CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, September 30th
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Happy Friday! We’ve got a big ole 13-game slate tonight with several top tier aces to kick off the party. There are some important games left, and it starts with a huge weekend series in Atlanta, where Jacob deGrom and the Mets take on Max Fried and the Braves.
DK might end up with a 14-game slate rather than 13 if they are able to play two games in Washington today, but for now, I’m leaving that one out of my plans.
Friday Night Pitching
This is one of the most fantastical pitching slates we’ve had all year. September is going out with a bang!
SO MANY ACES
Jacob deGrom at Braves
Corbin Burnes vs Marlins
Yu Darvish vs White Sox
Clayton Kershaw vs Rockies
Framber Valdez vs Rays
Sandy Alcantara at Brewers
BASICALLY MORE ACES
Logan Gilbert vs A’s
Alek Manoah vs Red Sox
Brady Singer at Guardians
Joe Ryan at Tigers
Max Fried vs Mets
STILL GOOD
Jack Flaherty vs Pirates
Alex Cobb vs Diamondbacks
Reid Detmers vs Rangers
Domingo German vs Orioles
Merrill Kelly at Giants
Oh my goodness, this is bonkers! You know who you should play tonight? Obviously deGrom and Burnes, and also obviously everyone else.
The first thing to point out is we are still one full week away from the first playoff games, and it’s not likely that we see much in the way of pitch count shenanigans. Clayton Kershaw is always a little questionable, but there is nothing different about tonight’s 85-90 pitches than anything we’ve seen from him all season, where he’s shown more than enough DFS relevance with those pitches.
However, the very obvious story here is that not only are Jacob deGrom and Corbin Burnes the best pitchers on the board, they are also both in must win mode. Jacob deGrom is the best pitcher in the world, and while it may be somewhat tempting to find a reason for concern after a bizarre bad start in Oakland, I consider it overthinking. Even after that 4-walk game, he has a goofy 91:8 K:BB ratio and the Braves give him plenty of strikeout upside. There is less power risk in Burnes’ matchup, but it’s not any better for strikeouts, and as good as he is, he’s no Jacob deGrom. The salary difference is extreme enough that I expect we get a fairly sizeable ownership discount as well. It’s tough to make a great lineup with a pitcher near $12K, but FD has enough cheap bats to make it work, while there are enough cheaper SP2’s to make it work on DK.
Officially, I will say that Corbin Burnes is the top points per dollar ace, and the logical SP1 based on the pricing discrepancy, but I absolutely want to play deGrom ahead of him.
Framber Valdez and Sandy Alcantara are both real-life superstars and I love everything about them. They are the 2nd and 3rd highest priced pitchers on both FD and DK, ahead of not only Burnes, but also Darvish, Kershaw and others. The only reason to consider either of them is just for the sake of being different. They have no place in the primary pool tonight, though I’ll tell you that I have seen enough domination from Alcantara that he is going to make it into my MME pool.
OK, Yu Darvish and Clayton Kershaw. They are both priced above Burnes on FD and within $1,000 of him on DK. As I start to look through this top tier, I am starting to form the opinion that this pitching slate is entirely about Corbin Burnes. He is priced to where he is bound to be the heavy chalk, and everyone else I’m looking at, my first thought is how to compare him to Burnes. We need to step back and recognize that as good as Burnes is, the strikeouts have really not been ace-level consistently at all in the 2nd half. In 13 starts since the All-Star Break, he has 6 or fewer strikeouts 9 times, with double-digit strikeouts just twice. He’s reached seven innings just three times in those 13 starts and hit 25-DK points 4 times. He’s great, and the upside is undeniable, but this is really not some can’t miss ace who has to be played as chalk on a slate with deGrom, Alcantara, Darvish, Kershaw, Valdez, etc. This is very stream of consciousness here, probably the NyQuil talking, now back to Darvish and Kershaw.
