MLB Pitching Primer: Friday, September 21st

Everything in the sport of baseball comes down to the hitter-versus-pitcher matchup – which makes pitching the most important element of MLB DFS play. Without an understanding of the best pitching plays on the day, your DFS efforts will be sunk! Each day, the Pitching Primer will provide you with some of the top pitching plays on the day – taking a close look at the “why” behind these picks, and helping you to identify pitchers others might overlook.

Friday, September 21st

Arms To Trust

Gerrit Cole vs. Los Angeles Angels

Cole is one of the safer bets for fantasy production on the entire slate. Of course, you are going to have to pay for it. He is $10,800 on FD, $12,000 on DK, and $22,900 on FDRFT.

Cole has the highest K% on the slate at 34.7% (if you remove Chris Sale that is, who is only scheduled to throw 65 pitches), which is good chunk ahead of the next highest on the list (Jacob deGrom, 31.9%). Where Cole becomes really frustrating is in those starts where he is walking too many batters, which appears to have reared its ugly head again. Right when I thought he had things figured out, the walks in his last five starts are as follows: 2, 2, 3, 2, and 4.

Those, along with the strikeouts, cause him to limit the amount of innings he can go because of how quickly the pitch count jumps.

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About the Author

meansy53
Andy Means (meansy53)

Andy Means (aka meansy53) was a walk-on with the esteemed Duke University basketball team for 3 years before graduating in 2004. He also has a Master’s in Accounting from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business and has been playing DFS since 2014. He has qualified for multiple Live Finals and displays his extensive basketball knowledge as a host of our top show – NBA Crunch Time. In the summer of 2022, Andy took over the role of Premium Content Director for the RotoGrinders Network, overseeing the vast array of content that is created on RotoGrinders, ScoresAndOdds, and FantasyLabs. Follow Andy on Twitter – @ameansy
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