Daily Pitcher Breakdown: Saturday, April 29th
Welcome to the Daily Pitcher Breakdown, where we study the blueprints for each day’s matchups and dive into the details of each pitcher’s unique profile. We’ll lay all the cards on the table and let the strength of each hand determine whether we want to commit our chips. For each player, we consider opponents, splits, stuff, mechanics, and recent performance.
There will also be a contingent of the starters that you can ignore each day. They offer no discernible upside so they aren’t worth your time. Because it is baseball and a 162-game season, there are going to be times when guys from the ignore group go off, but we’re dealing with probabilities in the daily game so the goal is to give yourself the best odds for success, not find needle in the proverbial haystack that finally doesn’t poke you.
LEGEND
Stats Shown in Red Are BELOW AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Yellow are AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Green Are ABOVE AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Blue Are ELITE
View descriptions of stats below and Legend FAQ
Daily Pitcher Chart
| Pitcher | Team | Opp | IP | ERA | SIERA | WHIP | GEM% | K% | BB% | HR/9 | GB% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zack Wheeler | NYM | WAS | 21.2 | 5.4 | 3.54 | 1.11 | 23.6% | 6.7% | 1.25 | 45.9% | |
| Ubaldo Jimenez | BAL | NYY | 162 | 5.5 | 4.86 | 1.57 | 24.00% | 18.8% | 11.5% | 1.11 | 48.1% |
| Matt Andriese | TBR | TOR | 148.2 | 4.3 | 3.91 | 1.24 | 21.05% | 20.6% | 5.2% | 1.33 | 43.5% |
| Derek Holland | CHW | DET | 130 | 4.43 | 4.97 | 1.36 | 45.00% | 15.4% | 7.9% | 1.25 | 38.3% |
| Bronson Arroyo | CIN | STL | 21 | 6.86 | 4.27 | 1.24 | 18.0% | 5.6% | 2.57 | 36.4% | |
| John Lackey | CHC | BOS | 212.1 | 3.52 | 3.79 | 1.08 | 55.17% | 24.2% | 7.2% | 1.19 | 41.8% |
| Yovani Gallardo | SEA | CLE | 140.1 | 5.32 | 5.17 | 1.58 | 21.74% | 16.1% | 10.9% | 1.15 | 44.2% |
| Jaime Garcia | ATL | MIL | 195 | 4.62 | 4.04 | 1.37 | 30.00% | 19.5% | 7.7% | 1.38 | 54.9% |
| Andrew Triggs | OAK | HOU | 78.2 | 3.78 | 3.59 | 1.16 | 14.29% | 20.7% | 5.8% | 0.69 | 51.9% |
| Ivan Nova | PIT | MIA | 189 | 3.86 | 3.77 | 1.2 | 30.77% | 18.0% | 3.7% | 1.19 | 52.8% |
| Phil Hughes | MIN | KCR | 80 | 5.63 | 4.94 | 1.46 | 18.18% | 13.5% | 4.9% | 1.58 | 34.5% |
| Tyler Anderson | COL | ARI | 139.2 | 4.19 | 3.91 | 1.32 | 52.63% | 20.5% | 6.1% | 1.16 | 48.7% |
| Jhoulys Chacin | SDP | SFG | 173 | 4.99 | 4.36 | 1.43 | 27.27% | 18.5% | 8.6% | 0.94 | 48.9% |
| Zach Eflin | PHI | LAD | 75.1 | 5.02 | 5.33 | 1.23 | 36.36% | 12.0% | 6.3% | 1.55 | 35.9% |
| Stephen Strasburg | WAS | NYM | 175.2 | 3.48 | 3.18 | 1.09 | 58.33% | 29.9% | 7.2% | 0.82 | 42.3% |
| Michael Pineda | NYY | BAL | 199 | 4.7 | 3.28 | 1.31 | 28.13% | 27.8% | 6.6% | 1.45 | 46.0% |
| Francisco Liriano | TOR | TBR | 180.2 | 4.68 | 4.38 | 1.49 | 41.38% | 23.1% | 11.8% | 1.35 | 51.2% |
| Michael Fulmer | DET | CHW | 184 | 3.03 | 3.95 | 1.1 | 50.00% | 20.8% | 6.4% | 0.93 | 48.5% |
| Mike Leake | STL | CIN | 204 | 4.24 | 3.84 | 1.26 | 40.00% | 16.8% | 4.0% | 0.88 | 54.2% |
| Steven Wright | BOS | CHC | 174.1 | 3.87 | 4.58 | 1.33 | 50.00% | 18.3% | 8.2% | 0.98 | 43.8% |
| Danny Salazar | CLE | SEA | 160 | 3.94 | 3.71 | 1.36 | 40.00% | 28.8% | 10.8% | 0.96 | 45.7% |
| Jimmy Nelson | MIL | ATL | 203 | 4.61 | 4.84 | 1.5 | 34.38% | 17.7% | 10.5% | 1.24 | 49.0% |
| Joe Musgrove | HOU | OAK | 83.1 | 4.54 | 4.15 | 1.27 | 40.00% | 19.4% | 6.3% | 1.40 | 44.1% |
| Dan Straily | MIA | PIT | 212 | 3.78 | 4.55 | 1.17 | 45.16% | 21.3% | 9.4% | 1.44 | 32.7% |
| Jason Hammel | KCR | MIN | 185.1 | 3.98 | 4.38 | 1.26 | 53.33% | 20.2% | 8.1% | 1.21 | 41.3% |
| Zack Greinke | ARI | COL | 189.1 | 4.14 | 3.95 | 1.26 | 50.00% | 20.8% | 5.9% | 1.19 | 46.1% |
| Matt Cain | SFG | SDP | 111.2 | 5 | 4.71 | 1.44 | 23.53% | 17.8% | 8.4% | 1.53 | 38.1% |
| Brandon McCarthy | LAD | PHI | 64 | 3.94 | 4.38 | 1.27 | 22.22% | 25.2% | 13.0% | 0.56 | 39.6% |
ALL-IN:
The aces that are worth pushing all of the chips into the middle of the table.