Both Darvish and Kershaw are aces with elite control and strikeout upside, both coming in at over 30% over the past month. Both have strong matchups at home, and this is the one where I’m going to use the ‘playing to win’ card. There is basically no separation between these two, so give me the guy who will get the extra inning in a close game, and that is Darvish.
It’s time to pause after these top six aces and do a little recap:
Corbin Burnes should be the chalk and Jacob deGrom is the other obvious play if you can find the salary. My initial lean here is that if projected ownership goes heavily to Burnes, I’m going to try and play either deGrom, or Alcantara and Darvish as my primary pitchers. Burnes is the top guy for the salary, I don’t dispute that, I’m just not so enamored to make up for something like a 7-1 ownership gap over someone like Alcantara.
UPPER MID-TIER
Logan Gilbert vs A’s
Joe Ryan at Tigers
Alek Manoah vs Red Sox
Brady Singer at Guardians
Max Fried vs Mets
This is such a crazy good pitching slate. These are pitchers 7-11, and any one of them would have been the clear SP1 on yesterday’s early slate when I desperately needed a Slurpee after trying to sort through the nonsense. It’s very clear at first glance that Joe Ryan and Logan Gilbert have the massive edge in matchup.
Other than everything about the White Sox, probably the most frustrating part of this season has been watching the Twins mess with pitch counts. However, Ryan is the one guy who has been given a full leash, and I’m going to assume that last weekend’s short outing was due to his ineffectiveness. I am nervous about him getting pulled at five innings even if he’s dominating, but with just two more starts this season, they can just let him go. Not only is the matchup great, he also has the highest strikeout rate of anyone in this tier. Detroit should get left-handed enough to dampen the strikeout upside a bit, but this is still just an atrocious lineup that is dead last in every meaningful category against righties.
Oakland has been sort of lumped in with Detroit as a bottom-tier offense this season, but they are not quite as bad. They’ve added a few lower strikeout bats to the lineup and they have a little more power than Detroit as well. With Seattle closing in on a Wild Card spot, we should not have pitch count concerns here if Gilbert pitches well. He has been consistent for the most part all season, though the strikeouts are a complete mystery. However, we’ve seen three big K games in his last five outings, giving him an ace-ish 32.5% K rate over the past month. I’m going to look to play both, but if I have to choose just one of these mid-tier pitchers, I’m going to side with Gilbert. My reasoning is the two-pronged ‘what-if’ of higher pitch count and the recent strikeout trend.
Manoah, Singer and Fried? I mean, yeah, of course you’re allowed to play these guys, they are all excellent pitchers. But I am just already at too wide a pool to want to go deeper in this mid-tier past Gilbert and Ryan.
WE ARE STILL NOT DONE YET
Jack Flaherty vs Pirates
Alex Cobb vs Diamondbacks
Reid Detmers vs Rangers
Domingo German vs Orioles
Merrill Kelly at Giants
Golly gee whiz, there is no end to the good pitching tonight.
Matchup, salary and name recognition should vault Jack Flaherty to the top of the charts tonight, and my hunch is that Burnes/Flaherty is the chalk combo in lineups that can’t fit double-ace. He has made four starts back off the IL, and he finally looked good last week with a 9-K outing in San Diego, although the control was still not there. The control, with an 11.3% BB rate is troublesome, but we are seeing full velocity, and I would suspect that St. Louis wants to give him a normal workload in preparation for the playoffs. The matchup is outstanding for strikeouts and this one seems likely to be decided by the walks. I really want to be down on Flaherty, but he’s just too cheap here for the matchup and the potential. I would rather pivot off of Burnes and use Flaherty as the SP2 with a different ace instead of the other way around. (The ‘other way around’ meaning Burnes plus a different cheaper SP2).
