CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, July 22nd
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And we’re back! I had a nice little refresher trip to the beach, where the highlight was not only the ice cream eating, but also the shark catching! Yes indeed, I did catch a shark, and he did not eat me. It was glorious. I was feeling pretty special until my daughter reeled in a 90-ish pound tarpon. No, I’m not kidding, she reeled the behemoth in for more than an hour, and our guide said it was the biggest fish anyone had caught with basic gear in his eight-years on the job. She is the real superstar.
We get back to business tonight with a pitching-heavy 13-game slate. Let’s get right into it.
H3. Friday Night Pitching
With teams being able to re-shuffle their rotations during the break, we have a lot of good pitching tonight. Even most of the weakest pitchers on this slate are at least sort of OK enough that you could make some sort of case for them if you really wanted to. I’m going to narrow this down as much as I can, which is going to leave a bunch of near-aces out of my pool. You can feel free to spread out as wide as you want tonight, but I’m looking to narrow it down as much as possible. We’ll start with the bird’s eye view and then dig into the tiers:
Aces Among Aces
Corbin Burnes vs Rockies
Max Scherzer vs Padres
Shohei Ohtani at Braves
Also Aces
Charlie Morton vs Angels
Yu Darvish at Mets
Maybe Aces
Kevin Gausman at Red Sox
Lucas Giolito vs Guardians
Zac Gallen vs Nationals
Jose Urquidy at Mariners
Tyler Anderson vs Giants
Logan Webb at Dodgers
Jameson Taillon at Orioles
Decent Enough Pitchers In Good Matchups
Cole Irvin vs Rangers
Kyle Gibson vs Cubs
Jose Quintana vs Marlins
Patrick Corbin at Diamondbacks
Spencer Howard at A’s
Brad Keller vs Rays
The Three SuperStuds
Corbin Burnes vs Rockies – 32.6% K, 6.6% BB, 2.14 ERA, 2.76 SIERA
Max Scherzer vs Padres – 34% K, 4.5% BB, 2.22 ERA, 2.55 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani at Braves – 35.4% K, 6.3% BB, 2.38 ERA, 2.48 SIERA
Corbin Burnes vs Rockies – 32.6% K, 6.6% BB, 2.14 ERA, 2.76 SIERA
Max Scherzer vs Padres – 34% K, 4.5% BB, 2.22 ERA, 2.55 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani at Braves – 35.4% K, 6.3% BB, 2.38 ERA, 2.48 SIERA
Going off of strikeout rate alone, these three stand out heads and shoulders above the rest of the field tonight. Since his return from the IL, Max Scherzer has struck out 31 batters in 19 innings with just one walk. That is goofy stuff. The full season numbers also favor him with the lowest walk rate, and I can find no reason not to play him anywhere and everywhere the salary allows. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. The reason would be that you can’t play him, Burnes and Ohtani all in the same lineup. Scherzer’s matchup isn’t exactly bad, it’s just not better than the others. Ohtani gets the higher strikeout, higher risk matchup of this trio against the Braves. As great as Scherzer has been, it’s just as impressive for Ohtani with four straight starts of double-digit strikeouts. But then we’ve got Burnes with 7+ innings and 9+ strikeouts in four of his last five starts.