CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Monday, April 25th
Happy Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I had the chance to spend the afternoon at an art museum, where they had an unusual display all about the history of steaks. It was a rare medium, well done!
We’ve got ourselves a slightly different slate depending on what site you’re playing on tonight. DK is starting an hour early to make a 7-game slate starting at 6:10pm ET, while FD is waiting until the usual time with a 5-gamer beginning at 7:07pm. It looks like a pitching-heavy slate with several aces and mostly above average pitchers throughout. Let’s jump on in and see what we find.
Monday Night Pitching
This is going to be one of those slates where you could build some sort of case for every single pitcher on the slate (except for one). I’m going to end up getting my pool fairly narrowed down, but you could end up with a bigger pool party than me if you want to.
THE ACES
Corbin Burnes vs Giants (DK)
Max Scherzer at Cardinals
Shane Bieber at Angels
Walker Buehler at Diamondbacks
This slate gets very different between sites right away with the inclusion of Corbin Burnes on DK. On FD, Max Scherzer is pretty much in a tier of his own, and this looks like a situation where you would play him 100% if the time if there were no salary cap. He’s walked a few more batters than usual, but he’s also right back at his normal 33% strikeout range and is one of the few pitchers in the league already over 100 pitches, going 96 and 102 in his last two outings. The matchup is not ideal enough to make me want to force him in at all costs, but the skills do leave him as the clear SP1 on FD.
When we add Burnes back in on DK, it’s a tougher call for the SP1. The Giants bring a lot of power risk, but they also strike out more than the Cardinals and Burnes is at least as good, if not better, in terms of strikeout ability compared to Scherzer. Burnes is also not dealing with the early season control problems and he’s also already over 100 pitches and has gone seven innings in back-to-back starts. For me, I prefer Burnes to Scherzer for raw points, but there is a $900 gap in salary. They are close enough that if I need that $900, I’m just as happy with Scherzer, but where I can fit him in, Burnes will be my first choice.
Shane Bieber is the first step down from Burnes/Scherzer, though we don’t know yet how big that step is. In 2021, Bieber missed so much time that we don’t have a firm grasp on his skills, but in the 96 innings he pitched, he was right there with the top two with a 33.1% strikeout rate. Through three starts this year it’s at 27.6% and his control is excellent. He’s still sitting at a career low fastball velocity, which does not thrill me at all, and he’s also topped out at 86 pitches, well behind Burnes/Scherzer. His matchup is better than the other two, but more similar to Burnes with some power risk offset by strikeout upside. For me, there is just not enough discount here to put him in the same tier as Burnes and Scherzer, which leaves him as just an MME pivot.
Walker Buehler is a good real-life pitcher who just doesn’t have the type of strikeout ability to compete with the aces tonight. He’ll have the occasional start where they ramp up, but this is a career 27% strikeout pitcher who is down at 16.2% to start this season, and that is not going to get him anywhere close to Burnes/Scherzer or even Bieber for me.
TIER TWO OPTIONS
Framber Valdez at Rangers
Nathan Eovaldi at Blue Jays
Kyle Gibson vs Rockies (DK)
Framber Valdez is even more of a good in real-life, but not so much in DFS pitcher. It’s not just the low strikeouts, he also has some very concerning control numbers. His 10.1% walk rate from last season is too high, but he’s started this season at a frightening 16.1% BB rate with at least three walks in all three of his starts. The groundballs are great, but that does not overcome all this other nonsense.
When I look at both the long-term skills and the current season numbers, I see Nathan Eovaldi more in the top tier. Even the pitch count is top tier with 95 and 101 in his last two outings. But, where are the innings? Generally, you would expect a pitcher with strong control like his to be efficient with pitches and getting deeper into games, but he has not topped five innings this season despite all the goodness in his skills. If we go back to last season, we find 14 of his 32 starts resulting in 6-7 innings, with the other 18 leaving him short of six innings, so I guess it should be considered a trend at this point. I’m not any more concerned about his matchup than the top tier guys, and even in five innings, he’s giving us respectable-ish DFS outings. The upside is so clearly here when he gets the innings up that I’m playing him well before someone like Valdez, and with salary considered, I’m playing him ahead of Buehler as well.
On DK, Kyle Gibson is only $6,800 at home against the Rockies. This year’s Rockies team does not look nearly as bad a road team as what we saw last year, and I’m not just throwing any old pitcher against them just because they are on the road. But in the context of this slate, the matchup is quite similar to what we’re seeing everywhere else. So then it becomes a matter of parsing through a weird start to the season from Gibson. He has been hanging around the 19-22% strikeout range for four years, pretty well locked in as a decent real-life pitcher with ground balls and slightly below average strikeouts. He started throwing a cutter more late last season, ending his year with 30 strikeouts in his last four starts, and he charged out of the gate with 10 strikeouts in his first start this season. He followed that up with six more strikeouts in a shorter start, with better than 18% swinging strikes in both of those games. Then he had to go to Coors Field, where I give him a pass on everything (though it was still an OK real-life start). Where I’m at on Gibson right now is that there is at least a possibility that there is some real strikeout growth here that can get him up near the 25% K mark, but we it’s still just guesswork. The safest bet is to just assume that he’s the same old guy as ever, with OK stuff that will leave him as basically an average pitcher. For me, he’s cheap enough to be acceptable even at that level, and I am leaning towards believing in some improvement, which means I’m playing him pretty heavily as one of my two primary SP2 on DK tonight.
