Covering the Bases: Tuesday, June 13
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 Tuesday, everyone! We have a large 14 game main slate on tap, and this should be a high scoring slate with some options to love on both the pitching and hitting sides of the ledger.
We have one game with a big weather concern, as Roth has the PIT/CHC game preliminarily listed as ORANGE/RED tonight. With this being such a large slate and the Pirates and Cubs being two teams that we don’t need to prioritize, I am just going to assume this game gets postponed. If it does not, we do have a modest wind blowing out at Wrigley Field, and I’d put both teams in the secondary stack mix, with power hitters like Happ, Suwinski, etc… being my favorite individual plays against league average pitchers. Just be aware that I am not going to include them in the writeup below as of now.
Tuesday Night Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The Top Options
Zack Wheeler vs. Diamondbacks
Max Scherzer vs. Yankees
Corbin Burnes vs. Twins
Pablo Lopez vs. Brewers
Hunter Brown vs. Nationals
George Kirby vs. Marlins
We have a nice mix of veteran aces and rising young aces on the mound tonight, and I’m placing six pitchers in this tier. As usual, here’s a peek at their data this season:
Wheeler – 3.91 ERA, 3.59 xFIP, 27% K, 5% BB
Scherzer – 3.71 ERA, 4.04 xFIP, 27% K, 6% BB
Burnes – 3.36 ERA, 4.14 xFIP, 24% K, 9% BB
Lopez – 4.25 ERA, 3.63 xFIP, 29% K, 7% BB
Brown – 3.69 ERA, 3.09 xFIP, 28% K, 8% BB
Kirby – 3.50 ERA, 3.74 xFIP, 20% K, 2% BB
We can afford to be somewhat picky with our selections tonight because the pool is deep. Are there any pitchers to throw out at first glance? For me, the two I don’t have much interest in are Burnes and Kirby. Burnes simply hasn’t looked as sharp this season. The strikeouts are down, the walks are up, and the upside just hasn’t been what we are used to seeing from him. Kirby is a great real life pitcher with ridiculous command, but he doesn’t strike a lot of batters out. That limits his DFS ceiling to some degree, and we need some element of ceiling on what should be a high scoring slate.
I think you can make a case for any of the other four, and there isn’t a whole let separating them. When you factor in salary and matchup, Lopez is my favorite arm this evening. He’s a bit cheaper than some of the other household names, he has a 3.63 xFIP on the season, and he has a 29% strikeout rate. He also benefits from a matchup against a high-strikeout Brewers team that just got swept at home by the woeful A’s. While the Brewers are weaker against LHP, it’s not like they are a dangerous lineup against RHP either, as they rank 20th in team wOBA against RHP this season. The $9,800 FD tag and $8,800 DK tag are nice discounts from the other top arms, too.
Wheeler and Scherzer are very intriguing as well, though they have tough matchups. Wheeler has to face a red hot Arizona team, but the Phillies could sure use some innings from Wheeler in this game. Scherzer has to face the Yankees, but this lineup is not the same without Aaron Judge in there. Scherzer has also looked more like his old ace self over his past handful of starts.
Brown has the most favorable matchup of the group against the Nationals, and he is a very large favorite. You could make an argument that he is the safest option. I don’t have a strong take on him, but I personally prefer Wheeler. I’ll let projected ownership guide some of my GPP decisions as the day plays out.
I will be fading Burnes and Kirby for sure. I will be overweight on Lopez and Wheeler for sure. I will table my decisions on Scherzer and Brown until we see refined ownership projections.
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