CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings: Wednesday, May 19th
Happy Wednesday! Another day, another no-hitter, another chalk offense going off. Tonight, we have another big slate that is filled with good pitching. It looks there is only one game with weather concerns, but it’s a big one with Corbin Burnes in KC, so we’ll need to keep an eye on that throughout the day. The pitching is absolutely loaded in all tiers, so while I’ll narrow things down a bit, it’s very wide open.
Wednesday Night Pitching
One, Two, Four, or Five Aces
Corbin Burnes at Kansas City – 45.3% K, 0.8% BB, 1.57 ERA, 1.36 SIERA
Max Scherzer at Chicago Cubs – 35.8% K, 4.2% BB, 2.10 ERA, 2.57 SIERA
Clayton Kershaw vs Arizona – 28.2% K, 4.5% BB, 3.20 ERA, 3.15 SIERA
Jack Flaherty vs Pittsburgh – 25.7% K, 7% K, 2.47 ERA, 3.77 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani vs Cleveland – 36.4% K, 18.2% BB, 2.10 ERA, 4.18 SIERA
When we just look at the 2021 numbers, this is a lopsided group of aces for DFS purposes. Corbin Burnes is just simply better than everyone else with no fewer than nine strikeouts in any start and only one walk all season. Silly. Then, Max Scherzer is in a strikeout tier ahead of Kershaw and Flaherty, but all three are seeing outstanding real-life results with ERA’s below 2.50 for Scherzer and Flaherty with one bad inning bringing Kershaw up barely above 3.00. Then there’s the wild card upside of Shohei Ohtani, who clearly has the strikeout ability to compete with the aces, but the control, who knows! Making matters tougher, the low strikeout arm here, Jack Flaherty, is the one with the great matchup tonight which pushes him up the charts despite the less dominant stuff. Need more wrenches thrown into this? OK. The wind is howling at Wrigley, and could be out to left, though maybe more side to side, potentially hurting the fly balls of Scherzer.