TOO CHEAP?
Michael Lorenzen vs Guardians
Jose Berrios vs Red Sox
Michael Lorenzen has made just two starts this season, and only four starts since 2015. We just don’t anything here. Making matters far trickier is that his two starts were one gem and one disaster, partially explainable by the matchups, but not entirely. My bottom line on this guy is that he just wasn’t good enough as a reliever to think that he’s going to be successful on any sort of regular basis as a starter. He’s facing a low strikeout lineup, and I’m just out on this. That doesn’t mean you have to be out on it, like I said, we just don’t know anything here yet.
We do know something about Jose Berrios. He has five straight seasons between 23-26% strikeouts, four of them below 8% walks, all five of them with a 4.00 ERA or better. He’s a good pitcher. He came out of the gate and was absolutely shellacked in his first inning of the season, and that is going to skew his numbers for a while. His last two starts have been what we’d expect, more than holding his own in two very tough spots, with an 11:4 K:BB ratio and four runs allowed in 11 innings in New York and Boston. On FD, I prefer his opponent Eovaldi in this price range, but on DK, $5,500 is just goofy. Maybe he has a good start tonight, maybe he has a bad start tonight, we can’t know that. But we can know that he is far too good a pitcher to cost $5,500. I’m going to say that I slightly prefer Kyle Gibson straight up as an SP2, but for salary purposes, I’ll likely end up with more Berrios than anyone tonight on DK.
I’LL PASS, THANKS
Miles Mikolas, Merrill Kelly, Dane Dunning, Kyle Freeland
Merrill Kelly has an 0.59 ERA in three starts this season, while Miles Mikolas comes in at 1.76. That is all fine and good and wonderful and fascinating and glorious and I’m very happy for them and their family and friends.
Both of these guys are good real-life pitchers, and I don’t think you are crazy if you want to allow them to go swimming tonight, but I don’t have room for them.
My biggest issue with Kelly is that he’s facing the Dodgers, but my second biggest issue is that while the strikeouts have come up, his swinging strikes are all the way down at his usual 9.4%, which tells me there is a 0% chance of the strikeout numbers holding.
Mikolas’ swinging strikes are even more concerning at just 6.7%, where we can say his already below average 20.6% K rate is a mirage and his career 17.8% is probably the high water mark.
If DK didn’t have the error in Berrios’ price tag, I could see the case for dart throwing at Dunning and Freeland, but we just don’t need it tonight. On FD, if you really need to go below Eovaldi at $8,200, I’d side with Lorenzen ahead of Dunning as the cheap dart, but really, these guys just aren’t all that cheap.
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
All these pitchers are at least pretty good in real life, and you could make a case for just about anyone. But I’m finding it fairly easy to narrow things down for my pool tonight, and this is how it looks:
FD – Max Scherzer all alone up top, with Shane Bieber as the MME pivot. Walker Buehler is OK as well, but I like Nathan Eovaldi just as much at a $1,200 savings. I’ll toss Jose Berrios in as an Eovaldi pivot and that’s pretty much it.
DK – I lean to Corbin Burnes over Max Scherzer, but there’s enough of a price gap to call Scherzer the primary SP1. Ideally, just play them both. Shane Bieber and Walker Buehler are good pitchers, but priced to close to Scherzer to love them tonight. I will include Nathan Eovaldi in my mix, but mostly, I’m just jumping down to Kyle Gibson and Jose Berrios where I can’t just afford the two aces up top.
Monday Night Bats
As you would expect, when we have a lot of good pitching, we don’t end up with much in the way of top tier offense. We end up with quite a few games where we are going to be able to make a case to play both sides, most notably with the Red Sox – Blue Jays game.
But for a starting point, this looks like the top tier:
Philadelphia Phillies vs Kyle Freeland
Houston Astros at Dane Dunning
LA Dodgers at Merrill Kelly
Not exactly a huge top tier. Let’s spread out to the next group and see what we add.
TIER TWO OFFENSES
Milwaukee Brewers vs Sam Long / SF Bullpen
Toronto Blue Jays vs Nathan Eovaldi
Boston Red Sox at Jose Berrios
NY Mets at Miles Mikolas
Cleveland Guardians at Michael Lorenzen
LA Angels vs Shane Bieber
Texas Rangers vs Framber Valdez
Colorado Rockies at Kyle Gibson
The good news here, is we can open things up to a lot of teams, but the bad news is, none of them are even remotely close to ideal.
