CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, June 24th
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Happy Friday and TGIFITMTYITDAAWEWFHOTOS!
We’ve got a big ole 14-game slate with a ton of everything. Things are incredibly bunched up on both the pitching and hitting sides, though I am going to end up narrowing down my pitcher pool significantly. On the hitting side today, it’s a lot of rambling to try and get to a narrowed down list of plays that never materializes. Enjoy!
Friday Night Pitching
We’ve got a lot of good pitchers today, but not a lot of great pitchers. I’m going to start by separating the guys I’m looking at into three different buckets based on DK pricing. The first group is over $9k. The second group is between $7,500-$8,500, and the third group is below $7k. The FD pricing follows a similar path for the most part.
$9K+ = Nola and Friends
Justin Verlander at Yankees – 25.5% K, 4.7% BB, 2.30 ERA, 3.34 SIERA
Luis Severino vs Astros – 29.9% K, 7.1% BB, 3.27 ERA, 3.11 SIERA
Aaron Nola at Padres – 28.7% K, 3.2% BB, 3.11 ERA, 2.79 SIERA
Alek Manoah at Brewers – 22.9% K, 4.7% BB, 2.00 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Nick Pivetta at Guardians – 24.9% K, 8.8% BB, 3.31 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
Julio Urias at Braves – 22.2% K, 6.1% BB, 2.56 ERA, 3.96 SIERA
Mackenzie Gore vs Phillies – 26.5% K, 10.4% BB, 3.64 ERA, 3.83 SIERA
Michael Kopech vs Orioles – 24.6% K, 11.2% BB, 2.38 ERA, 4.38 SIERA
By name recognition and track record, it would look like three aces with Verlander, Severino and Nola. Going by just 2022 data, it appears that Severino and Nola have the edge over Verlander, but it’s still those three on top. If we break out recent performance, just looking at the past month, Severino separates himself further up at a 40% K rate, which everyone else is hanging around 25%.
There are different ways to look at this, but for me, there’s one really simple way to look at it. If we take consistency, skills and matchup, Aaron Nola is the SP1 and that’s kind of all there is to it. Maybe the recent strikeout spike from Severino is real, and that’s all nice and fine and good, but he’s still facing the Astros, while Nola is facing the Padres. The Padres are fine, the Astros are better. The Yankees are not only better, but Verlander has just not actually been that outstanding. He’s good, he gives you innings, but it’s more common to see him striking out less than a batter per inning. I’m assuming Nola will be the chalk here, but it’s not as if Verlander and Severino are going to go overlooked completely, and this is just not where I’m going to get different tonight.