Welcome to the June 29th Edition of Painting the Black, an MLB Pitching Breakdown for Fanduel, DraftKings, and Fantasydraft!
In case you all didn’t know, my name is Matt, mdellagnese14 on twitter. I am currently a student at Springfield College with a love and passion for sports, mainly baseball.
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I am mostly a Fanduel player, so the content in my articles will be for geared mainly towards Fanduel. However, I will include pricing from all three sites (Fanduel, Draftkings, FantasyDraft). Some plays may be better off for the two pitcher sites and I will mention that when needed about a pitcher.
Pitching is one of the most, if not themost important position in your MLB lineups and selecting the right one will help you tremendously. Go check out the MLB Pitching Strategy article to get my thought process on picking these pitchers each slate!
NOTE: most of the stats I used are from a 14-game sample to the handiness of pitchers. If I reference season numbers, I will mention that!
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BULLPEN REPORTS
Yesterday’s Results
Since we had a split slate, I won’t have results for yesterday!
Main Slate
Nick Pivetta (8.6k FD) (9.5k DK) (18.9k FD2) vs WSH
Pivetta just faced off against this Nationals team his last start, but this time it is a home game. Pivetta has been better at home this year and his ERA is almost a full 3 runs lower at home than the road this year. At home, he is allowing a .267 wOBA with a 28.6% strikeout rate on the season. Pivetta has immense upside in this matchup as well. Over the last 14 vs RHP, the Nationals have a 24% strikeout rate with a 76 wRC+ and .285 wOBA, with a .097 ISO. For all you BvP’ers, don’t look at the BvP against him for Washington because it’s pretty good. Any team can go cold at any time, and the Nationals have been a bit cold of late. Pivetta is a GPP option for me tonight.
Jacob deGrom (11.7k FD) (13.6k DK) (26.7k FD2) @ MIA
deGrom is one of the top options on the slate tonight and he is one of my favorites as well. There are a few top arms tonight that we can use and we should spread out our exposure to the top 4 pitchers tonight. The Marlins have been very pesky lately, but they still have a 24.6% K rate over their L14. The Marlins have seen him 117 at-bats against deGrom and just a .248 average with a .060 ISO and a 23.9% K rate. deGrom has been the only bright spot for the Mets team of late. He is as consistent as it gets when you have a pitcher. Over his last 8 starts, he has just 1 game under 40 fanduel points and has a 31.4% strikeout rate this season. deGrom is a great option for all formats this evening.
Gerrit Cole (11.5k FD) (13k DK) (24.8k FD2) @ TB
Cole is another one of the top options on the slate tonight. He comes into this start with a 36.3% K rate and 8% walk rate. He is sort of on the downward trend, but this matchup is prime for him. McCullers shut down the Rays last night and Cole should be able to do the same tonight. The Rays have not seen him a ton, but still only have a .182 average against him. The Rays come into this game with a 27.2% K rate in their L14 vs RHP with the 2nd lowest wRC+ of 62 and a very low .257 wOBA. He’s expensive tonight, but him, like deGrom is consistent. Cole should easily be able to score 40+ fanduel points in this matchup tonight. Over his last 8 starts, he has just 1 game under 30 fanduel points and has 5 over 40. For his price, we do want him to score upper-40’s to 50+. Cole should be able to go deep into this game and get a bunch of strikeouts.
Patrick Corbin (9.6k FD) (11.9k DK) (23.1k FD2) vs SF
Corbin has been very good this year and faces off against a Giants team that he has faced a bunch this year. Over 20.2 innings against the Giants this year he has given up just 4 earned runs, getting 24 strikeouts and allowing just a .141 batting average. Against LHP, the Giants are among the worst teams right now. They have just a 20.4% K rate, but also have just a .183 average, .243 wOBA, and 55 wRC+. They are falling victim to low BABIP, but Corbin has dominated them already so many times this year. He is having a career year this year with a 32.5% K rate with an amazing 2.81 SIERA. Corbin is one of my favorite plays tonight and could get over-looked with the 3 studs that are priced above him. He is a wonderful pivot and salary saver under 10k on fanduel this evening. Corbin has also been more of a reverse splits pitcher this year, meaning he pitches better to right-handed hitters than left-handed hitters. He’s allowing just a .237 wOBA to RHH opposed to a .345 to lefties. The Giants projected lineup right now shows a few lefties, but also has 5 righties. The more righties the better for Corbin tonight. I love him in all formats.
Trevor Bauer (12k FD) (13.3k DK) (25.7k FD2) @ OAK
The most expensive pitcher on fanduel, and right behind deGrom on DK and FD2 tonight is Trevor Bauer. I’m hoping the 12k price on FD will keep people off him, but he has been nothing but consistent all season. Can you believe that he has not had a start under 40 fanduel points since May 11th? Believe it, because it’s true. He is coming off of 4 straight starts with 54+ fanduel points and topping 67 once. Besides 1 bad start this year, Bauer has always been more than 30 fanduel points and his strikeouts have been through the roof. He has a 31.8% K rate this year and a 3.04 SIERA getting 45% groundballs too. The A’s are one of the hottest teams vs RHP in the L14, but they are very suspect to striking out and going cold. When a very good pitcher faces off against a hot offense, more times than not the pitcher will come out on the better side. Bauer is amazing play in all formats.
Marco Gonzales (7.3k FD) (7.8k DK) (15.3k FD2) vs KC
A pretty name? No, but a great GPP option for me this evening. I love picking on the Royals lately as they have been horrible against everyone. Gonzales used to be a guy people picked on a lot, but he actually is a good pitcher. His strikeout rate is not that high (21.1%) but he isn’t walking many hitters and has a 3.74 SIERA. His groundball rate helps him out to get outs and he does not give up a ton of home runs. Against LHP in the L14, the Royals have a 23% K rate with a 77 wRC+ and .282 wOBA. Their projected starting lineup has a .326 xwOBA and just a 0.094 ISO with an average DFSA Grade of 60.21. Those are all on the lower end of things also. Before squaring off with hot offenses (Boston, Yankees, Angels) he had 3 straight games of 40+ fanduel points. He has been good for 6+ innings almost every start this year and can easily get 30+ fanduel points tonight. His strikeouts have been up the last 3 starts getting 5,6,7 in his last 3. Gonzales will likely be virtually un-owned tonight and I think he’s a great GPP play.
Joe Musgrove (7.2k FD) (7.6k DK) (15k FD2) @ SD
Musgrove has been brutal of late, but I hope that keeps people off him. The Padres have been horrible vs RHP of late and have one of the highest strikeout rates in the MLB. That number is 28.7% while having a .278 wOBA and 76 wRC+. Looking at our lineups page, you can see how bad their projected lineup looks. For easy purposes, below here is the projected starting lineup and their numbers for the Padres.
These numbers a HORRIBLE and Musgrove ranks as one of our highest DFSA Grades tonight. Now 6 starts under his belt, he has a 21% K rate with a 6% walk rate. I wish the strikeouts were a bit more, but he can easily get 5-7 any time he starts. Musgrove is a good pitcher and showed that when he was with the Astros. The Padres are not an offense that scares me tonight and I would have no problem rolling Musgrove out in tournaments and using him as an SP2 on two pitcher sites.
MAIN SLATE RANKINGS
- Trevor Bauer (all formats)
- Jacob deGrom (all formats)
- Gerrit Cole (all formats)
- Patrick Corbin (all formats)
- Joe Musgrove (GPP)
- Nick Pivetta (GPP)
- Marco Gonzales (GPP)
