CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Wednesday, May 11th
Happy Wednesday! And a very happy Wednesday to Reid Detmers. You’ve got to love the 2-K no-hitter. And hey, we are still playing with the 2019 baseballs when bases are loaded, with something like the 100th straight day with a grand slam. It’s getting exciting out here!
We’ve got games sprinkled all throughout the day, with two primary slates to look at. The focus will be on the 7-game main slate at the usual 7:05pm ET start, but we’ll start with a quick Cliff Notey look at the early 4-game slate. Or, if you prefer, the ‘Very Early Only’ 4-game slate, as 12:35pm ET is indeed ‘Very Early’.
Early Slate Pitching
Ryan Pepiot at Pirates (DK)
Adrian Houser at Reds
Jameson Taillon vs Blue Jays
Jose Berrios at Yankees
Aaron Civale at White Sox
Uh, what? There’s no way to sugarcoat this, it’s just bad. It gets even worse on FD, where the one maybe OK option isn’t even available.
I’ll get to Ryan Pepiot in a minute, but first we have four OK-ish real-life pitchers with Taillon, Berrios, Houser and Civale. If we combine 2021-2022 data, Berrios and Taillon are in the acceptable 22-25% K range, both with good control, while Civale is down at 20% K and the same good control, and Houser drops to 17.9% K with 10.6% walks. The good news on Houser is that he is a 55%+ ground ball pitcher to help smooth over the other deficiencies. So far this season, Civale leads the way at an uninspiring 22% K rate, with the others all at 20% or lower.