CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Monday, June 13th
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Happy Monday! I hope you had a Matt Carpenter weekend, which is to say, I hope you had the best weekend of all-time.
Do you ever wonder to yourself, ‘self, I wonder who has the highest ISO in major league baseball?’ Or do you ever wonder to yourself, ‘self, I wonder who has the highest wRC+ in major league baseball?’. Well, there’s no need to wonder. It’s the greatest of all-time, Mr. Matt Carpenter!!
The Yankees are off today, so major league pitchers will have a fighting chance. What’s not off today is the rain in Detroit. Roth is giving us an Orange/Red this morning for the White Sox-Tigers game. I’m going to touch on Lance Lynn right out of the gate, but will then leave this game out of the rest of the analysis.
Monday Night Pitching
OK, the first thing I want to touch on is the situation with the Lance Lynn salary on FD. With this game being and Orange/Red to start the day, I’m not planning on considering pitching in this game. But, if we were, it would be important to point out the massive difference between a $5,500 pitcher on FD and a $5,500 pitcher on DK. FD is a one-pitcher site, and FD has lower pricing on bats. It’s nearly impossible to even use all the salary with a $5,500 pitcher even if you want to, and it’s much more about raw points on FD. The long-term skill and matchup are great, but this is a guy making his first start of the year and maxing out at four innings in three underwhelming rehab starts. He should be able to go 80+ pitches, and sure, he’s clearly too cheap. I just want to make sure we’re not thinking about salary the same way between the sites, as it is a different animal all together on FD. With the weather, this may not be a relevant discussion for tonight, I just wanted to touch on it since it will be the first thing a lot of people notice on this slate. Now, on to the good stuff;
Top Tier Pitching
Aaron Nola vs Marlins – 29.3% K, 3.4% BB, 3.50 ERA, 2.75 SIERA
Sandy Alcantara at Phillies – 24.1% K, 7.5% BB, 1.61 ERA, 3.56 SIERA
Alek Manoah vs Orioles – 22.3% K, 4.8% BB, 1.81 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
Cristian Javier at Rangers – 30.4% K, 8.7% BB, 3.22 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Yu Darvish at Cubs – 20.1% K, 5.6% BB, 3.61 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
Alex Wood vs Royals – 23.3% K, 6.4% BB, 4.23 ERA, 3.44 SIERA
This is a lot of excellent pitching, but the Nola-Alcantara matchup steals the spotlight. Nola has the best combination of strikeouts and walk, and both pitchers here can pile up innings like nobody’s business. Nola has gone at least seven innings in five of his last nine starts and 8+ in two of his last three. Alcantara has made it 8+ in five of his last six starts, which is basically unheard of in this day and age. At first glance, the matchup seems much better for Nola, but when you dig into the numbers, it’s actually not. Miami has a lower strikeout rate than the Phillies, with a higher wOBA and they rank next to each other in ISO against righties. Alcantara has had a lot of good fortune along with his outstanding pitching recently, but I love everything about his skill set. My assumption here is that Nola comes in as the mega-chalk spend up SP1, and while I 100% get it, and 100% trust him, I like Alcantara every bit as much. I can’t quite justify the salary gap on FD, but on DK, I am calling Alcantara my SP1 when factoring in ownership.