CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, July 8th
Happy Thursday! We’ve got a seven-game slate tonight with one clear top offense and then a late-night duel of aces. Overall, the pitching is solid everywhere, and weather permitting, we’re going to see massive chalk on the Toronto Blue Jays. This slate gets interesting right away as that Blue Jays-Orioles game is in some danger of getting washed away. The good news is that it’s the first game of the night, so we should have a better idea of how to handle it. For now, I’m building lineups as if we will get that game in, just be aware that it’s a wildly different slate without it.
Thursday Night Pitching
Ace vs Ace
Yu Darvish vs Nationals
Max Scherzer at Padres
Neither of these aces have shown any ill effects from the recent trends in MLB. They both sit at 33% strikeouts over the past month and both have at least 7+ strikeouts in their past three starts. If there’s anything that looks a little off about Scherzer, it’s that he’s only reached six innings in his last three starts, but he’s still been at 100 pitches every time. There is no concern about leash here, it’s only matchup. We can say basically the same thing about Darvish. He may throw more 95-ish pitches, but leash is not a concern here, nor are skills. It’s just matchup.