Yu Darvish TEX (vs. LAA, $11900) – He stumbled a bit out of the gate, but after five starts the line on Darvish falls right in line with expectations, from the 3.03 ERA to the 31:13 K:BB in 32.2 innings. He’s coming off his longest start of the year, both in terms of innings and pitches thrown, with an eight-inning masterpiece against the Royals that stretched Darvish out to 113 pitches in the game. He gave up two solo homers, but that was the only scoring, and he walked just one batter over the eight frames while punching out eight hitters. Darvish has yet to allow more than five hits in any one game and he’s already notched his first double-digit strikeout game of the season, which came in seven scoreless innings against these Angels three starts ago. He popped 35.55 points on DraftKings in that ballgame, one of two games in which he exceeded 30 points this season, and he could well make it a third time as he takes on the Halos at home.
RAISE:
The value plays, next-tier players that can compete with the aces on any given gameday but who probably won’t cost an arm and a glove.
Zack Greinke ARI (vs. COL, $10100) – There’s a huge drop-off on tonight’s slate after Greinke, such that if one doesn’t want to invest in the services of Darvish, Greinke offers the one ray of light in the rest of the pitching pool. He’s priced accordingly, but Greinke has a much better chance of turning a profit on $10k tonight against the Rockies than do any of the pitchers within earshot of that price point. Greinke is experiencing a rebirth of sorts this season, cracking a 2.93 ERA and 31:6 K:BB and just two homers allowed in 30.2 innings this season, a performance that even the FIPsters can appreciate (his FIP is 2.42). The right-hander has been getting better with each successive start, and though his run prevention has been strong throughout the month, his K-count had topped out at six before his last outing, in which he broke out with 11 strikeouts (and zero walks) against the fledgling Padres. That outing required less than 100 pitches to complete six full frames, and in the previous turn he fired 8.0 frames while still keeping the pitch count under 100 throws, as he scored more than 60 points on DraftKings between the two starts.
Matt Cain SF (vs. SD, $7700) – For years, Cain excelled as a low-K hurler who specialized in generating weak contact, with solid-yet-unspectacular walk rates paired with exceedingly-low frequencies of hits, going five straight seasons (from 2009-13) with a hit rate between 7.0-to-7.9 H/9. It was the type of performance that brings the skeptics out of the woodwork, and those skeptics were rewarded with three seasons of troubling performance from Cain, who battled injury and inconsistency to post poor ratios and high hit rates (as well as high homer rates) that seemed to personify the expected regression. Fast-forward to this season and Cain is up to his old tricks, keeping the ball in the yard and the hits from falling, and though the latter aspect might be seen as out of his control (calling those skeptics), the fact that he’s facing the light-hitting Padres should help to cover for expected regression in the stats on contact. The $8k-10k range of pitchers is full of landmines, but one can take a shot of Cain in a very favorable context without breaking the bank, increasing his likelihood of profit and vaulting him into the Raise category for tonight.
Ivan Nova PIT (at MIA, $8100) – Nova has pitched 92.1 innings for the Pirates split between this season and last, and he has walked just four batters. That’s a frequency that would make Dennis Eckersley proud, and Nova has upped the ante this season by posting less than a hit-per-inning for the first time since 2013. Strikeouts are not part of his game, lowering the margin for error in order to compile an impressive score in DFS, but the exceedingly-low walk rate as a Pirate has shielded him from the rain of singles and allowed him to overcome some of the low-K pessimism. He has unflappable efficiency with his pitch counts, such that Nova has pitched 6.0 or more frames in all four of his starts this season but has yet to top 92 pitches, going so far as to fire eight innings against the Cardinals two starts ago while using just 78 pitches. Expect the innings count to be an asset even if he’s kept on another short leash.
