CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, April 21st
Happy Thursday! We’ve got an early day on tap with a 1:10pm ET start time for the main slate. It’s going to be six games on FD and seven on DK with a similar setup to yesterday, with a lack of an obvious top tier of offense. Even the pitching side is a bit jumbled with a good, but not quite elite top tier and a chalky value option in a good matchup. Let’s jump on in and see what we find.
Thursday Pitching
In looking only at long-term skills, we could end up with a pretty sizeable top tier to play the mix and match game. That is still a reasonable way to go, but I’m hoping to end with a little more separation between some of these pitchers. I’ll start by building a MySpace page using the Top 8 pitchers on this slate:
The Lucky Eight
Dylan Cease at Guardians
Jordan Montgomery at Tigers
Carlos Carrasco vs Giants
Kevin Gausman at Red Sox
Tanner Houck vs Blue Jays
Joe Ryan at Royals
Paul Blackburn vs Orioles
Zach Plesac vs White Sox
Using 2021 skill sets, Dylan Cease, Tanner Houck, Joe Ryan and Kevin Gausman are all close to the same guy with strikeout rates between 29-32%. Cease is a little higher on the strikeouts, but also the walks, while Houck and Ryan are both dealing with very small sample size. But as far as per-inning upside, they all have it. We can also say that it’s quite possible that Carlos Carrasco joins them, as he was regularly in that 29% K range from 2017-2020, and 2021 can be somewhat written off due to injury.
In the early going, Dylan Cease has flown to the top of the list with 16 strikeouts in 10 innings, while Houck, Carrasco and Gausman had 7-8-9 strikeouts in their last outings. All these guys have the upside we need before accounting for matchup and salary. The first thing I’m going to do is remove Tanner Houck from this group. He has the toughest matchup, and he has been bad to start the season with a 7:6 K:BB ratio in nine innings. I can remove him and make space for a new friend!
As far as the group of Cease, Carrasco, Gausman and Ryan, I am personally in on the Dylan Cease breakout, and though the control is still an issue, I buy into his strikeout upside more than anyone else here, making him my SP1. With these other three, I cannot find any real reason to put much separation between them. When we look at matchups, Carrasco’s has the edge for strikeouts, while Ryan has the edge in power and lack of patience. Meanwhile, I would say Gausman has the most trustable skill set. So, I’m left with a conundrum.