Three True Outcomes: Key MLB Matchups for Friday (July 28)
Three True Outcomes highlights a trio of crucial matchups for today’s slate. We might strike out or settle for a walk, but we’re also going to hit our fair share of home runs. Ideally, this article will give your MLB DFS lineups and sports betting card a boost.
Shoutout Aaron Civale, awesome start on Tuesday as the lead item of the article. Definitely need to keep picking on the Royals with right-handed starters. Will be taking a long look at Sonny Gray today.
The Weirdest Split of All Time vs. Respect for Coors Field
I looked up Kyle Freeland’s splits just to see how bad he’s been at Coors Field. I was floored by the results. Not only is his ERA more than a run lower at home (4.13 vs. 5.33), the strikeouts are WAY up. Freeland has a pitiful 14.2% K% on the season (3rd percentile), but it’s 20.4% at home in 10 starts. That means it’s 7.8% on the road. 7.8%!! Marco Gonzales had the lowest K% among qualified starters last season at 13.2%.
The raw numbers look even crazier. Freeland has 46 strikeouts over 52.1 innings at home and 17 strikeouts over 50.2 innings on the road. His career numbers are more in line with what you’d expect at Coors Field (home ERA is .76 runs higher), but 50+ innings in both environments is a decent sample this year.
Adding Freeland to your tournament pool isn’t necessary, the bigger takeaway for me is ignoring the Oakland offense.
SUMMARY: It’s not often we get reasonably-priced bats in Coors, but I’ll be staying away from the A’s. Freeland has been strangely effective and there are plenty of alternatives.
Tommy Henry’s Uncomfortable Profile vs. Seattle’s Free Swingers
Strikeout-to-walk ratio is one of the more straightforward ways to evaluate pitchers. If you can limit free baserunners and get outs without allowing contact, you’re doing something right.
Henry fails the K:BB test. Miserably. He’s at 58:34 over 83 IP. But he did have a four-game stretch heading into the All-Star break with a 1.48 ERA and three quality starts. His two outings after the break haven’t been great, though both were challenging road matchups (Blue Jays and Reds).
Henry is 89th percentile in hard-hit rate and his xERA is a manageable 4.29. Seattle is the type of offense he can take advantage of, with the 3rd-highest K% and a middling 96 wRC+ vs. LHPs.
SUMMARY: Henry falls into the “this could go well” category, and sometimes that’s all we need for tournaments. His price is laughably low on DraftKings ($6.7K). You can easily pair him with an ace and still stack a couple top offenses.
Misguided Mitch Keller vs. Flailing Philadelphia
It seems like Keller is searching right now. He’s been blasted for 14 ER over his last two starts and the pitch mixes have been all over the place.
Two games ago against Cleveland, Keller threw his 4-seamer and sinker a season-low 34.3% of the time and ramped up the slider to 32.4%, nearly twice his season average. Then last time out against Los Angeles, the fastballs returned to 48.5% usage (season average is 47.1%) but the changeups spiked out of nowhere. Keller threw the changeup a season-high 8.9% of the time, way above his season average of 3.4%.
Keller has six pitches, so it wouldn’t be surprising for him to lose the feel for some of them occasionally. Certainly not scientific analysis or anything, and he’s still having the best season of his career. Just might be a bit vulnerable right now. Philly has been below-average vs. RHPs since the start of June (22nd in wRC+), but they still have a bunch of talented bats.
SUMMARY: I’m betting against Keller until he shows he’s sorted out his arsenal. Give me Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, plus a mix of Turner/Stott/Realmuto/Marsh where appropriate (Turner is surprisingly expensive on DK). Gonna roll the dice and fade Bryce Harper since the power has been nonexistent.
Grabbing the Philadelphia team total Over 4.5 (-113 on FanDuel).