If you don’t want to chance the Flaherty control, I’m looking next at Alex Cobb and Reid Detmers. However, there are very obvious problems here that put me back on Flaherty. Detmers has dropped all the way down to 15.2% strikeouts over the past month and he’s only reached six innings once in his last seven starts. Cobb always has the ground balls going for him, but the strikeout and innings lack any consistency, and I do not love picking on the Diamondbacks lineup.
Aaron Civale is going to throw strikes and he’s completely fine-ish, but really with anything else in this tier, it just feels really silly not to just either play Flaherty or spend up.
I suppose the one other way to go is to pay down even further, which would be a DK-only consideration. Ken Waldichuk is $5,800, but he looks so far like a below average starter with power risk. I just can’t get there against Seattle. If I really had to punt it, I guess it would be with Tyler Alexander at $5,100 against Minnesota. But really, what are we doing with our lives to play Tyler Alexander on a slate with deGrom, Burnes, Darvish, Kershaw, Alcantara, Valdez Gilbert, Ryan, Flaherty, etc, etc?
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
This will probably be the last great pitching slate of 2022, and it sure is a great one. It’s possible that I’m over-emphasizing the level of Corbin Burnes chalk, and if the projected ownership were to even out throughout the day, I’d definitely call Burnes the SP1 for points per dollar, with Jacob deGrom the SP1 for raw points upside.
In a prefect world, I’d just play deGrom/Burnes, but I will tell you this my friends, this ain’t no perfect world. The salary on deGrom is so high that it skews the rest of the lineup and forces you into a tighter group of value options everywhere else. Personally, I am more hopeful that this just helps to make the best pitcher in the world somewhat ‘off the radar’ and he’s far and away my favorite pitcher on the slate.
As of this morning, my plan is to be well under the field on Corbin Burnes, again pending projected ownership trending strongly his way as the day progresses. Sandy Alcantara and Yu Darvish are my preferred pivots. I certainly wouldn’t argue with Clayton Kershaw either.
From there, we get a little step down to Logan Gilbert and Joe Ryan, and a bigger step down to Jack Flaherty. There are plenty of other viable mid-range options, but as I alluded to above, my preference tonight is to get cute with the aces, and just stick to the strong matchups for Gilbert, Ryan and Flaherty.
Friday Night Bats
With so much fantastical pitching, we have a very small pool of primary offenses. This is what I have as Tier One:
LA Dodgers vs Chad Kuhl
LA Angels vs Glenn Otto
SD Padres vs Davis Martin
St. Louis Cardinals vs Johan Oviedo
Toronto Blue Jays vs Nick Pivetta
NY Yankees vs Jordan Lyles
Seattle Mariners vs Ken Waldichuk
(Philadelphia Phillies vs Washington) – DK pending weather
So, this is actually a bigger pool that I first thought, and I’m quite pleased seeing this many teams which should allow us to skip the nonsense later.
We are going to need to monitor lineups for the Dodgers, Yankees and Cardinals, as I’d expect to see players getting days off for the rest of the season. I will also say that as a general thought, in the final week of the season, we’re much more likely to see players pinch-hit for in blowouts, which can make stacking a little dicier than usual. When we have a team like the Dodgers or Cardinals with very expensive pieces, it’s going to be tough for all of them to pay off their price tags. It’s not impossible, but I am going to prioritize pitching over getting the one extra stud bat into a stack.
With all that being said, the Dodgers still look like a top team tonight, but I’m more interested in stacking the cheaper bats lower in the lineup. I’ll play Mike Trout or Shohei Ohtani ahead of Mookie Betts and I’ll play Vladimir Guerrero ahead of Freddie Freeman, etc. This is not to say that I am not happy to have a Betts/Turner/Freeman stack, but I’d rather play deGrom and use Lux/Taylor/Bellinger.
The Angels have gotten some production from Luis Rengifo and Taylor Ward, but this is still basically Trout/Ohtani and then maybe stack ‘em because they are cheap. Glenn Otto has been a tad better in September, but this is still a very low strikeout pitcher who does nothing to control batted balls. I will be playing Angels stacks early and often tonight.
