CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Wednesday, April 27th
Happy Wednesday! It was a tough scene for the Yankees Are Trash crowd last night, but offense continued to sputter everywhere else on the main slate. Tonight, we get an 8-game slate that looks similarly uninspiring for big time offense, with only one game opening with a total of 9, despite lacking much in the way of high-end pitching. Such is life with MLB 2022.
Wednesday Night Pitching
There are not a lot of viable pitching options, but we’ve got three very good pitchers up top and then a couple mid-tier options with solid matchups.
THREE UP TOP
Shohei Ohtani vs Guardians
Joe Ryan vs Tigers
Pablo Lopez at Nationals
Shohei Ohtani is an ace, plain and simple. That doesn’t mean we can say he’s going to be 100% consistent, as he does already have one bad start this season, but he was BABIP’d around and still struck out five batters in under four innings in that outing. Last week, he bounced back with one of the best games we’ve seen from any pitcher this season, striking out 12 Astros in six scoreless innings. His 44% strikeout rate through three starts is up there with Carlos Rodon, and his control is even better. The improved control goes back to last season, and I’m buying it. The only sort-of issue is that he is not getting that full-ace pitch count, hanging around 80 pitches. On some slates, that would be enough to knock him off the SP1 pedestal, but tonight, his skills override that for me. He looks drastically underpriced on DK and fairly priced on FD. We do have some quality arms at a big discount on FD, so this will not be an all-in situation there, but on DK, I’m looking for 100% in primary lineups. I will just note that if you are not comfortable locking in someone who is only getting 80 pitches, I would not fault you for that.
Joe Ryan has also looked like an ace in his first eight career starts with a 28.7% K rate and 6.3% walks. He has back-to-back six inning starts with a 12:1 K:BB ratio after some opening start jitters, and tonight he gets a strong matchup against Detroit. Like Ohtani, he’s not quite up in that full-ace pitch count level, but on this slate, that does not bother me. I much prefer Ohtani, so let’s look at the other expensive pitcher to compare.
That would be Pablo Lopez, who has allowed just one run in 17 innings this season. The main thing he has going for him compared to Ohtani/Ryan is pitch count, getting up to 100 pitches and seven innings last start. His strikeout ability is very good, hanging around the 27% mark, a shade below the top two, but made up for with trustable control. His matchup is quite a bit tougher for strikeouts than Ryan, so we likely need those extra pitches. Personally, I am very happy with both of these guys, though neither reach Ohtani level for me. I’m going to side with the matchup for Ryan, but this can be a mix and match situation.