Covering the Bases: Saturday, September 2
STLCardinals84, one of the best tournament players in the game, is here to cover the bases for the upcoming MLB DFS slate. Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Cards has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks.
Happy Saturday, Grinders! This is just the second time all season that we haven’t had a significant “early” slate on a Saturday. That was helpful for me in order to give me time to focus on some college football lineups this morning, but now it’s time to turn the attention to baseball.
We have a very healthy 11-game main slate to look forward to as we get the weekend kick started, and it’s a slate that is skewed a bit toward offense. However, there are some strong pitching options to choose from as well. It’s time to dig in and see what this slate has to offer for MLB DFS picks!
Saturday Night Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
Top Tier Pitching
Blake Snell vs. Giants
Luis Castillo vs. Mets
Aaron Nola vs. Brewers
Jordan Montgomery vs. Twins
Kyle Bradish vs. Diamondbacks
This is an interesting quintet of options at the top of tonight’s board. At this point, you know the drill! Let’s take a look at the 2023 data:
Snell – 2.60 ERA, 3.62 xFIP, 31% K, 14% BB
Castillo – 3.01 ERA, 3.64 xFIP, 28% K, 6% BB
Nola – 4.30 ERA, 3.74 xFIP, 26% K, 6% BB
Montgomery – 3.19 ERA, 4.01 xFIP, 22% K, 6% BB
Bradish – 3.03 ERA, 3.69 xFIP, 24% K, 7% BB
If you look at most of the data, there really isn’t much separating these pitchers. All five of them have xFIP marks between 3.62 and 4.01 — a remarkable range of just 0.39 runs among all five. Nola has been the unluckiest of the bunch, pitching to the highest ERA at 4.30.
Blake Snell is the wild card that deserves his own discussion. The strikeouts are a lot higher than the rest. He also has a good matchup against a Giants team that has struck out a lot against left-handed pitching this season. However, he also has the highest ownership projection in our early runs at 30% pOWN on DK and 25% on FD. If we have learned one thing from Snell over the years, it’s that matchups don’t really matter. As always, this matchup will come down to the battle of Blake Snell vs. himself. I’m simply not going to play the highest-priced pitcher on the slate at high-projected ownership when that pitcher has a 13.7% walk rate. No thanks.
I’ll take the safety of Castillo. His strikeout rate is only 3% lower than Snell’s this year, and he pitches for a Mariners team that is suddenly in the thick of the AL West race. Seattle played very well in the month of August, and they are finally putting up runs. He’s your safest SP1 on the board.
I’ll rank the others as Nola > Montgomery > Bradish. Nola has been a bit unlucky with home runs this year, and he faces a Brewers lineup that does contain a lot of risk/reward bats. Montgomery faces a high-strikeout Twins team. I like Bradish just fine, but there’s nothing about his data and a road matchup against the Diamondbacks that pushes him above any of the others in this tier.
Secondary Pitching Options
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