or BABIP or HR/FB or weather or anything. But, excluding double-headers, these are the actual results from 2022 baseball games at Coors Field.
Coors Game 1 Total Runs = 207
Coors Game 2 Total Runs = 165
Coors Game 3 Total Runs = 201
Maybe this means something, maybe it means nothing. I don’t know what last years numbers were or the year before that or the year before that. I am not telling you that there is nothing to the ‘first game at Coors’ theory. I am simply presenting those numbers and then asking if you are absolutely certain that the first game at Coors should be faded more or less than any other game at Coors.
Image Credit: Imagn