CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, June 30th
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Happy Thursday and Happy No More Dodgers in Coors Day! To celebrate sending the Dodgers back where they belong, we get a 7-game slate on DK and a 5-game slate on FD. Be sure to note the time difference if you’re playing on DK, as their main slate is starting an hour earlier than usual at 6:05pm ET. FD’s main slate will start at the usual 7:05pm, leaving the Braves-Phillies and Yankees-Astros off their schedule. This makes things quite different between the sites, especially on the pitching side.
Thursday Night Pitching
We have a very strong group of five pitchers with ace-level skills:
Aaron Nola vs Braves (DK) – 29.2% K, 3.5% BB, 2.98 ERA, 2.77 SIERA
Luis Severino at Astros (DK) – 29.7% K, 7.2% BB, 3.38 ERA, 3.13 SIERA
Joe Musgrove at Dodgers – 24.6% K, 5.4% BB, 2.12 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Logan Gilbert vs A’s – 24.9% K, 7% BB, 2.44 ERA, 2.44 SIERA
Luis Garcia vs Yankees (DK) – 25.5% K, 6.6% BB, 3.68 ERA, 3.57 SIERA
There is a lot going on here. To make it easier, I’m going to remove two of these pitchers from my pool – Joe Musgrove and Luis Garcia. We see a clear break in skill set after Nola/Severino, and if playing one of those lower strikeout aces, it’s a very easy call for me to just take the one against Oakland.
What this means for me is that FanDuel is extremely simple tonight for primary builds. It’s Logan Gilbert, and I’m done. He’s good, he’s consistent, he throws 100 pitches, and he’s facing Oakland.
But with Nola and Severino in the mix, DK is a far tougher decision. Both Nola and Severino are better pitchers with more strikeout ability that Gilbert. At first glance, the matchup seems so much a no-brainer that we should still go with Gilbert. But digging in a little, that may not really be the case.
The Braves are the second highest strikeout team in the league against right-handed pitching and there’s a good chance they are without Acuna again tonight. The power risk is considerably higher for Nola, but I would take the Nola side for strikeouts. It’s close, but I prefer Nola here.