Bryan Mitchell Daily Fantasy News, Rankings, Projections

A 4.86 implied run line in Seattle is basically like a six run line at Coors. but that's the Bryan Mitchell effect, a pitcher with a -5.1 K-BB% through 53 innings. While LHBs have a .359 wOBA against him, RHBs are above .400. Mitch Haniger (138 wRC+, .232 ISO vs RHP this season) and Nelson Cruz (141 wRC+, .157 ISO) should mash...or walk and then mash. Either way, there will likely be a lot of traffic on the bases for the Mariners tonight.

The Diamondbacks are able to claim tonight's top implied run line at home (5.68) despite there being a game in Texas on the slate. That's because Bryan Mitchell has been hammered at the major league level in 48.1 innings this year (9.7 K%, .413 xwOBA) and then had a 6.12 FIP in six more starts at high A-ball. Batters from either side of the plate are above a .360 wOBA against him this season, though he has kept LHBs on the ground for 52.1% of batted balls. That's less impressive than it looks considering the minuscule strikeout rate. David Peralta (158 wRC+, .262 ISO), Paul Goldschmidt (141 wRC+, .238 ISO) and Eduardo Escobar (129 wRC+, .270 ISO) have assaulted RHP this season and are top overall bats on this slate. Arizona stacks look healthy here right down through the first six in the lineup, though players need to realize that San Diego does have one of the top pens in baseball (3.29 FIP, 21.8 K-BB% last 30 days). We're just not very likely to see the top of that bullpen tonight.

Mitchell is set to make his sixth start of the 2018 campaign on Saturday afternoon, and he been less than impressive thus, allowing three earned runs or more in all but one outing while eclipsing two strikeouts on just two of those occasions. Performances like the aforementioned starts have become the norm for Mitchell throughout his career, as he has accumulated just a 13.3% strikeout rate and an 11.4% walk rate in his four big league seasons, numbers that he has yet to improve upon as starter, posting a 10.0% strikeout rate and 16.4% walk rate through five outings. This leaves a career 51.7% groundball rate and 30.3% hard hit percentage as the only discernable skills in Mitchell's overall pitching profile, which typically forces him to subject himself to the discretion and variance of BABIP on a start-to-start basis. That said, it doesn't make a whole lot sense to delve too much deeper into his splits against certain handedness since Mitchell has amassed just 128.0 innings pitched in his career with most of them coming out of the bullpen in a reliever role. Further piling on, the matchup for Mitchell couldn't be much worse, as the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup is loaded with left-handed hitters, and the two righties, Chris Taylor (0.215 ISO, 0.411 xwOBA vs RHP in 2017/18) and Matt Kemp (36.6% HH%, 0.208 ISO, 0.426 xwOBA vs RHP in 2017/18), have been more than competent versus right-handed pitching the last two seasons. The other viable players to target from this squad appear to be Yasmani Grandal (38.9% HH%, 0.232 ISO, 0.384 xwOBA vs RHP in 2017/18), Cody Bellinger (43.4% HH%, 0.298 ISO, 0.437 xwOBA vs RHP in 2017/18), and Joc Pederson (0.209 ISO, 0.379 xwOBA vs RHP in 2017/18), making them each logical members of a full stack in tournaments or even as individual one-offs in cash games across the industry, especially given the conducive hitting environment at elevation in Mexico at Estadio de Beisbol Monterrey.

Bryan Mitchell has a Statcast estimated .400 xwOBA despite an 87.1 mph aEV, and 27.9% 95+ mph EV that's second best on the board (both behind Carrasco). That's the result of a -10.7 K-BB%. With the Rockies owning a board high implied run line above six, are players paying up for walks tonight? Aside from Charlie Blackmon (149 wRC+, .305 ISO vs RHP since 2017), Nolan Arenado (99 wRC+, .224 ISO) is the only other batter in the lineup with a wRC+ above 90 against RHP since last season or overall for the last seven days. This feels more like something players will be forced to do rather than wanting to tonight. To add extra insult, the cleanup hitter David Dahl, who has just five major league PAs since 2016, is not even available on FanDuel. He does cost just $2.8K on DraftKings, where it would now be a shock if he weren't the most popular play tonight.

Bryan Mitchell has walked 14 and struck out three in three starts for the Padres. While he's done a decent job of keeping the ball on the ground, batters from either side have both a wOBA and xwOBA above .350 against him in 46.1 innings since last season. These are the kind of numbers that make you look twice to make sure the Padres are actually still starting him. Strangely, the Dodgers are only projected for 4.34 runs by Vegas. The lineup is not yet confirmed, but each of the first seven batters in the projected lineup have a 105 wRC+ or higher against RHP since 2017 with only Chase Utley (.167) and Corey Seager (.163) below a .200 ISO vs RHP since last season. With lots of walks and quite a few ground balls, a stacking approach might be superior to individual selections here.

San Francisco at San Diego is not on the main DraftKings slate, but is on the five game board at FanDuel. It's an unappetizing matchup from any angle, pitting Chris Stratton against Bryan Mitchell in a negative run environment. Both teams have a below average wRC+ with a strikeout rate above 25% against RHP this year. Mitchell has walked nine and struck out one in two starts this year, somehow nearly cutting in half a 6.4 SwStr% from last year. Stratton had a useful 19.9 K% last season until you realize that aside from striking out 10 batters twice, he failed to strike out more than four in all but one of his other eight starts last year. He walked four in his last start and has not exceeded four strikeouts in either of his two starts. If you must, Brandon Belt (131 wRC+, .409 xwOBA, .252 ISO vs RHP since 2017) is a cheap bat ($2.4K), who's a much better hitter than his home park lets him look and LHBs have a .359 wOBA against Mitchell since last season. Eric Hosmer (151 wRC+, .191 ISO), Joe Panik (112 wRC+, .166 ISO), Cory Spangenberg (115 wRC+, .170 ISO), Jose Pirela (109 wRC+, .162) and Andrew McCutchen (102 wRC+, .163 ISO) are the only other bats who are even average against RHP since last year. Though Franchy Cordero (95 wRC+, .225 ISO, 40 Hard%) hits the ball hard and is in the leadoff spot at a minimum cost ($2K). The San Francisco lineup is not yet confirmed.

