CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Friday, July 2nd
Happy Friday! We’ve got a big ole 14-gamer tonight that looks very tricky at first glance. We’ve got one clear ace with Max Scherzer, but in a tough matchup with the Dodgers. Then we’ve got Lance Lynn in a much better matchup against Detroit, followed by a big mid-tier of good, but not great pitching. On the hitting side, we’ve got Coors Field with two bad pitchers, and then a bunch of games with better offenses against average to below average starters. Let’s get right into it and see how this all shakes out.
Hi, this is me Dave, from the future! There are a lot more robots now, but otherwise things are similar in the world as when I started this article three or so hours ago. I am going to be discussing this throughout the article, but I wanted to start out with the Cliff Notes of the ending that I came to. When I first glanced at this big slate, I fully expected to have a huge pitcher pool and to find a top tier of offense to get me away from Coors Field. None of that happened, and I am quite stunned by how small a pitcher pool I ended up with and how little offense I like outside of Colorado. I’ll be on Crunchtime tonight at 6:30 (even further into the future than now!), and I will be able to let you know if I’ve had a change of plans at that point. But for now, this is what I’ve come to:
Friday Night Pitching
Decision #1
Max Scherzer vs Dodgers OR Lance Lynn at Tigers
Perhaps it won’t end up being completely necessary to use either of these guys, but as I glance at the salaries, it’s a very slow drop off that makes me lean immediately towards just playing at least one top pitcher. The matchups make this one quite tricky, and both DK and FD did a perfect job of putting just enough gap in pricing, but not too much to keep it a tough decision. I’ll start by saying the Max Scherzer is a better DFS pitcher than Lance Lynn. It’s close, but Scherzer’s strikeouts and control are more consistent. Scherzer doesn’t appear to have been as affected by recent trends as some other top pitchers, but he’s still backed off from his 35.4% K rate for the season to 31.6% over the past month. But there’s been no drop in swinging strikes and I’m not at all certain that there is any reason to change our expectations for him one bit. It’s really just the matchup here with a Dodgers team with low strikeouts, high walks and plenty of power. Meanwhile, Lynn is at the same 31.7% K over the past month and faces a Tigers team with the 2nd highest strikeout rate in the league against righties with below average ISO and wOBA. They can use 4-5 lefties against him, so I’m not as certain that he can pile up an outlier strikeout game.