I want to take a look at individual batters for this slate and see if we piece together any top stacks by looking at starting points.
SPEND UP BATS
Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker at Dane Dunning – Pretty ideal with .276 ISO and .245 ISO against average at best stuff against lefties.
Nick Castellanos and Rhys Hoskins vs Kyle Freeland – Freeland is even more ‘average at best’ against righties, while we’re looking at .295 and .302 ISOs from Castellanos and Hoskins against lefties in a good HR park.
Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Will Smith at Merrill Kelly – This is probably the biggest deciding point of the slate. Do you believe Kelly has figured something out and is hitting a new level this season? If so, then you want to fade Dodgers with likely high-ish ownership. Personally, I do not believe there is anything new here and I want these Dodgers bats against a plain old strike thrower. He is not bad, it’s just a matter of too many elite bats all lined up in a row to think he gets through them.
Rafael Devers at Jose Berrios – Of course you can play Boston righties, but Berrios is a .108 ISO / .245 wOBA vs righties and a .234 ISO / .353 wOBA against lefties.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. vs Nathan Eovaldi – Eovaldi has the least attackable skill set so far, so this is just a bet on talent with Guerrero.
Pete Alonso and Francisco Lindor at Miles Mikolas – Mikolas is similar to Kelly. There is nothing terrible about his skill set, it’s just that he throws a lot of strikes without a lot of swing and miss.
Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout vs Shane Bieber – This one is tricky. The strikeout risk is higher here than anything else on the list so far, but as far as batted balls, he’s just as susceptible to power as guys like Mikolas and Kelly.
Jose Ramirez at Michael Lorenzen – Like I said in the pithing section, we just have no idea what we’ve got with Lorenzen. But if we just look at the 2021 bullpen numbers, he was very good against righties and scary bad against lefties. Ramirez would be a top play even if Lorenzen improves dramatically.
Brewers? – The problem with Milwaukee is that we could definitely put Hunter Renfroe on the list, and maybe Willy Adames and Andrew McCutchen, but they probably only see the lefty Sam Long for 2-3 innings, and then it’s to the bullpen and mostly righties. The Giants bullpen is nothing elite, so there is still plenty to like here, but individually, these bats are not jumping out at me.
Looking at this list of spend up bats does nothing help to the original issue. That issue is a clear three-team top tier of the Dodgers, Phillies and Astros (which is a two-team top tier on FD) and then a bit of a mess in the next group.
This means I am definitely going to be starting my primary builds with Dodgers, Phillies and Astros, building around the bats listed above.
As far as the second-tier teams, it’s a small enough slate to go pretty wide with full stacks, but I want to try and focus on getting in a few of these big bats on their own. Ideally, I can find lineup builds where I’ve got guys like Jose Ramirez, Rafael Devers or Mike Trout as my one offs around other stacks.
VALUE BATS
There are two kinds of builds tonight. There are the Burnes/Scherzer DK builds and the Scherzer FD builds where we are hunting for value early and often and then there is everything else.
DK – Hunter Renfroe, Andrew McCutchen, Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor, Gavin Lux, Alec Bohm, Alex Verdugo, Jackie Bradley, Lourdes Gurriel, Mark Canha, Michael Brantley, Adolis Garcia, Franmil Reyes, Daulton Varsho
Something that jumps out when looking at salaries is how cheap Milwaukee bats are. I guess I’m going to move the Brewers up the ranks a bit on DK, at least as a secondary stack.
On FD, we run into the usual situation where there are a couple different levels of values. You can find near-elite bats close to the $3K mark, where you can build an entire balanced lineup with these types of bats:
FD $2,800 – $3,400 – Kyle Tucker, Trevor Story, Bo Bichette, Alex Bregman, Max Muncy, Justin Turner, Cody Bellinger
Or, you can go a little more stars and scrubs with cheaper bats like:
FD $2,700 and below – Franmil Reyes, Michael Brantley, Bobby Dalbec, David Peralta
We see this most days, but it is more pronounced today – There is a huge difference in the quality of bats when you start looking below that $3K level. I am much more interested in the mid-tier build if starting with Scherzer on FD.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
The top tier does separate itself a little bit, but this is not as ideal a top tier as we will often see. That is to say, I’m not looking to go all-in on a team like the Dodgers or Phillies, even though they are my clear top teams. On DK, the salaries are soft enough that I may not end up 100% full stacking tonight. I’m not going to force Alec Bohm into a Phillies stack if I can just play Jose Ramirez instead, and we may run into several of those situations here.
Officially, this is how my stack rankings look – Dodgers, Phillies (DK), Astros, Brewers (DK), Red Sox, Blue Jays, Cleveland’s Of The Galaxy
For Individual Spend Ups, regardless of stacking or not, these are my favorites – Jose Ramirez, Yordan Alvarez, Nick Castellanos (DK), Rhys Hoskins (DK), Kyle Tucker, Mike Trout, Rafael Devers, Every Dodger
Image Credit: Imagn