CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, June 16th
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Happy Wednesday! Many thanks to Cards for filling in yesterday. I had no idea when I asked him to cover for me that it was his birthday, but I think we all appreciate hearing that story he was able to tell. Miles Mikolas was so close to an all-time great birthday present, coming one out away from the no-hitter last night. I am still going to consider that great outing icing on the proverbial cake.
For today, we’ve got games spread out all over the place throughout the day. The main slate will be a 9-gamer starting at the usual 7:05pm ET. We also have six early games that have combined into one 6-game slate on DK, and split into two 3-game slates on FD. I’m going to start by touching briefly on the 6-game DK early slate, and then I’ll be back in a bit with the main slate analysis.
Early Slate Pitching
We have an ace-less early slate with seven decent pitchers, and then a whole bunch of ‘who are these people’ cheap options.
Luis Garcia at Rangers
Zac Gallen vs Reds
Luis Castillo at Diamondbacks
Sonny Gray at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs Twins
Vince Velasquez vs Tigers
There is not a single pitcher on this slate above a 25% strikeout rate this season (other than Gray, who doesn’t count due to injury). That immediately leaves us lacking upside. What we find is the trio of Luis Garcia, Zac Gallen and Luis Castillo between 23-25% strikeouts, and all between 6.7-8.1% walks. Their SIERA’s are basically identical between 3.72-3.81. These guys are all fine, and have at some point shown more upside than this.
Luis Castillo looks finally at full strength after his slow start back from injury, but we now have back-to-back seasons saying that full strength Castillo is just a 24% strikeout pitcher with just serviceable control. He’s got the talent and the pitch count to have those occasional big outings, of which we’ve seen one this season in seven tries. The matchup is fine, but not outstanding. It’s all sort of OK. Let’s see what’s next.