CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Friday, May 27th
Happy Friday! It’s now the actual official Top Gun Opening Day, so I guess we go again! It was everything I’d hoped and if you’re wondering if you should go see it, I can say it qualifies as a Don’t Overthink It. Go, enjoy your life!
Speaking of enjoying your life…Matt Carpenter is back! The Yankees turned themselves into the World Series favorite adding Carpenter to the lineup yesterday. I did some quick math, and a very conservative projection in Yankee Stadium, starting one of every three games for New York, and pinch hitting in the others, we should see roughly 34-42 home runs the rest of the season for Carpenter. That is the low end obviously, but I don’t want to set expectations too high.
OK, baseball. We have a 13-game slate with a limited group of top pitchers, and a lot of offense spread out all over the place. Let’s dig in and see what we find.
Friday Night Pitching
This looks similar to last night with a good, but closely bunched top tier. We also have quite a few strong secondary options based on some combination of skills, matchup and salary. Here’s the bird’s eye view:
TOP TIER ARMS
Justin Verlander at Mariners
Sean Manaea vs Pirates
Shane Bieber at Tigers
Brandon Woodruff at Cardinals
TIER TWO
Alek Manoah at Angels
Jon Gray at A’s
Cole Irvin vs Rangers
Jeffrey Springs vs Yankees
Garrett Whitlock vs Orioles
Bailey Ober vs Royals
Sorting The Top Four
Justin Verlander at Mariners – 26.3% K, 4.8% BB, 1.22 ERA, 3.17 SIERA
Sean Manaea vs Pirates – 27.6% K, 8% BB, 4.04 ERA, 3.38 SIERA
Shane Bieber at Tigers – 24.1% K, 7.3% BB, 3.55 ERA, 3.62 SIERA
Brandon Woodruff at Cardinals – 28.7% K, 7% BB, 4.76 ERA, 3.13 SIERA
What jumps out at me first here is matchup. While Brandon Woodruff has a slight edge in strikeouts, he’s been the least consistent of this group and he has the worst matchup for strikeouts. This immediately drops him into the leftover category. He’s in play for MME, but we just haven’t seen enough from him this season to make up for the matchup difference.
The best matchup here goes to Shane Bieber, but despite the fact that he dominated this lineup last week, I’m not getting the warm fuzzies from his skills. A 24.1% K rate is fine, but nothing great. He’s obviously still doing a lot of things well, but his fastball velocity remains at a career low by a substantial margin. This is a guy who always threw 93-94mph and is now sitting at 90-91. He can still locate and has a good slider and curve, so he is getting by, but it does make me nervous. If we were facing any other team tonight, I’d be looking for reasons to fade, but he’s facing the Tigers, and the cheapest of these four on both sites. His pitch count helps make up for the lower strikeout numbers, and the matchup just adds to it. Long-term I’m a bit concerned, but for tonight, I have to call him the SP1.