CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Wednesday, June 9th
Happy Wednesday! Thanks to Cards for filling in here yesterday on the massive 15-game slate. We’ve got another busy night with a 12-game main slate and plenty more rain all over the place. Hopefully it ends us similar to last night where we don’t end up with anything more than a couple late starts. I’ll be on Crunchtime with Roth at 6:30pm ET tonight to make sure we don’t need any last-minute adjustments. Let’s jump on in and see what we find tonight.
Wednesday Night Pitchers
What we find with pitching is there’s a Cole and then there’s a gap. And then there’s a Lynn in a tough matchup and then another gap. Then we’re looking at guys like Taijuan Walker, Zach Eflin, Shane McClanahan and Austin Gomber. None of this is ideal, so we’re going to end up chasing some matchups and salaries here tonight. This is how I’ve got the buckets sorted:
One and a Half Aces
Gerrit Cole at Minnesota
Lance Lynn vs Toronto
Tier Two
Taijuan Walker at Baltimore
Zach Eflin vs Atlanta
Austin Gomber at Miami
Getting Dicey Already
Shane McClanahan vs Washington
Griffin Canning vs Kansas City
Adam Wainwright vs Cleveland
Alek Manoah at White Sox
Nate Eovaldi vs Houston
Patrick Corbin at Tampa
Tony Gonsolin at Pittsburgh
Matchup Aided
Chris Flexen at Detroit
Casey Mize vs Seattle
Braxton Garrett vs Colorado
For Starters, Just Play Cole And Hope It Sticks
Gerrit Cole is one of those pitchers who seems extremely likely to see a little step back in strikeouts as MLB cracks down on the use of illegal substances. If we look at this season for Cole, we see five double-digit strikeout games in his first eight starts, but then a drop to no more than seven strikeouts in any of his last four outings, which included three high strikeout opponents. The good news here is that Cole is still getting swinging strikes in the 12-15% range, and even a slowed down version of Cole is still far and away the best pitcher on this slate. All I can say here is that I if there was no caution flag out there, I’d be saying to try and lock in 100% Cole, he’s that far ahead of everyone. However, there is that caution flag, and combined with the salary, I’m just going to say play him in cash games, but he’ll be merely my highest owned pitcher, but not at anything near a lock-button level. I’m going to assume that he most likely gives us a 6-7 innings, 7-8 strikeout kind of game, rather than assuming that as his floor. That leaves him as the best pitcher on this slate but not an absolute necessity at his salary.