Welcome to back to the FRIDAY edition of Dr. StrangeChalk, where I hope to give you some potential pivots for tonight’s 14 game MLB DFS slate. I go by “Thunder Dan” around here and you can find me @ThunderDanDFS on twitter.
This is the latest installment in an ongoing series in which I will focus on identifying the “chalk” and figuring out ways to leverage against it. This may include fading “bad chalk”, stacking an offense against a chalky pitcher, “flipping” your roster construction for the slate, or simply looking for similarly priced pivots who could outperform the chalkier plays any given night.
Since this article was released pretty early in the morning, I will warn you that ownership can be affected throughout the day by which players get touted by various sites today. I am mainly going off Vegas totals, recent performance, and making educated guesses as to what plays the DFS public will be gravitating towards.
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Tonight’s Arms
The pitching is very top heavy tonight, as we have a bunch of expensive aces taking the mound and then the talent level drops off really quickly. The aces I refer to are Trevor Bauer, Jacob Degrom, Gerrit Cole and Patrick Corbin (yes, I am finally willing to admit he’s an ace).
The first question I like to ask is who is going to be the chalkiest (highest owned) in contests tonight? My gut says, Gerrit Cole. Last week he was more heavily owned than a similarly priced Chris Sale, which should show us that the DFS community is still in love with Cole. While Cole came out the gates like gangbusters, he hasn’t topped 50 FD points in eight straight starts. As the third highest priced pitcher on both sites, I think he’s overpriced for his upside and I’ll likely fade him in GPP and cash against a scrappy Tampa team that got to him for four runs in their last meeting.
If you’re playing cash games, I am going to recommend moving down to Patrick Corbin for almost 2000 less. He’s the only one of these four who is pitching at home, and he has simply owned the Giants this season, allowing only four earned runs total in his three starts against them while piling up 24 strikeouts.
For GPPs, I like paying up at pitcher to be contrarian. The MLB DFS conventional wisdom is usually “pay up for pitching in cash, and down in tournaments” which is certainly still a viable strategy tonight with a few cheaper guys in good spots. But rarely do we see a 6-7k pitcher put up the massive ceiling game that we want for a GPP takedown.
This brings me to Degrom and Bauer. Both are road favorites with favorable matchups here. They both are in pitcher-friendly parks as well. On one hand, Degrom gets a national league opponent with no DH which usually helps pad the strikeout total a little. On the other hand, Bauer has been the best strikeout pitcher in all of baseball with 67 (yes, that’s not a typ0) strikeouts in his last six starts. Both of these guys have strikeout rates approaching 30% and are in elite spots tonight. I’ll probably have more Bauer just because I think he could be lower owned and have the highest ceiling, but I’ll definitely have some Degrom shares as well.
I am going to skip over the mid-tier today and drop all the way down to 7200 on FD for my next favorite pitcher, Joe Musgrove of my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates. If you’ve read this column before you know that I’ve been driving the Musgrove bandwagon for over a month now. If you’re frustrated with his last two sub-par outings, I’ll warn you that NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO JUMP OFF! If anything, it’s the time to LOAD UP on some Musgrove tonight in an extremely favorable matchup at San Diego.
One look at our Research Station will show you that Musgrove is ranked right behind Degrom and ahead of Cole and Bauer. His strikeout and walk numbers have continued to be good even with his poor results lately and there’s probably not a better “get right” spot than against the Padres. Musgrove is a pitcher I get to watch every time out and I firmly believe in the quality of his pitches. Don’t fall victim to recency bias, and roll Joe out tonight at his reduced price tag.
The only really cheap pitcher I’m interested in is Marcus Stroman (6200 FD, 6300) against Detroit. He looked good in his first outing back off the DL tossing 5 scoreless innings. He’s never a huge strikeout guy, but is great at getting ground balls and limiting hard contact. If he were able to give us 5-6 innings and get the win tonight at that price, you’d be able to load up on whichever high priced bats you want.
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Tonight’s Bats
The first step of my process when evaluating offenses is usually to look at the Vegas implied run totals of each team and try to discern which of those totals are too high/low based on the pitching matchup, ballpark factor, platoon splits, etc… If we think a team’s total is falsely inflated by things that Vegas loves (home/road team, park factors especially) then we can take advantage by fading those teams, or at least lessening our exposure to those spots and increasing our exposure elsewhere.
The White Sox-Rangers game has the highest total on the slate. This is likely a product of the game being in Texas (remember, better hitting environment than Coors) and the pitchers that are taking the mound. Remember one thing, these are not only bad pitchers in the game, but bad offenses as well. So while the game could end up 10-8, with a full game stack winning you a GPP, it could easily also end up 4-3.
Personally, I love the White Sox against Gallardo. I’m not sure how Gallardo still has a rotation spot in the majors other than Texas just literally has no one else (I mean, right now Bartolo Colon is arguably their #2 starter). Gallardo has allowed 15 baserunners in only 10 innings as a starter and given up 9 runs. I really like the cheap top of the order stack for Chicago tonight (Moncada, Garcia, Abreu). And as
As far as Texas goes, I’m less likely to play a full stack against Dylan Covey who is a decent young pitcher and not a total gas can. I do think that lefties Roughned Odor, Nomar Mazara, and Shin-soo Choo make nice one-offs tho. I’m not sure how chalky the White Sox and Rangers hitters will be, but I want some shares of this game in tournaments for sure.
So who else will be chalky tonight? Our other big total comes from the Angels-Orioles game in Baltimore. Again, we see two sub-par arms on the hill in a positive hitting environment. The Angels have been awfully cold lately and the Orioles are about as volatile as it comes, so even though Hess and Pena are pitching tonight, I don’t have a ton of interest in these offenses.
One game that will surely generate some buzz is the Red Sox-Yankees at Fenway tonight. Eduardo Rodriguez faces C.C. Sabathia and both lefties have their work cut out for them against lineups full of right-handed power hitters and a short porch in left. I’m not likely to roster either pitcher, especially a fly ball pitcher like E-Rod in a park like Fenway, but I wouldn’t be surprised if either them puts up a decent stat line. C.C. has great numbers in his career against the Sox and I expect him to be pumped up for this matchup. There’s plenty of great individual matchups to target here (Stanton, Martinez, etc…) but I wouldn’t be full stacking either of these teams tonight.
Game Stack of the Night – Brewers at Reds in the Great America “Small Park.” Chase Anderson and Sal Romano are underwhelming pitchers, and both of these offenses are red hot! Sign me up!
Sneaky Stack of the Night – Seattle Mariners against Ian Kennedy. I love picking on Kennedy and the Mariners have been hitting the ball really well as a team lately.
Final Thoughts
On a big slate like this, even one low owned play that goes off (pitcher or hitter) can really rocket you up the leaderboard. Resist the urge to play a chalky play that you don’t believe in, and never be afraid to roll with a guy you have a strong feeling about. Trust your gut, if you’ve been playing DFS a while, you know that projections and touts miss just as often as they hit. Baseball is a game full of variance, embrace it!
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