Max Fried is good. He’s really frickin’ good.

The question isn’t a binary one of whether or not he’s a really good pitcher, but — for our purposes — whether or not his run prevention is sustainable enough, given his pitch-to-contact style.

I started with the ERA because he’s been very good to us, lately. But we should scrutinize how likely that ERA is to stand up. We should be viewing Fried as deceptively volatile.

His K/9 since 2020 is 24th of the 34 qualified pitchers and his CSW% is 25th. Hey, we’ve had success with contact-heavy pitchers in the recent past — notably Hyun-Jin Ryu, Kyle Hendricks, Marcus Stroman, and Adam Wainwright. It isn’t impossible for fantasy goodness from a guy who doesn’t mow down hitters in a sexy manner. But his 87.4% contact rate in the zone is sixth-highest over that span and this is a big concern because he only averages about 5.2 innings per start.

If Fried were getting volume, we could throw caution to the wind and say 190 strikeouts is 190 strikeouts — even if it took him 200 innings to get there. In the second half of 2021, Fried’s groundball rate went from 45.0% in the first half up to 57.7%. And with it, his ERA was only 1.74 and he pitched 93.0 innings as a reward, as the Braves said, .237 BABIP be damned.

So, Fried can get there. But we’re relying very heavily on balls in play going our way for a lot of months (if not years in dynasty) in one big chunk on 30 starts. And he needs to be elite to get innings.

This is why projections see that the sixth or seventh round is a bit of a reach in a 12-team redraft. Every model we track is rough at the moment without schedules, but they all have his 2021 .278 BABIP bloating near or over .300. THE BAT has his ERA as high as 4.05 for it with a .312 BABIP. They have him with a strong shot at 180 innings, but — again the K/9 tells us that Fried needs to work really hard to get us there on strikeouts.

And the strikeouts aren’t just a singular category on which I’m fixating. Once contact is made, Fried loses a lot of control over his destiny. With a strikeout, he’s in control. This is where the volatility comes in. Do we believe Fried’s low 3.04 ERA from 2021 of the 3.50 xERA? Or THE BAT’s 4.05? Or ATC’s 3.44? I’m not saying to believe THE BAT to make a hyperbolic argument. I’m saying to believe them all because Fried has a wide range of outcomes.

Another dynamic where strikeouts are so valuable: trade baiting. If Fried is just O.K., good luck getting a damn thing for him because people trade for strikeouts and volume a lot more than BABIP-dependence. Fried’s team winning a lot of games helps and getting a quality start in two-thirds of his starts in 2021 helps — from our end. It’s just a tougher sell than lesser real-life pitchers like Jose Berrios or Frankie Montas. Because Berrios and Montas have that higher strikeout ceiling and can be had cheaper.

Frankly, once we draft Fried, we’re stuck with him — for better or worse. On the better side, he’s compiling outs in few pitches and accumulating the wins or quality starts at a low ERA and we’re comfortable with the volume giving us strikeouts. The worse side is one where he’s just fine and no one wants him; not even us.

No one doesn’t want Yordan Alvarez. He’ll be a low-third or high-fourth rounder in 2022 redraft leagues. This isn’t a binary buy-sell article on Alvarez in that we all know he’s good. But do we know how good he is?

Putting Alvarez’ first 976 PAs into context against other players with 750-plus PAs since 2019:

His SLG% ranks third, behind only Mike Trout and Fernando Tatis Jr. His wRC+ is tied for third. His wOBA ranks sixth. And he ranks seventh among hitters in barrel rate with 600-plus batted ball events.

Alvarez is somewhere in the top-ten among real-life hitters in MLB and will likely be toward the bottom of the top-20 among hitters in ADP. Houston is probably gonna keep getting on base a ton, with or without Carlos Correa, so the hitting in the middle of that order is gonna keep showing a profit. The profit that should make up for virtually no expected steals.

Alvarez has a history of injury, but I don’t really care about 25-year-old DH who just played a full season. Personally, I don’t even equate it.

His walk rate could be higher and strikeout rate is about fine. The team coaches contact, so there is room for growth on both ends. Even if the strikeout rate falls without the wall rate rising, we see in Alvarez’ elite barrel rate that contact is good for our purposes.

Alvarez’ .335 BABIP is really high, but I don’t really give a crap about that because he pulverizes the ball on contact so often. High BABIPs are usually ripe with good fortune, but there is such thing as a high quantity of high-quality contact. I’d bank more on his .369 wOBA in 2021 inches up closer to his .389 xwOBA because his quality of contact is so pure. And the super-raw, extremely early returns are agreeing with me out of the gate.