Pitcher Advanced Stats and Stats Against
| Pitcher | Team | Opp | wOBA vs L | ERA vs L | wOBA vs R | ERA vs R | AVG | SIERA | BABIP | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zack Wheeler | NYM | WAS | 0.406 | 9 | 0.16 | 2.84 | 0.22 | 3.54 | 0.259 | 3.8 |
| Ubaldo Jimenez | BAL | NYY | 0.374 | 5.93 | 0.314 | 5.19 | 0.265 | 4.86 | 0.31 | 4.65 |
| Matt Andriese | TBR | TOR | 0.3 | 3.49 | 0.325 | 5.01 | 0.262 | 3.91 | 0.3 | 4 |
| Derek Holland | CHW | DET | 0.238 | 1.96 | 0.344 | 4.96 | 0.261 | 4.97 | 0.284 | 4.7 |
| Bronson Arroyo | CIN | STL | 0.246 | 4.22 | 0.452 | 9.58 | 0.25 | 4.27 | 0.242 | 5.88 |
| John Lackey | CHC | BOS | 0.304 | 3.53 | 0.271 | 3.51 | 0.216 | 3.79 | 0.257 | 3.89 |
| Yovani Gallardo | SEA | CLE | 0.349 | 6.08 | 0.345 | 4.74 | 0.276 | 5.17 | 0.311 | 4.82 |
| Jaime Garcia | ATL | MIL | 0.291 | 2.88 | 0.344 | 5.07 | 0.263 | 4.04 | 0.299 | 4.55 |
| Andrew Triggs | OAK | HOU | 0.27 | 3.75 | 0.291 | 3.8 | 0.235 | 3.59 | 0.284 | 3.24 |
| Ivan Nova | PIT | MIA | 0.352 | 4.15 | 0.294 | 3.65 | 0.264 | 3.77 | 0.297 | 3.96 |
| Phil Hughes | MIN | KCR | 0.392 | 5.67 | 0.336 | 5.6 | 0.302 | 4.94 | 0.319 | 4.88 |
| Tyler Anderson | COL | ARI | 0.299 | 2.86 | 0.345 | 4.63 | 0.27 | 3.91 | 0.318 | 3.9 |
| Jhoulys Chacin | SDP | SFG | 0.334 | 5.82 | 0.313 | 4.19 | 0.267 | 4.36 | 0.313 | 4.08 |
| Zach Eflin | PHI | LAD | 0.341 | 6.51 | 0.309 | 3.55 | 0.247 | 5.33 | 0.245 | 5.23 |
| Stephen Strasburg | WAS | NYM | 0.255 | 3.36 | 0.291 | 3.61 | 0.215 | 3.18 | 0.292 | 2.79 |
| Michael Pineda | NYY | BAL | 0.34 | 3.81 | 0.322 | 5.4 | 0.261 | 3.28 | 0.334 | 3.78 |
| Francisco Liriano | TOR | TBR | 0.319 | 4.02 | 0.341 | 4.87 | 0.247 | 4.38 | 0.299 | 4.76 |
| Michael Fulmer | DET | CHW | 0.26 | 2.3 | 0.307 | 3.94 | 0.224 | 3.95 | 0.263 | 3.74 |
| Mike Leake | STL | CIN | 0.313 | 4.34 | 0.309 | 4.14 | 0.272 | 3.84 | 0.31 | 3.58 |
| Steven Wright | BOS | CHC | 0.287 | 3.38 | 0.334 | 4.22 | 0.254 | 4.58 | 0.294 | 4.21 |
| Danny Salazar | CLE | SEA | 0.284 | 3.98 | 0.326 | 3.9 | 0.237 | 3.71 | 0.323 | 3.5 |
| Jimmy Nelson | MIL | ATL | 0.339 | 4.65 | 0.344 | 4.57 | 0.263 | 4.84 | 0.298 | 5 |
| Joe Musgrove | HOU | OAK | 0.323 | 4.71 | 0.342 | 4.4 | 0.259 | 4.15 | 0.292 | 4.43 |
| Dan Straily | MIA | PIT | 0.29 | 4.05 | 0.317 | 3.56 | 0.214 | 4.55 | 0.237 | 4.79 |
| Jason Hammel | KCR | MIN | 0.341 | 4.14 | 0.296 | 3.87 | 0.242 | 4.38 | 0.279 | 4.38 |
| Zack Greinke | ARI | COL | 0.31 | 4.09 | 0.315 | 4.2 | 0.256 | 3.95 | 0.299 | 3.84 |
| Matt Cain | SFG | SDP | 0.375 | 4.73 | 0.333 | 5.18 | 0.271 | 0.3 | 5.03 | |
| Brandon McCarthy | LAD | PHI | 4.13 | 0.27 | 3.79 | 0.208 | 0.276 | 3.52 |
CALL:
Long-shot plays that could hit it big but carry considerable risk of blow-up.
