CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, May 19th
Happy Thursday! We’ve got another one of these weird Thursdays with games spread throughout the day, leading to a couple smaller slates to look at. We’ll start with a 5-game FD and 4-game DK slate at 12:35pm ET. Then later, we have a 3-gamer on both sites at 7:10pm ET.
Early Slate Pitching
There is not a lot to see out here for this early slate:
Chris Bassitt vs Cardinals – 26.9% K, 7% BB, 2.34 ERA, 3.22 SIERA
Yu Darvish at Phillies – 19.6% K, 6.7% BB, 4.62 ERA, 4.04 SIERA
Kyle Gibson vs Padres – 19.6% K, 8.5% BB, 4.10 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
Jordan Montgomery at Orioles – 20% K, 5.5% BB, 3.06 ERA, 3.70 SIERA
Vince Velasquez at Royals – 20% K, 9.6% BB, 5.53 ERA, 4.45 SIERA
Bruce Zimmermann vs Yankees – 21.5% K, 6% BB, 2.72 ERA, 3.76 SIERA
Cal Quantrill vs Reds (FD) – 14% K, 10.5% BB, 3.93 ERA, 5.23 SIERA
Tyler Mahle at Guardians (FD) – 24.5% K, 11% BB. 5.89 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
If we take long term numbers, Yu Darvish would be the ace, but he has simply not been very good this season. Only two of his seven starts have come with more than five strikeouts and the matchup adds power risk on top of it. Any way you slice it, Chris Bassitt is just the better pitcher right now. Bassitt has one of the longest leashes in the league, over 100 in his last two starts and has been much more consistent with the strikeouts than Darvish. His matchup is nothing ideal, but he’s the closest thing we have to ‘safe’ on this weak pitching slate, and he’s my SP1.