ATC has Alvarez 2022-projected wOBA at .385. THE BAT X at .382 and Steamer at .379.

Alvarez’ .570 xSLG% was far great than his .529 SLG%. ATC has him projected early at .557 for 2022, THE BAT X has .551, and the more conservative Steamer still has him boosted to .546 — .313-projected BABIP be damned.

Factoring in the bats around Alvarez boosting his run production — Jose Altuve the Everyman, a healthy Alex Bregman, the ageless Yuli Gurriel, the high power of Kyle Tucker, and the perpetual hitting efficiency of Michael Brantley — we should be projecting Alvarez as a top-12 fantasy hitter in redrafts and even higher in dynasty and keeper formats. He’s only turning 25 this season and without defense for fantasy or a speed-dependency on the table, he should age very well.

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

There’s some talent on this slate with mixed matchups, so we have a lot of work cut out for us, tonight. Early on, my pool is:

Full slate, so I won’t go through every pitcher, as there are a lot of gas cans, too. If you think I’m leaving someone out, feel free to tweet me. I will confess Zack Greinke and José Berríos are close and might enter my pool. Marcus Stroman has a great matchup, but we can play Kyle Gibson for less in an even juicier matchup, so I left him out, but he’s fine, too.

Lucas Giolito off the IL is way too much of a pitch count concern; for his price, we need volume. He’s projecting very well, with a projected pitch count in the low-80s, so any word that he gets normal workload, and he’s high on my list. Just not aggressively foreseeing that at this moment of the day.

THE ACE — Gerrit Cole

Don’t be scared of Gerrit Cole without the sticky stuff. Since June 23, he has a:

2.89 SIERA
13.65 K/9
15.5% SwStr%
35.1% O-Swing%
2.76 BB/9
1.16 HR/9
11.4% Barrel%

Going into Camden Yards, there could be more concern for lesser control and his awful power prevention than Yu Darvish post-sticky stuff, but that 11.4% is on contact and Cole is inducing chases and not giving up contact.

The Orioles aren’t terrible, so we don’t have to play Cole, but Cole is the best pitcher on the slate and that isn’t close. The control and power concerns with the ballpark are valid reasons to bump him closer to the field, but he’s still way above the field.

THE PIVOTS — Nathan Eovaldi, Frankie Montas

Nathan Eovaldi is firmly the second-best pitcher on the slate and feels safer because he draws the terrible Mariners, who gift strikeouts to all pitchers. Eovaldi’s elite control gets him deep into games for innings, so the context raises his upside into ace territory. He just isn’t Cole.

Cole has that 13-15 strikeout upside every slate against all opponents in every ballpark, whereas Eovaldi is relatively capped. For the price, Eovaldi isn’t a huge step. Battling the megachalk possibility of Cole, his ownership is a huge discount, though. And ownership is a cost. Remember that.

If that’s still too much to spend under the condition of not playing Cole, Frankie Montas draws a tough strikeout matchup, but a great one for run prevention in a great ballpark for doing so. On DK, he’s more than Eovaldi, so the argument is tough; but, on FD, he gets cheaper — where we only play one pitcher. There are a lot of baked-in strikeouts, his control is just a bit worse than Cole’s, and his power prevention has been elite post-sticky: 0.56 HR/9 on a 7.3% barrel rate.

Where I’m not playing Cole, I’m loading up on these two at what could be single-digit ownership on FD. Eovaldi will catch some ownership on DK, but will still be at a huge discount. THE BAT like Eovaldi for more raw points than Cole on DK, so that could put his ownership on the rise, so keep a look out.

THE SP2s — Drew Rasmussen, Jesús Luzardo, Touki Toussaint, Kyle Gibson

Drew Rasmussen has the worse matchup we’re discussing. The Jays are packed with power and don’t strike out much. But Rasmussen has shown elite power prevention and strikeout stuff. Chances are, the Jays win this battle, but we don’t care about what will happen a vast majority of the time. We care about how often the Jays will wet the bed in relation to Rasmussen’s ownership. Rasmussen has the stuff to succeed and any group of hitters can fold any night. This is a solid low-exposure spot for leverage.

The Jesús is a solid pitcher who gives up too much power at times. The Nats really only have a couple of guys to supply it. If Jesús Luzardo can get through he heart of the order, his strikeouts should cruise through this lineup for free. He’s the top spend-down option on both sites, despite his control and power prevention issues, as his K/9 is enough for me. The play is volatile and we should watch ownership before we decide to hit the gas, though. Higher-owned, he becomes a bad play; low-owned, a fantastic play who allows us to do whatever we want for hitting.

