CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Monday, August 1st
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Happy Monday and Happy August! I hope you all had an enjoyable weekend. Mine was a complete bust due to receiving a questionable tag from old age that lasted through the weekend. For some reason, I ate a spicy chicken sandwich on Friday night, and it was delicious, but quickly turned into up all-night heartburn. It was one of those ridiculous heartburn sagas that was in full effect through all of Saturday and part of Sunday. I didn’t get a single full meal all weekend, which is nonsense. So far today, things are looking up, and if all goes well, I’m going to eat lunch like a regular human today. My point in telling you this is to let you know that if you are a young person, or young-ish, you should just stay there for a while, it’s way better!
We ring in the month of August with a nine-game slate that has a fairly good mix of everything. We’ve got one ace, but several good pitchers behind him, and a top tier of offenses that is deep enough to have no trouble finding multiple lineup builds with slate winning upside that are not overly chalky.
Monday Night Pitching
It’s a decent-ish pitching slate with one elite ace in Max Scherzer and then a handful of above-average pitchers behind him. I end up with a very quick X button on the majority of mid-tier options, but we’ll look at a couple of them just to be sure we’re doing our due diligence. I have three tiers that are sorted like this:
The Ace And The Three Good Pitchers
Max Scherzer at Nationals
Luis Garcia vs Red Sox
Jon Gray vs Orioles
Mike Clevinger vs Rockies
Mid-Tier Leftovers
Tarik Skubal at Twins
Logan Webb vs Dodgers
Andrew Heaney at Giants
Michael Kopech vs Royals
Nathan Eovaldi at Astros
Cheap-Ish Darts
Domingo German vs Mariners
Patrick Corbin vs Mets
Scherzer Or Goof Around?
Max Scherzer at Nationals
Luis Garcia vs Red Sox
Jon Gray vs Orioles
Mike Clevinger vs Rockies
Max Scherzer is far and away the best pitcher on this slate with his 32.6% K rate and just 4.7% walks and has thrown five quality starts since coming off the IL at the beginning of July. He’s looked as good as ever in this past month with 35.7% K and only a 3.2% walks rate, all good for a 1.39 ERA and 2.44 SIERA. Whatever this matchup lacks in strikeouts is made up for with the 4th lowest ISO in the league against right-handed pitching. There are some good pitchers at lower salaries, but when someone is this much better than the rest of the slate, I will prioritize spending up as much as possible.
So, if not Scherzer…
Jon Gray and Luis Garcia are both sitting around 27% strikeouts with just under 8% walks on the season.