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 Monday and Thursday, I deep dive into research and come up for breath only to write this article. It will always 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
There are a few of very good pitchers in excellent spots for this medium sized eight game slate. We are going to focus on these three pitchers and make sure we don’t fool around with any of the other upside pitchers who are also in decent spots. I believe a couple of them (that I will discuss at length in our members only Slack channels) are landmines and could sink your lineup before your night even begins.
- Charlie Morton
Charlie has been rock solid over his last five games scoring 37, 34, 39, 23 and 58 Fanduel points. Over his last three starts, he has increased his strike ratio by 4% up to 66%. He also has decreased the opposing batter hard hit rate from 31% down to 18%. He’s throwing more strikes, opposing batters aren’t hitting the ball hard, and the results are showing in his Fanduel point totals. The 58 points he had last game was a season high.
Charlie is facing the Rays on Monday who are in Houston and have an implied run total (IRT) of 4.1 runs. The Rays lineup is full of left-handed batters which normally is a difficult proposition for a right-handed pitcher. However, over the past month, Charlie Morton has struck out 28.8% of lefties and held them to a .166 wOBA and .111 ISO. He also has a 3.03 SIERA and 3.31 xFIP to lefties in the same sample size used. He is the real deal against lefties or at least is currently in the zone.
The Rays have Mallex Smith, Corey Dickerson, Logan Morrison, Lucas Duda, and Brad Miller who are all likely to be in the starting lineup for the Rays against Morton. Over the past month, the entire Rays lineup has a .270 wOBA and .165 ISO with a 26.2% strikeout rate. It might not be the easiest play to make but I believe using Morton in cash should be taken into strong consideration and he is certainly GPP viable.
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- Luis Severino
Severino has been a picture of consistency this season. It wouldn’t do us much good taking a look at his season long statistics but they are quite remarkable. He’s going to be in the hunt for a Cy Young in a year or two.
More recently over the last three starts, Luis has increased his pitch speed by 0.9 MPH up to 98.1 MPH. He has increased his strike ratio from 65% to 70%. Opposing batters have a hard hit rate of 23% and an average batted ball distance of 179 feet, both of these numbers are improvements over his season long averages. In his last 21 innings (3 starts), he has 21 strikeouts and only allowed one total earned run. What a beast.
The Tigers have an IRT of 3.7 runs and could have some serious trouble with Severino. Over the past month, the Tigers have a team wOBA of .305 and a .113 ISO against righties. They have a decent strikeout rate of 18.0% but Severino will raise that average with another gem if he’s able to make it four in a row.
- Sonny Gray
For a moment it looked like Sonny was going to be a Yankee. The dust has settled and he’s still an Athletic, for now, and will be in a great spot Monday at home against the Giants.
Over his last three starts, Gray has held opposing batters to a 171-foot average batted ball distance with a 20% hard hit rate. He has scored 37-49 Fanduel points in his last six starts and hasn’t allowed more than two runs in any of them.
The Giants have a boring .292 wOBA and .144 ISO with a 20.2% strikeout rate against righties over the past month. Over the past week (171 at-bats), the Giants have a weak and feeble .076 ISO against righties. It is the second worst ISO in MLB over the past week, second to only the Detroit Tigers who are facing Severino. Gray is in a great spot for cash and GPPs, just like our previous two pitchers.
It is rare to have three different pitchers that are cash viable on a small eight game slate but that’s what we have. It will be important to pay attention to lineups releasing to see if we can gain any edge in picking which pitcher. If you are already a DFS Army VIP member then you know the drill. You’re going to receive a boat load of statistics that are very specific to these pitchers and a handful of others that are solid SP2 on Draftkings or large field GPP plays on Fanduel. They will be discussed in our Slack (specifically my personal channel) and they won’t be for the public. If this is something you’re interested in but you’re not sure if you want to sign up, we have an excellent one-week free trial if you use the link below and the promo code “WIN”.
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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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