Touki Toussaint is all over the place. He can’t find the strike zone, but it might not matter in a great spot for run prevention against the Quad-A Rockies. The Rockies aren’t a great strikeout matchup, but their active roster’s 32.8% O-Swing rate is among the worst in the league this season. This is a sneaky-great spot for Toussaint to rack up the strikeouts. The fear, of course, is whether or not he can command his pitch count to stay in the game long enough.

Everyone is gonna play Kyle Gibson — I think. He draws the Quad-A Cubs, who strike out a ton. Gibson himself doesn’t have the baked-in strikeouts to lock him in, but his lack of command could induce chasing that helps him compile the strikeouts. We’ve seen him go seven (and even eight) innings this season quite a bit, so his seven shutout innings with six strikeout ceiling is in full effect. The downside, of course, is that those potential strikeouts can easily become walks and he barely last four or five innings, which is why I’m more likely to be defensively underweight on the flocking field than aggressive overweight.

Stats cited are since 2020 unless otherwise noted. Park factors via EV Analytics.

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

This slate is loaded with pitching talent, but I have a narrow pool a lot faster than I normally would. Without ownership data, yet, we’ll focus more on deductive reasoning to see how I narrowed this pool to:

Instead of analyzing tiers of the pool, this week, we should go down the list of who I’m likely not playing and why.

Carlos Rodón might be the best pitcher on the slate. It isn’t the matchup with the Red Sox that throws me off so much as his pitch count. He only missed one start with a sore shoulder and I wish he missed more and stretched out again in rehab starts. As is, we have no clue how limited he’s going to be. We can gamble on these scenarios often, but there’s enough pitching on this slate that we don’t have to bother our brains thinking much about it.

Tanner Houck is one of the best per-inning pitchers on this slate, but he hasn’t gone more than 5.1 innings in any starts this season. Yet, he’s priced right around the point where we want shots at six innings.

Joe Musgrove is still a really good pitcher post-sticky stuff, but he isn’t elite. Facing the Dodgers on a full slate, I want elite.

Framber Valdez is fine, but there are a lot of baked-in strikeouts on this slate and he has very little. Besides, his FD price is stupid. On DK, he’s viable, but we’ll get to a far lower-owned play under $10k later.

Tylor Megill is a good pitcher, but has some power prevention issues that don’t seem like early-career bad luck. Against the Yankees, we don’t need to test the skill luck factor.

Trevor Rogers is yet another really good pitcher on this slate. He’s as playable as Rodon, Houck, and Megill. Maybe more playable because his power prevention can neutralize the Braves right-handed thump. If he gets lost in the ownership shuffle, he’s the most likely to enter my pool as the day goes on. But, boy, the Braves can really getcha’.

Shohei Ohtani falls in the Musgrove category of a really good pitcher in a crappy matchup. Ohtani’s command has been on since his beatdown in Yankee Stadium, but the K/9 has fallen to 9.00 in the process. The Astros just don’t strike out, so our ceiling looks more like seven innings with five strikeouts than six or seven strikeouts. And this matters because a shutout, let alone clean innings, are hard to come by in this matchup. On DK, though, we could put him in my pool in the case that we have money left over, but we can spend down further for similar production.

Julio Urías has been great this year. The matchup against the Padres isn’t quite Musgrove or Ohtani’s hands-off matchup, but it’s still a left-handed pitcher against a lot of right-handed thump. That said, 9.67 K/9, 1.84 BB/9, and 1.09 HR/9 on a 5.9% barrel rate is all superstrong and no one is gonna play him at this price, so we can spend up to him with the extra salary. But, again, this is similar to Rogers’ situation. Except Rogers is cheaper and in a better spot.

Then, there’s a bunch of overpriced gibberish like Michael Wacha, Marco Gonzales, Madison Bumgarner, and Jordan Montgomery. Volatile plays with little upside like Eli Morgan, Matthew Boyd, and Paul Blackburn. Then, the gas cans like Chris Ellis, Griffin Jax, Daniel Lynch, and Jon Lester. Blackburn has a notable matchup with the Rangers, but should be overowned for the lack of strikeout upside.

I didn’t forget about Adrian Houser. There’s just nothing to say about him.

I also didn’t forget about Glenn Otto. The kid has electric strikeout stuff that we’d love on DK in a lot of matchups. But the Athletics don’t strike out much and this ballpark depresses strikeouts. Without an innings ceiling, we should be out. But if ownership funnels way up to Germán Márquez and Ian Anderson, he’s certainly viable.

