CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, April 22nd
Happy Friday! We’ve got a big ole Whopper of a 13-game slate tonight. It is very spread out on both the pitching and hitting sides, so you’ll be able to Have It Your Way. If you play it right, who knows, maybe you’ll Wake Up With The King tomorrow!
Friday Night Pitching
This shapes up as a very interesting pitching slate with a lot of different ways to go. The most talented pitchers on this slate also come with the toughest matchups, while we have a mid-tier of limited sample size pitchers with upside in better matchups. My initial look at things tells me I am going to end up very spread out tonight, but let’s dig in and see if that changes.
TOP FOUR, LESS THAN IDEAL MATCHUPS
Justin Verlander vs Blue Jays
Julio Urias at Padres
Freddy Peralta at Phillies
Corey Kluber vs Red Sox
Justin Verlander looks like he has picked up right where he left off in 2019, coming in with his usual dominant stuff through two starts. The strikeouts are there, the control is there, the innings are there. I am comfortable saying that he is the no-doubter most skilled pitcher on this slate. So then, it’s a question of paying the highest salary on the slate for a pitcher against Toronto. As we see every day, Toronto has an elite top of the order, but the power drops off quickly. The problem with that is they aren’t really adding in any strikeouts lower in the order, and overall they carry just a 19.8% K rate from their projected lineup. But as we go through the rest of the top four, there is little, if any difference in any of these matchups, they are all tough. I land on Verlander as the SP1 on DK where it’s not that hard to get up to his $10,500 salary. On FD, I’ll need to break down the bub-$8K range a little further to see where I land, but even at the salary, Verlander will be my top pitcher in this tier.