Brendan McKay Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

Brendan McKay has now allowed at least three runs in fewer than six innings in five of his last six starts and has not exceeded 24 batters or 93 pitches in any outing as the Rays remain cautious with their valuable commodity, but there are still positive signs and potential reasons to employ him in your daily fantasy lineups on Monday night. His 27.4 K% is second best on the board tonight (30.7% is best over the last 30 days), while his 6.2 BB% makes him the only pitcher to exceed a 20 K-BB% tonight. While his 5.47 DRA is above his 5.08 ERA, each of his more traditional estimators (SIERA, xFIP, FIP) are all more than a run below. His 80.8 Z-Contact% and 29 Z-O-Swing% are both best on the board. While his 12.4% Barrels/BBE is second worst on the board, a .319 xwOBA is essentially league average and 27 points better than his actual mark. A .352 BABIP would seem unsustainable, 63 points above the .289 mark the Tampa Bay defense has allowed this season. To sum, while he’s allowed some harder contact than we’d like and fails to push very deep into games, he may have the top batter for batter upside on the board and most signs are pointing towards some positive regression. Then we take in the fact that there’s not a reliable, ace level talent on the board, and McKay at $7.5K on either site starts to look very attractive, especially when you consider that Marco Gonzalez, Wade Miley, Kyle Gibson and Kolby Allard are some of your highest priced pitchers and all more than $2K more on DraftKings. The Mariners continue to be a quality offense vs LHP (106 wRC+, 13.6 K-BB% this year), but it’s certainly not a lineup that scares anyone at this point and the park is pitcher friendly. In fact, Seattle currently owns the second lowest implied run line on the board (3.51).

Brendan McKay struck out seven Orioles in his last start, to drive his strikeout rate up to an average 22.4% over three starts, but with an impressive 13.2 SwStr% and 78.7 Z-Contact%. Perhaps more impressively, he’s walked just one of the 58 batters he’s faced and generated a 4.6 Hard-Soft% with an 86.6 mph aEV resulting in a .287 xwOBA. You may site the short sample and wonder about the quality of opposition, but he’s also faced the Yankees and Rangers and exceeded a 20 K-BB% at both AA and AAA this year. He’ll face an offense that has been league average against RHP this year (101 wRC+), but with a 17.9 K-BB% and 10.1 Hard-Soft%. In addition, since the break, the White Sox have just a 68 wRC+ and 10.2 HR/FB as they currently regularly employ Jon Jay and Ryan Goins among their starting nine. McKay offers quite a bit more upside than his strikeout rate suggests for less than $9K in a controlled environment, which is important considering the heat wave currently enveloping a large portion of the country. The only downside is that McKay has not gone beyond 20 batters in any of his three starts, nor beyond 22 batters in any of his minor league ones this year.