CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Saturday, April 3rd
Happy Saturday! For the majority of this season, Justin Van Zuiden will be with you on Saturdays breaking down the slate. But he is busy finishing up tax season, so I’ll be here with you this week and next. Saturdays will typically have a spread out schedule, and often split slates like we have today. It’s a little easier today since both DK and FD are on the same schedule with a 5-game early slate starting at 1:05 pm ET and then a 5-game evening slate at 7:10pm ET. Let’s take a quick look through the early slate and then I’ll be back in a bit with analysis on the evening slate.
Early Slate Pitching
As they say in show business, this is not good. I imagine someone in some area of show business said that about something at one time or another. There are exactly zero sure things and close to zero realistic upside. This is the list of pitchers I am looking at for this slate:
Corey Kluber vs Blue Jays
Zach Plesac at Tigers
Mike Minor vs Rangers
Jake Arrieta at Cubs
Kohei Arihara at Royals
Tanner Houck vs Orioles
Corey Kluber used to be an ace, but it’s been a long time, as he’s pitched just 36 innings the past two seasons. Even looking back to when he was an ace, it’s clear his one elite strikeout season was an outlier, and he was more of a control specialist with good, but not great strikeout numbers. Now we’re looking at a guy who has been down in the 90-92 mph range with his fastball in spring, which doesn’t bode well for a return to dominance. A pitcher of his ilk can still be quite good with his control, but it’s anybody’s guess how long it will take him to put it all back together, if he ever does.
If there’s an ace on this slate, it’s probably Cleveland’s Zach Plesac. He made eight starts in 2020 and jumped all the way up to a 27.7% K rate with elite 2.9% walks. It’s tough to just assume he’s that good after he was a below average 18.5% K pitcher in his 2019 rookie season. But what I’ll say here is that even if loses 5% or so from last year’s strikeouts, as long as he keeps the control, he looks like the best pitcher on this slate to me. Plus, he’s got the cushy matchup against Detroit, far better than what Kluber is dealing with. I’d rather not have to count on him until we see more out of him, but he’s my SP1 in all formats on this rough early slate.