The White Sox’ Davis Martin has been kind of OK since being called back up, but he’s also had some very easy matchups, with both of his quality starts coming against the Tigers. Until he shows anything near average strikeouts at the major league level, I’m going to playing against him. Unlike the Dodgers, I do want to prioritize at least one or two of the expensive bats in Padres stacks although I won’t force both Soto and Machado in every lineup.
It’s at least possible that Johan Oviedo is a decent pitcher, which is something we can’t say for most of the pitchers in this tier. But there are control concerns, and the strikeouts are very small sample size. In trying to rank all these top tier teams, I’m moving the Cardinals to the bottom of the list, but just be aware that there is very little separation anywhere in this group.
If we get a full Yankees lineup, which should include the return of D.J. LeMahieu, there are a lot of ways to stack this team without breaking the bank. Aaron Judge is appropriately priced up on both sites, and he’s more of a one-off spend up, and I would be willing to have a full Yankees stack without him. On DK, Gleyber Torres and Josh Donaldson are priced in the mid-tier along with LeMahieu, while Giancarlo Stanton is still priced down on FD. Jordan Lyles is no match for this lineup and with salary considered, I have to put the Yankees up ahead of the Dodgers tonight.
Nick Pivetta has a bit more strikeout ability than the other pitchers in this group, but he’s also struggling with walks and home runs, which have been issues throughout his career. He’s up from a 1.32 HR/9 on the season to 1.58 in the second half and up again to 1.93 over the past month. Add to that a walk rate that has gone from 9.2% overall to 10.1% in the second half and 12.5% over the past month. He’s a pitcher with risk to begin with who is trending in the wrong direction facing one of the best offenses in the league. I have no issue filtering in any of the Blue Jays bats on their own, but I much prefer the full stack, playing for walks, homers, more walks, more homers, then middle of the bullpen. I love it, and while they are expensive, I’ll be going out of my way to stack them early and often.
In his first five career starts, Ken Waldichuk has allowed five home runs and allowed 18 ER leading to a silly 7.15 ERA. Under the surface, he really doesn’t look that bad, and both the 4.25 SIERA and the minor league track record say that he should be something close to an average pitcher, and certainly not a jabroni. But he is a fly ball pitcher, and there’s a lot of power and plenty of contact in this Seattle lineup. They still don’t quite look as enticing as teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Blue Jays, but this is a very good lineup that is easily stackable with the pricing. If just ranking which teams I expect to score the most runs with the most DFS points, Seattle would miss the top tier, but salary is such a thing because of the pitching on this slate, that I will end up with as much Seattle as anyone.
If we are able to get two games in Washington today, the Phillies will have to be added to the top tier against what would probably be a bullpen game for Washington. For now, I’m not planning on having this game, but if it clears up, I’ll put the Phillies in the mix.
OK, so basically, there are 7-8 teams here that end up in pretty close to a virtual tie, with all them having clear stacking upside and plenty of individual bats with upside.
I’m going to make a few different lists to break down my thoughts here, but please be aware that this is all so very tightly bunched that I would not argue at all with any other way you wanted to have this all ranked.
If every team plays a completely full lineup, and there was no such thing as salary cap, I would rank them like this – Dodgers, Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, (Phillies), Mariners, Angels, Cardinals
It turns out that there is a salary cap tonight. There is also such a thing as ownership. Who knew? With those factors added in, I think I want to start by saying that I don’t expect ownership to be strong enough anywhere to be a deciding factor. But salary certainly will be. With salary factored in, I move the Mariners stack up to the top of the list, followed by a bottom of the order Dodges stack and then a Judge-less Yankees stack.