Bryan Mitchell is set to make his second start of the 2018 campaign, and he was less than impressive in his first start against the Colorado Rockies, allowing five earned runs and striking out zero hitters in five innings pitched. Though those numbers seem relatively lackluster, performances like that have become the norm for Mitchell throughout his career, as he has accumulated just a 13.6% strikeout rate and a 10.0% walk rate in his four big league seasons. This leaves a 51.3% groundball rate and 29.5% hard hit percentage as the only discernable skills in Mitchell's overall pitching profile and typically leaves him at the discretion and variance of BABIP on a start-to-start basis. That said, it doesn't make a whole lot sense to delve too much deeper into his splits against certain handedness since Mitchell has amassed just 103.1 career innings with most of them coming out of the bullpen in a reliever role. Further piling on, the matchup for Mitchell couldn't be much worse, as the Houston Astros possess power bats up and down their lineup that also do a fairly decent job at making contact consistently, evidenced by a combined 19.7% strikeout rate versus right-handed batters last season. The best individual players to target from this squad appear to be George Springer (0.227 ISO, 0.398 xwOBA, 36.3% HH% vs RHP), Jose Altuve (0.200 ISO, 0.401 xwOBA vs RHP), Carlos Correa (0.238 ISO, 0.445 xwOBA, 39.0% HH% vs RHP), Marwin Gonzalez (0.218 ISO, 0.367 xwOBA vs RHP), and Jake Marisnick (0.289 ISO, 0.342 xwOBA vs RHP), though their hitting position goes a long way in determining their viability as one-offs or part of a stack of tournaments. The elevated price tags of most of the Astros will also work as a natural pivot away from hitters in the Coors Field game and makes them a logical stacking candidate in all daily fantasy formats on Saturday's main slate.

We're seeing the back end of rotations on Monday night, where Charlie Morton can be considered the only established high strikeout pitcher. DraftKings pricing is particularly tough, where Morton (26.4 K%), along with Mike Clevinger (27.3 K%) and Tanner Roark (21.4 K%) each cost $9.9K or more. While Hyun-Jin Ryu and Taijuan Walker also boast a 21.4 K% from last season, the former rarely goes much more than five innings and the latter has a difficult matchup with the Dodgers, even if we're still counting on the humidor to under-value pitchers at this point in the season. Morton pitches in the most negative run environment in baseball the last few years and faces a predominantly right-handed Baltimore lineup. However, he had a reverse split last season, striking out more LHBs (32.8%), while generating more ground balls (56.1 GB%, 0.4 Hard-Soft%) against RHBs. That may bring down his upside somewhat, but he still struck out righties at a league average pace last year (20.9%). Clevinger struggles with his walk rate (12.5%), does carry the top strikeout rate on the board and walked just four batters this spring. He completed six innings in nine of his last 13 starts last season. Tanner Roark's value lies in the fact that he is probably the pitcher most likely to finish six innings tonight. He's the only pitcher on the board to average at least six innings per start over the last two calendar years. Lower priced potential pitchers of interest may include Bryan Mitchell, who had higher strikeout rates in the minors than he's had in the majors so far and faces a perennially awful road offense in the Rockies in San Diego tonight, Brian Johnson, who's similarly struggles to miss bats in the majors, but travels to Miami and struck out 13 in 15.2 spring innings, and Andrew Triggs, who has exhibited a double digit SwStr% and 50+ GB% in each of his two seasons before 2017 ended early due to injury. He's in a strong spot at home against a Texas offense that was exposed )82 wRC+, 26.1 K%) outside a very hitter friendly home park last season.

We have a relatively small sample size on Bryan Mitchell, but he looks to be a low strikeout, ground ball pitcher to right-handed batters (52.9%), and a higher strikeout, but lower ground ball pitcher to left-handed batters (45.0%). We'll be looking for home runs from David Ortiz (178 wRC+, .442 wOBA, .359 ISO vs RHP) and Jackie Bradley (137 wRC+, .382 wOBA, .268 ISO vs RHP) tonight, with Ortiz being a top cash game and tournament option with his elite skills against right-handed pitching in general. We should reserve the right-handed Boston bats for a tournament stack, though of course Mookie Betts (142 wRC+, .390 wOBA, .209 ISO vs RHP) is nearly always in play anytime, anywhere. We'd definitely prefer to focus on the lefties as one offs. Andrew Benintendi (176 wRC+, .440 wOBA, .261 ISO vs RHP) is still too cheap on DraftKings, but is relegated to tournament-only use given his spot in the batting order.

Bryan Mitchell has just a 12.7 K% and 35.6 Hard% in an abbreviated 2016 season. The Blue Jays have the second highest run projection on the slate (5.4). Though Mitchell has faced fewer than 250 major league batters in his career, RHBs have hit him just as hard as LHBs (.360 wOBA, 36.5 Hard%). While fairly expensive, this is a potent Toronto lineup that deserves your stacking consideration nearly all the way through. The first seven batters all have at least a .100 wRC+ and .173 ISO vs RHP this season. The top three are obvious and still project for decent value even considering high price tags. Michael Saunders (111 wRC+, .213 ISO vs RHP this season) may be the value play players omit from stacks due to his spot in the order (seventh) with a cost of just $2.6K on FanDuel. The Blue Jays could be in for a big night at home here.