CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Tuesday, April 27th
Happy Tuesday! If you’re looking for that little glimmer of hope that anything is possible in life if you just put your mind to it, well, the Marlins managed to put four earned runs onto Corbin Burnes ledger, so yeah, anything is possible. But if you’re the type of person who would prefer to know that everything is fine and some things can be counted on, well, Corbin Burnes struck out another nine and still hasn’t walked a single batter all season. Today is all about optimism, so let’s open up with another quote from the one and only Mitch Hedberg.
“I opened-up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, “Please try again.” because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. …Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me… “Come on Mitchell, don’t give up!” An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.”
Tuesday Night Pitching
A Trio Of Aces
Max Scherzer at Toronto
Lucas Giolito vs Detroit
Walker Buehler vs Cincinnati
Walker Buehler finally looked like an ace in his last start, while Lucas Giolito stumbled into a disaster start that lasted just one inning. Meanwhile, Max Scherzer was quietly posting his third (+ K outing of the season in four starts.
All of this ‘what happened most recently’ is exciting and all, but the bottom line here is that the matchups here lean heavily towards locking in Giolito as the SP1 tonight. In addition to the matchups, Giolito is the cheapest of these three on DK and $1,400 below Scherzer on FD. I don’t see any red flags other than a plain old outlier start from last week with Giolito. His velocity was normal, he simply suffered from a .667 BABIP and 66% HR/FB% despite just 27% hard contact. Some days, these things happen. Somebody give the guy some yogurt, just make sure he doesn’t cut his finger opening it. The reason I say that is that this start was pushed back a couple days after he cut his finger opening a bottle. Oops. If you want to use this as a reason to go another direction, there it is, but for me, I’m just looking at his 33.3% K rate since last season that puts him ahead of Scherzer’s 32.3% as the top pitcher on this slate.
Max Scherzer is absolutely good enough to dominate any opponent, and I am by no means telling you not to play Scherzer. This is just a situation where he faces a lower strikeout, higher walk, higher power opponent than Giolito at a higher price tag. Assuming the projected ownership shows this same opinion, I will certainly go out of my way to get a few Scherzer tournament shares, but he’s well behind Giolito for me tonight.