TIER TWO AND BEYOND
Houston Astros vs Drew Rasmussen
Minnesota Twins at Tyler Alexander
Texas Rangers at Reid Detmers
KC Royals at Aaron Civale
Cleveland Guardians vs Brady Singer
Baltimore Orioles at Domingo German
SF Giants vs Merrill Kelly
Arizona Diamondbacks at Alex Cobb
Houston has said that they will play a full lineup this weekend for the ‘integrity of the game’ since they are playing games with playoff implications for their opponents. Still, against a good pitcher in Drew Rasmussen, and with Yordan Alvarez battling all kinds of injuries, I am pretty much out on Houston tonight.
If we lived in a world of no salary cap, I would completely out on all full stacks in this tier, and I would be 100% in the top tier. However, we get some very useful savings in a few different spots here:
Twins at Alexander – Jose Miranda, Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela are cheap-ish, and Carlos Correa is too cheap on FD. I only end up really liking Miranda and Sanchez on DK with Miranda and Correa on FD.
Rangers Power at Detmers – Detmers’ strikeouts are dropping, and while the home runs have not been there, he is still allowing fly balls to righties. Adolis Garcia is not ‘cheap,’ but is reasonably priced as the best play here, and then on DK, guys like Josh Jung, Mark Mathias, and maybe even further down the lineup with Huff, Taveras and Thompson are viable punts to enable spending up elsewhere.
Orioles lefties at German – I generally think of German as a pretty good pitcher, but he is a guy who will throw pitches to hit, and this season, his strikeout rate to lefties is at a scary low 12%. The Orioles have four very good lefties (or switch hitters) at the top of the lineup with Cedric Mullins, Adley Rutschman, Anthony Santander and Gunnar Henderson, making for an interesting secondary stack.
Diamondbacks at Giants? – This is the game that should go completely overlooked tonight, and for good reason. Both pitchers are good, but not quite good enough to use on this slate but not bad enough to love picking on. But we do have some case for an Arizona stack with Cobb or playing a Giants power bat against Kelly. I don’t think I’ll end up here on DK, but the SF pricing on FD might get Joc Pederson or Mike Yastrzemski into the pool.
Folks, this is the point at which I stop and say we’re being silly. That top tier is big enough that there are more than enough ways to build 50 lineups of all sorts of varieties of slate winning upside.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
The top tier ended up a little bigger and better than I first expected. This is outstanding news for me, as it will allow me to skip a bunch of nonsense in the second tier and beyond. I might end up with a couple Twins and Rangers, but for the most part, this is how it looks for me tonight:
Stacks if salary doesn’t matter – Dodgers, Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, (Phillies), Mariners, Angels, Cardinals
Favorite Individual Bats Outside Of Stacks – Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, (Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber), Manny Machado, Vladimir Guerrero, Bo Bichette, Mookie Betts, Paul Goldschmidt, Juan Soto
Favorite Individual Mid-Tier Bats – Eugenio Suarez, Adolis Garcia, Taylor Ward, (Rhys Hoskins), Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton (FD), Carlos Correa (FD), Teoscar Hernandez, Matt Chapman
Favorite Salary Savers:
DK – Jose Miranda, Gary Sanchez, Josh Jung, Mark Mathias, Jo Adell, Vinnie Pasquantino, Lars Nootbaar, Corey Dickerson, (Brandon Marsh), Carlos Santana, Dylan Moore, Jarred Kelenic, Joey Gallo, Gavin Lux, Chris Taylor, Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham
On FD, if you play Jacob deGrom, you have $2,925 per bat. All these guys are $2,900 and below. Hmmmm!
FD – Josh Donaldson, D.J. LeMahieu, Alejandro Kirk, Matt Chapman, Salvador Perez, MJ Melendez, Jose Miranda, Carlos Correa, Trey Mancini, Bryan Reynolds, Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan, Luis Rengifo, Mitch Haniger, Carlos Santana, Max Muncy, Joey Gallo, Gavin Lux, Chris Taylor, Cody Bellinger, Josh Bell, Ha-Seong Kim, Trent Grisham, Joc Pederson, Mike Yastrzemski.
Image Credit: Imagn