CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Friday, April 23rd
Happy Friday! We’ve got a big ole 14-game slate tonight which includes the Phillies making a trip to Coors Field and a late-night Kershaw-Darvish game with a playoff feel in Los Angeles. With this big a slate, we are going to find plenty of good options on both the pitching and hitting sides. I’ll talk through some of my favorites, but I’m not going to attempt to talk about every viable play on this monstrous slate. So as always, if you find something you like that you’re not hearing me or anyone else talk about, that doesn’t mean it’s not a strong play.
Friday Night Pitching
The Super Aces
Jacob deGrom vs Washington
Tyler Glasnow vs Toronto
Clayton Kershaw vs San Diego
Yu Darvish at LA Dodgers
These four aces are top of the line pitchers, all playable in any matchup. However, we do end up with a very clear dividing line here, based both on matchup and current form. Jacob deGrom and Tyler Glasnow have separated themselves from Kershaw and Darvish in strikeout ability over the past year. Using 2020-2021 stats, which gives us 14-16 starts for all four, we see deGrom and Glasnow at 40.9% K and 38.7% K, while Darvish and Kershaw are down at 30.9% and 27%. Both Kershaw and Darvish are absolutely elite with their control on top of the solid strikeouts, but so is deGrom, while Glasnow shows signs of improvement.