Leaving us with:

Robbie Ray

Robbie Ray is the best play on the slate at first glance. This season has been really great for him because he’s finally found his command. With it, his BB/9 has fallen to 2.28 and his HR/9 down to 1.36 this season — despite an 8.7% barrel rate. Sure, he still gets hit hard when he gets hit, but “when he gets hit” is the caveat, as he’s still compiling 11.49 K/9.

Post-sticky stuff (since June 23), Ray’s gone at least six innings in 13 of 14 starts with 11.33 K/9, 2.17 BB/9, allowing only 0.79 HR/9. I’m not a recency bias guy, but this is clearly an elite pitcher finding his stride.

The Orioles are an about-average matchup, Camden Yards sucks for power prevention, but I don’t care. Looking at what we’ve eliminated, there are so many pluses here that the minuses are blips on the radar.

Tyler Mahle

Ownership on Tyler Mahle is usually tough to gauge on full slates. It looks like Mahle will get overlooked, despite having a great season so far because: (a) people don’t realize how much of a strikeout machine he is and (b) people don’t realize how many the Cardinals are against right-handed pitching. In a pitchers’ park at single-digit ownership, yes, please.

Ian Anderson

This is the chalk on both sites. Ian Anderson is criminally cheap on both sites for the Marlins matchup. So many strikeouts in here that the walks will likely not matter. If we’re spending down on FD, we’re eating the chalk here, but there’s a similarly priced pitcher who’s very similar to whom we can pivot on DK.

Germán Márquez

No one’s gonna play Germán Márquez because of Anderson’s situation, despite Márquez having slightly more K/9 and less B/9. Sure, Márquez has to battle Citizens Bank Park, but he battles Coors just fine, so why the hell would Philly be a problem. They’re an average, so the ceiling of seven strikeout in seven largely clean innings is certainly in play.

Anderson is the better projection, but Márquez is the better DFS play at microscopic ownership over Anderson’s megachalk.

Stats cited are since 2020 unless otherwise noted. Park factors via EV Analytics.

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

Both sites are very different on this slate because of pricing, but the overall slate is such that there are no truly great aces. Without ownership data, we’ll focus more on matchups to narrow our pool:

TIER ONE: KINDA’ ACES — Peralta and Ohtani

Freddy Peralta is the best pitcher on the slate, but he’s projected at only 75 pitches coming off of the IL. This doesn’t take him out of play if there’s an ownership gap between him and Ohtani that supplies us leverage. If Peralta is rolling — translation: throwing strikes — then, 75 pitches can get us some game depth to compile Ks with his elite K/9. His ceiling is capped at under 30 points, but his median projection might be good enough if we can get 15-to-20 from our SP2, as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

We’ll look at the three aces, the primary pivot off of the aces, and some DK SP2 options. Here’s my preliminary pool:

Read the rest of this entry »

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

We’ll look at the current pool I’m using — the chalk and pivots — and then, cover some questionable plays I’m avoiding for the most part at this time. Right now, this is what I’m looking at:

TIER ONE: ACES — Burnes and Flaherty

Jack Flaherty sticks out like a sore thumb because he’s a legitimate ace and is facing a terrible Tigers team that strikes out a ton. They strike out more often than any other pitcher’s matchup on this slate. He’s also pitched six-plus innings in nine of his 13 starts, so he’s staying in if he’s rolling — and he should roll through Detroit tonight for a quality start, a win, and a shot at nine-plus strikeouts.

THE BAT has Flaherty projected for the most raw points and lower ownership on FD, but pretty high ownership on DK. Sucking the air out of the room is the 500-pound gorilla looming over this slate with another idiom that slips my mind.

Corbin Burnes is the best pitcher on this slate and it isn’t close at all. This season, he’s fine-tuned his control and been a friggin’ serial killer:

2.57 SIERA
12.40 K/9
1.63 BB/9
35.1% K-BB rate
0.35 HR/9
2.7% barrel rate

These are the only Cy Young digits on the slate. That said, we’re paying for it.

Burnes is $1,200 more than Flaherty on FD and $1,000 more on DK. Instead of facing the bum-assed Tigers in a pitchers’ park like St. Louis, Burnes has to face a strong Reds lineup in a hitters’ park like Milwaukee. So, there is added risk.

I don’t — personally — think this risk is enough to sway me from the best pitcher on the slate. Flaherty is a really good pitcher. But it would take a great pitcher or maybe 150% of Flaherty’s ownership to take me away from Burnes on either site in single-entry.

