CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Monday, July 19th
Happy Monday! It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, I hope everyone enjoyed their All-Star Break. I was able to visit my parents for the first time since pre-covid, and spend a few days without thinking about wOBA and BABIP, which is always a nice break. There was also a good amount of ice cream and pie.
We’ve got an 11-game slate tonight with a pretty good mix of everything, but not a whole bunch of anything. There is one game with significant weather concerns, with Roth giving the straight Orange to the Padres-Braves game. Let’s dive in and see what we find.
Monday Night Pitching
This slate gets interesting immediately, with the top few pitchers coming with difficult matchups that have me leaning towards the mid-tier as a starting point. This is how I have things broken into tiers:
Ace Upside With Questions
Kevin Gausman at Dodgers
Yu Darvish at Braves
Shohei Ohtani at A’s
Good Real-Life Pitchers
Zack Greinke vs Indians
Cole Irvin vs Angels
Matchup Aided Decent Pitchers
Kyle Gibson at Tigers
Ryan Yarbrough vs Orioles
Caleb Smith vs Pirates
Casey Mize vs Rangers
Jon Lester vs Marlins
Cheap Darts
Jake Woodford vs Cubs
Alec Mills at Cardinals
Spenser Watkins at Rays
Three Up Top, Sort Of
Kevin Gausman at Dodgers
Yu Darvish at Braves
Shohei Ohtani at A’s
Gausman and Darvish are the closest thing to trustable aces on this slate, but it’s a tough spot for Gausman against the Dodgers, and Darvish is in the dicey rain game in Atlanta in addition to coming off a hip issue. I am not completely off Gausman by any means, but at his salary, I don’t like him enough to force him in anywhere. He has the talent to have a big game against anyone, but he’s just going to be a multi-entry option where I have extra salary sitting around. With Darvish, unless we get something close to an all-clear on the weather, he is also going to be just an MME dart throw. I’ll be fine skipping both these guys on FD.
Shohei Ohtani bounced back from his bad outing with a strong seven innings against Boston, most notably with no walks. All we can say here is that he does not have any consistency, but when he’s good, he’s really good. Like Gausman/Darvish, I don’t have much interest here on FD, but he is going to be ahead of those two on my DK tournament list. Oakland comes with enough right-handed strikeouts for clear upside here.