CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, August 26th
Happy Thursday! We had aces pitching like aces like night, bringing some balance back to the world. It’s not quite as loaded tonight, but we do have another Chris Sale start and a playoff caliber matchup out West between Scherzer and Darvish. We are also right back to Boston chalk on the offensive side after another day where they almost disappointed, but came through late against the bullpen. At first glance, I see just a couple other teams that anywhere remotely close to top tier, but let’s dig in and see what happens.
Thursday Night Pitching
I end up with just two buckets here tonight. It’s three aces and then it’s almost everyone else with some combination of decent skills and/or good matchups.
THE THREE ACES
Chris Sale vs Twins
Max Scherzer at Padres
Yu Darvish vs Dodgers
The salaries are close enough with these three not to matter. The matchups are the biggest difference with Scherzer and Darvish both facing low strikeout, dangerous opponents and Sale facing a middle of the road at best Twins team that strikes out an above average rate. The only factor to consider here is pitch count with Sale still just two starts back off the IL, and held to five innings each time. The skills are as good as ever and I have zero concern there. We saw 89 pitches in his first start, then 71 last time, which was a disappointment, but it was also five full innings, and he left with a 5-run lead. I am just guessing here, but my read on this situation is that there is not any hard pitch count or innings limit here, but they are certainly going to try and be careful with Sale anytime they can. This means that what we saw last week is in play again. If the Red Sox jump out to a lead, which is to be expected, Sale could end up being cut off at five innings again regardless of the pitch count. But I don’t see any reason they’d hesitate to let him go 6+ innings and 90+ pitches if they are looking at a close game where he’s pitching well. And if it’s the five innings, most likely he’s got another win with another 5-8 strikeouts. If I get 20 DK points and 35 FD points in a ‘bad’ start, I’m completely happy. He’s my SP1.
What we can say here is that Max Scherzer definitely has a higher ceiling in a best-case scenario game. The strikeout ability is the same, and he will have no cap on his innings in an important game if he’s mowing them down. I love Scherzer here, and I’m hopeful he’ll be somewhat underowned next to Sale. My ideal lineup would be a Sale/Scherzer combo, not that there’s anything sneaky about that. I do have Sale ahead of him, but I will be ahead of the field on both of them.