In MME play, there’s a decision to be made. I expect the field to spread ownership around to a lot of good pitching that we have on this slate, I’m taking a strong stance by going overweight on both guys. The field wants to have enough lineups to spread exposure. I want to counter that by being potentially overexposed to the two cleat-cut aces.

TIER TWO: THE DK SP2 — Márquez

Germán Márquez isn’t cheap in a vacuum, but he’s way too cheap for the skillset and situation. This is a Coors Field pitcher with only 0.83 HR/9 on a 4.7% barrel rate and near 9.00 K/9. This is a really good pitcher. Add that he’s facing the Cubs and their high strikeout rate against right-handed pitching and I DGAF how the wind is blowing; he’s the best SP2 play on DK.

That said, everyone is seeing this terrible Cubs dynamic and will jam him in, which forces us to call back to savings on Flaherty from Burnes. More importantly, it raises the necessity for us to not play Flahety-Márquez or Burnes-Márquez lineups too freely, as those will be the two chalk combinations. We can play them; we just need to stack off the board when we do.

And we don’t have to play those pairings. There is a wealth of pivots on this slate.

TIER THREE: PIVOTS — Morton, Megill, Berrios, Morgan

Charlie Morton is still a really good pitcher. Where he ranks on this slate among qualified pitchers:

3rd in SIERA
4th in K/9
4th in K-BB%
2nd in HR/9
5th in barrel rate

Morton faces a tough power matchup in the Yankees, but he neutralizes power. The key to this play is that the Yankees have a few guys who strike out a bunch and Morton has baked-in strikeouts. No one’s gonna play him.

Tylor Megill is more than just a background Game of Thrones character. He’s a pretty good pitcher with baked-in strikeouts, decent control, and strong power prevention, who can go six innings, if he’s rolling. The Giants are a really tough matchup, but Citi Field is a great pitchers’ park. There aren’t any good SP plays under $7,000, so we have to consider sprinkling him around.

José Berríos is probably the pitcher after Morton in a bad matchup that I’m considering most. The White Sox are about as bad a matchup as the Yankees, but they strike out more often. This is a guy who can go seven innings against anyone any given night. Remember that more innings equals more strikeout opportunities and, hell, we get fantasy point for innings, too.

Last and certainly least, we have to discuss Eli Morgan. He isn’t any damn good. He walks too many guys and is a launching pad when contact is made. But this is a great run prevention situation. The Rangers are worse than the Tigers and Cubs and we’re considering passing over Burnes for Flaherty and Márquez. We can save a lot of money in some lineups and get the nut matchup. Sure, it can blow up in our faces, but this is baseball.

Baseball is a risky game on which to make wagers of any sort. The temptation on a slate where there is really good pitching is to eliminate all of the high-risk situations as unnecessary. This is incorrect.

Tournaments are won by calculating when to embrace variance. Doing so at SP2 with a guy who struggles to prevent power because he can strike out a man per inning is totally fine. Especially on a slate where the cheapest guy we want to play is $8,200.

Stats cited are since 2020 unless otherwise noted. Park factors via EV Analytics.

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

Tonight, we have a full slate with a lot of options and at 6:00 a.m., I’m in favor of a robust pitching pool and a condensed pool of diversified stacks for hitters. Because, well, we can’t play everyone, and I rarely favor balance over taking a stand. Currently, this is my pitcher pool. We’ll go through the three tiers of these pitchers and briefly sum up why I eliminated others in the end.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our pitching in MLB DFS isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

Tonight is a short slate, so not a lot of great options, so I thought we’d zero in on DraftKings, where we have to play two pitchers. On DK, we have to know when to play about half of the pool and when to condense the pool. With so much bad pitching, it’s a slate to attack that bad pitching with a diversity of hitter stacks and have a condensed player pool.

And even this condensed pool isn’t super pretty, so you can imagine how much fat we’ve cut:

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Our MLB DFS lineups don’t start and end with pitching. I’m not saying to punt pitcher every night or even every now and then. I’m just stressing that each and every slate does not rest upon our pitching. That said, the pitcher position is so vital because it’s the slot where we can get the most accurate projection in an extremely volatile wing of DFS.

Our pitching isn’t just a source of fantasy points. The price tags on pitchers make it so they shape they dictate the freedoms and restrictions of building our lineups. Before reading this article, it’s highly suggested that you read my article, “DFS Pitching Primer,” so the concepts discussed here make more sense.

That we’re not selecting the best players. We’re constructing the lineups which carry the most leverage without sacrificing many projected fantasy points.

Read the rest of this entry »