CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Wednesday, June 30th
Happy Wednesday! We’ve got a fun main slate tonight with some good pitching and a ton of high end offense in great spots. There is a 4-game early slate, but it’s one of the goofiest jabroni filled slates I’ve even seen. I’ll give you a quick thought or two here, but honestly, there is nothing to say about this early slate.
The evening slate has a lot of potential weather issues, but hopefully none will end up severe enough to change anything in our play. Be sure to tune into Crunchtime tonight as I’ll be going over any last minute changes with Roth.
Wednesday Night Pitching
The first thing to note here is that there is at least a slight chance of rain in almost every game on the slate. I’ll be on Crunchtime with Roth tonight to go over final thoughts here, but as of now, I’m planning on be able to use any pitchers we want. This is what the top tier looks like:
Aaron Nola vs Marlins – 28.3% K, 5.8% BB, 3.97 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Chris Bassitt vs Rangers – 25% K, 6.4% BB, 3.25 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
Luis Garcia vs Orioles – 27.4% K, 7.7% BB, 2.83 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
Joe Musgrove at Reds – 30.8% K, 5.7% BB, 2.22 ERA, 3.05 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani at Yankees – 33.1% K, 12.5% BB, 2.58 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
Dylan Cease vs Twins – 29.2% K, 9.7% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
The stats for the season don’t do a whole lot to separate these guys, and at first glance, Nola at home against Miami looks like the best option. However, while I’m not going overboard with recent trends, if we break things down to just the last month, Nola stays the same, while everyone else falls off in strikeouts except for the phenom to end all phenoms, Shohei Ohtani. Not only is he still up at 34% strikeouts, but his walks have come down to 5.3%. Nearly all his control issues leading to that full season 12.5% BB rate came in his first four starts. Sure, it’s the Yankees, and the risk is high, but wait for this one….Ohtani is striking out 43% of right-handed batters this season, 43%! It’s not a huge sample size, but it is a huge number. And the one thing we know about the Yankees is that while they have a ton of power, it’s all right-handed.