CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, April 29th
Well folks, happy Friday, I guess. I am not even going to make it through the first paragraph before we need to start talking about the DK pricing on the Reds in Coors Field. There has been plenty of bad pricing here and there over the years, but this time, someone hit the big red button marked ‘Do Not Push Unless You Are A Huge Jabroni.’ It’s a 13-game slate, and it’s the Reds, not exactly the 1927 Yankees (who by the way, played with a much more modern baseball), but come on here. With MLB playing with nonsense slippery rock balls, the Coors Field factor takes on even more significance, and to have an entire team facing Antonio Senzatela, with only one batter over $2,900 is just not OK. I don’t have a clue what to tell you to do at this point, it’s too early for any of this. If you can’t tell, I don’t love it, nor should you. It’s not as if the Reds are likely to be the highest scoring team on this slate, but priced down here, they don’t even have to be. I’m just going to go about business as usual, while skipping over this game in my initial look at the slate and seeing what that brings to the top of the list. We’ll loop back to this situation at the end, at which point, I will probably tell you it’s too chalky to play, and too cheap to fade. You are welcome in advance.
Friday Night Pitching
Similar to what we saw yesterday, we have a lot of good pitching tonight, but it’s not immediately clear where to draw the lines of separation. This is the group that I’m looking at to begin with:
Lucas Giolito vs Angels
Nestor Cortes at Royals
Aaron Nola at Mets
Tylor Megill vs Phillies
Adam Wainwright vs Diamondbacks
Ian Anderson at Rangers
Alex Wood vs Nationals
Tanner Houck at Orioles
Noah Syndergaard at White Sox
Aaron Civale at A’s
Corey Kluber vs Twins
THE FOUR TOPS
Lucas Giolito, Nestor Cortes, Frankie Montas, Aaron Nola
The first thing I see is that if take just the small sample 2022 data, Nestor Cortes and Lucas Giolito jump up to the top with strikeout rates over 40%. Giolito was already considered an ace coming into the season, while Cortes had plenty of strikeout ability, but unknown upside.
The tricky part with Giolito is that he’s made just two starts this season, topping out at 76 pitches last week and having some control issues. However, he should be on the same path as everyone in this weird season, and not in his third start, I’d expect he should be allowed to go 85-90, and with his strikeout ability, that is enough. The matchup is a risk for power, but a boost to strikeouts and I’m on board with him as a potential SP1 tonight.