CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Tuesday, July 12th
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Happy Tuesday! We’ve got a whopper of a 14-game slate (13 on FD) tonight with aces galore and Coors Field and more. The slate is so exciting, even Chris Sale wanted to get in on the action. We are likely to see more chalk with the Padres again at goofy low salaries, but we also have a lot more strong pivots to get away from them.
We also have a one game difference between DK and FD that has a pretty big effect on the slate. The second game of the White Sox – Guardians doubleheader brings Dylan Cease into the DK mix along with another high end stack that will not be a part of the FD slate.
Tuesday Night Pitching
Many Aces
Gerrit Cole vs Reds – 31.2% K, 7.3% BB, 3.26 ERA, 2.98 SIERA
Dylan Cease at Guardians (DK) – 34.3% K, 11.1% BB, 2.45 ERA, 3.14 SIERA
Spencer Strider vs Mets – 39.1% K, 9.6% BB, 2.60 ERA, 2.38 SIERA
Luis Garcia at Angels – 25.7% K, 6.5% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.53 SIERA
Kevin Gausman vs Phillies (?) – 27% K, 4.3% BB, 2.86 ERA, 3.06 SIERA
Logan Webb vs Diamondbacks – 20.7% K, 5.6% BB, 2.98 ERA, 3.53 SIERA
Josiah Gray vs Mariners – 26.8% K, 9.8% BB, 4.14 ERA, 3.92 SIERA
Chris Sale at Rays
With Cole, Cease and Strider, we have three of the highest strikeout upside pitchers in the league. Cease has struck out 8+ batters in 12 of his 17 starts this season, Strider has double-digit K’s in three of his last five outings and Cole has four double-digit strikeout games and 11 quality starts in his last 14 games. Basically, any one of these three has the talent to post a slate winning score anytime they take the mound.
If we focus in on recent trends, Spencer Strider has been so obscenely good that I would have to call him the ‘ace of the moment’. We’re looking at a goofy 42.5% K rate with just 5.7% walks over the past month, with matchup mattering nothing to him. This is just going to be about track record. Gerrit Cole has been a dominant ace for five years, while Strider has been a dominant ace for one month. I don’t care nearly as much about matchup for a guy like Strider, but still it has to be noted that the Mets are a far lower strikeout team than the Reds. The way I see this is that both Cole and Strider are awesome and fantastical, but where salary doesn’t matter, I’ll take the five-year ace in a better matchup over the one-month ace. On DK, it’s not so tough to just start with Cole, and that’s what I’ll do. On FD, the $1,500 gap is more significant with what it allows you with bats, so I will land on more Strider than Cole on FD.
On DK, we also bring Dylan Cease into the mix, and at least some chance that he gets a somewhat watered-down Guardians lineup in the second half of the doubleheader. If we assume a normal lineup, Cease also has a much tougher strikeout matchup than Cole, and his upside is no more consistent than Strider. This leaves him as the SP3 and a tournament pivot for me. I just want to point out that I will be using as much double-ace as possible with these three mixed and matched on DK.