Brandon McCarthy LAD (vs. PHI, $8900) – I don’t like the price on McCarthy, but given the serious lack of options near the top of the pitching scale for tonight’s slate, he does offer uncommon consistency on a game-by-game basis. He hasn’t allowed more than five hits or two runs in any of his four starts this season, has generally kept the ball in the yard (two homers allowed) and even spiked a big strikeout game with eight Ks in 5.0 innings against the Diamondbacks. In four starts this season, McCarthy has scored between 18.45 and 24.15 points on DraftKings in each start. Between the Phillies’ lack of offense and the lack of quality SP options, a slight reach for McCarthy at $8900 is easily justifiable. The injury concerns are a bigger worry for the full-season gamer, but in DFS it’s a relative non-factor.
Andrew Triggs OAK (at HOU, $6800) – Triggs had spun 17.2 innings of clean-ERA baseball for the first three games of the season, never giving up more than four hits in a game, striking out more than five, or pitching more than 6.0 innings in any one contest. It was a performance that screamed regression, and the Mariners did a chunk of the work last weekend by scoring six runs in less than five frames. Triggs only has 13 strikeouts this season in 22.1 innings, but that is also out of line with his minor-league numbers, as Triggs maintained an 9.0 K/9 through more than 250 innings in the minors. Basically, it’s hard to know what to make of this guy, and a lineup with the top-side and depth of the Astros’ could pile onto the mess that the Mariners started. He’s got substandard velocity, averaging 89.5 mph on the fastball this season, but the break on his secondary pitches is massive and likely factors into his inconsistency. The cost is low enough to justify the risk, but the downside is steep.
Joe Musgrove HOU (vs. OAK, $7400) – Musgrove finally finished the sixth inning in his last start, after lasting no more than 16 outs in any of his first three turns, but the results were largely the same: four runs, five hits, four strikeouts, one walk. The command is legit and the walks will likely stay low, but MLB batters have teed off on Musgrove, whose career ERA now stands at 4.54 in 83.1 innings of big-league ball. He’s given up four homers in just 21.1 innings of 2017, ripening the pot for Oakland slugger Khris Davis (who has nine bombs already), and Musgrove’s short leash will make it tougher for him to reach for a win.
Jimmy Nelson MIL (vs. ATL, $7300) – Nelson cruised through his first two outings of the season, striking out eight Cubs over 6.0 frames in his opener (with only a solo homer marring his line), following by 7.0 innings of one-run baseball against the Reds. But the Cubs enacted vengeance when they got Straily at Wrigley, scoring seven runs on nine hits against him, and Nelson followed that up with a six-walk performance against the Cardinals. He gets the benefit of facing the Braves today, but Nelson’s performance pattern is all over the place, and he’s probably good only for use in large tournaments. He’s only thrown one wild pitch this season, after leading the majors in that category each of the past two years; so he’s got that going for him, which is nice.
Dan Straily MIA (vs. PIT, $9200) – Straily struck out 14 batters over 7.0 innings in his last start and fired 5.1 no-hit innings in the previous turn. Take those facts on their own and his $9200 salary sounds like an acceptable cost for such a high risk/reward pitcher. The problems: the 14 strikeouts came against the Padres, who give out Ks like candy and raise the baseline of expected points for every pitcher that faces them (see comment for Cain, Matt); and the no-hit frames came packed with five walks. Even after those performances, his ERA is still an unimpressive 3.92 this season. Let him be someone else’s costly mistake.
Jesse Chavez LAA (at TEX, $7000)
Phil Hughes MIN (at KC, $6500)
Jason Hammel KC (vs. MIN, $7900)
Tyler Anderson COL (at ARI, $6200)
Jhoulys Chacin SD (at SF, $6700)
FOLD:
Run away. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Consider stacking with opposing lineups.
Jaime Garcia ATL (at MIL, $6600)
Zach Eflin PHI (at LAD, $5700)
Starting Pitcher Salaries
Click the image below to view pitcher salaries by each daily fantasy site along with their percent of top statistics.
- Percent of Top (Top) – Player salary divided by the most expensive pitcher each day. So if “”(player-popup)Felix Hernandez”:/players/felix-hernandez-10954(player-profile)”:/fantasyplayers/Felix_Hernandez-10954 is $9,000 on FanDuel and “”(player-popup)Justin Verlander”:/players/justin-verlander-10908(player-profile)”:/fantasyplayers/Justin_Verlander-10908 is $4,500, Verlanders Top stat would be 50.
NOTE: Button for pitcher salary chart above opens in popup window