For Daily Fantasy Sports baseball, nothing is more important than the pitcher. Choosing the correct pitcher can help stave off certain danger when your batters are falling short of their perceived value. Unfortunately, choosing the wrong pitcher can ruin a beautiful team stack that sent several home runs into the bleachers. No matter how many batters you choose correctly if your pitcher gets shelled for six runs in the first inning you are in catch-up mode from the start. Countless hours of research and lineup tuning can go right down the drain in 30 pitches or less. It’s an awful feeling knowing your night is over before you had time to finish your chips and salsa.
This is where I come in. Every Friday for the rest of the season I am going to deep dive into research and come up for breath only to write this article. It will be filled with data for my fellow numbers nerds and analysis on who to play and why you need to consider rostering them.
- Main Slate Musings
This will be a night where there are a handful of excellent pitching options. The issue will not be finding a good one but to make sure you have the best one. My choices will be backed by numbers and data instead of opinion. My goal is to present you with the best choices available based on data and allow you the opportunity to flex your muscle and make the best choice possible for the type of lineup you’d like to construct. Let’s get to work.
- Seth Lugo
In his last ten starts going back to last season, Seth has not allowed more than three runs in any one single game. He offers a solid floor while offering a pretty strong ceiling for being very affordable on both Fanduel and Draftkings. In his two starts this season he has pitched a quality start. He is prone to the long ball but limits damage otherwise. He has thrown 66% of his pitches for strikes and limited opposing batters to a 20% hard hit rate and 88 MPH exit velocity.
Lugo faces the Giants in San Francisco which only helps his cause. In the month of June, the Giants have only struck out 17.5% of the time but that’s about all that they’ve done well. They have the sixth worst OPS (.742), the 8th worst wOBA (.319) and the second worst ISO in the league (.141). They struggle to get on base and can’t hit for power and will be playing in a pitchers ballpark. All of these things add up to Lugo being able to continue to provide his DFS owners with a solid floor.
- Alex Wood
Wood is having a fantastic season. In his last eight starts, he has given up more than five hits just twice and rarely walks batters. He’s excellent at keeping runners off the base paths and it shows in the box scores. In five of his starts he has given up zero earned runs and in a sixth start he only gave up one run (his last start). In 59 innings this season he has struck out 72 batters which not only raises his floor but significantly raises his ceiling. His opponents are only hitting the ball against him for an average of 184 feet with an 88 MPH exit velocity. He’s so good.
All that being said he is strictly a GPP play only on Friday. The visiting Rockies are projected for only 3.4 runs by Vegas, however, when we take a deeper dive into the numbers we can see that the Rockies are actually the best team in MLB against lefties in the month of June. In past 22 days, the Rockies have a .933 OPS (1st), .394 wOBA (1st), .425 BABIP (1st), .210 ISO (7th) and a .333 AVG (3rd). Wood will have his hands full with the Rockies bats even though Vegas doesn’t expect him to. I still like Wood because he’s been so good but the Rockies have been exceptional against lefties which will keep Wood in the GPP category only.
- Chris Archer
Archer has scored over 30 points on Fanduel in 13 of 15 starts this season. It hasn’t mattered who he has played or whether he was home or away. He’s silenced the Yankees twice, the Tigers, Red Sox, and a few other solid offenses. Archer shouldn’t have many problems silencing the Orioles who have been an all or nothing offense for most of the year. Archer is actually my favorite play of the day because of his mix of floor and ceiling potential.
- Trevor Bauer
In the month of June, the Twins have the second-worst wOBA (.308), second-worst OPS (.717) and the worst batting average in MLB (.241). They have had moderate power with a .170 ISO and are striking out 21.2% of the time. Trevor Bauer has been up and down but has the chance to rack up a bunch of strikeouts and get the quality start. He is an excellent GPP play.
Don’t let a pitcher sink you on this beautiful slate. Swim on over to Pitchers’ Island and enjoy the plentiful fruits of my labor. You can find me on Twitter @DFSnDONUTS where I love to interact with my followers and discuss all things sports.
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