Howdy, folks. It’s Wednesday, so we’ve got a bundle of afternoon games on the schedule, but I’m here to talk about the main slate. Things get underway a little early at 6:45 PM ET, so don’t get caught out. This slate looks quite a bit better than an early slate that had approximately zero good pitchers on it, so at least we have that going for us.
We still don’t have to worry about Coors Field tonight, but we do have the A’s playing their 125th consecutive home game, sadly. I suspect that will once again be the chalky spot for bats, but I suppose we’ll have to dig a little further to figure that out. Let’s figure it all out together, shall we?
MLB DFS Pitcher Picks (6/17)
- Braxton Ashcraft ($9,800, at ATH)
- Gavin Williams ($9,300, at MIL)
- George Kirby ($9,000, vs. BAL)
- Carlos Rodon ($8,700, vs. CWS)
- Kyle Bradish ($8,300, at SEA)
- Javier Assad ($6,300, vs. COL)
- Brandon Sproat ($5,800, vs. CLE)
The most expensive pitcher on the slate is…Braxon Ashcraft? Can’t say we’ve said that before. The Pirates’ right-hander has pitched well (26.2% Ks, 3.29 SIERA, 45% groundballs), and there’s nothing under the hood that makes him look illegitimate. Good for him? The problem? He’s pitching in Sacramento, where it’s consistently 200 degrees. The A’s are also a much lower-K lineup vs. RHP (18.6%) with plenty of power (.176 ISO, 10% barrels vs. RHP).
While I think Ashcraft is an interesting leverage play, assuming the A’s are somewhat chalky, he’s certainly not a priority play on this slate at $9,800.
Noted stud Gavin Williams is back, this time on the mound in Milwaukee. This guy is a badass, with a 28.7% strikeout rate alongside a much-improved 8.1% walk rate this season. Williams has only walked 6.2% of hitters over the last month, too. His SIERA is almost identical to his ERA, which we don’t really see all that often. The Brewers aren’t a high-strikeout lot (21.7%) and they will take walks (10.7%). This team is also hitting for more power (.172 ISO) than we’re used to, along with a healthy .350 wOBA vs. right-handed pitching.
I don’t love the matchup, but $9,300 is a reasonable enough asking price for one of the slate’s better pitchers. I will note that Williams has yielded some power (.204 ISO, 14.3% barrels) to lefties, and the Brewers can pile up at least 6 LHBs against him.
It feels like it’s been a while since George Kirby has been on a slate. Maybe that’s anecdotal and I’m wrong. My memory only goes back about 4 hours. He’ll take a turn tonight at home against the Orioles, the same bunch he faced in his last start on the East Coast. Kirby’s 3.73 SIERA beats his 4.07 ERA, but the strikeout stuff (21.1%) has been painfully average this year. Kirby has always been a guy who relies more on elite control and keeping the ball on the ground (52%). A matchup with the O’s should help his strikeout potential (23.3% vs. RHP), but this is another team with quite a bit of thunder in the bats (.179 ISO, .330 wOBA vs. RHP).
I like the ballpark, but I’m not all that enthused by the matchups for any of these $9,000+ options. I think Williams is the best play as the highest-strikeout pitcher of the group, followed by Kirby thanks to the ballpark, while Ashcraft is a pretty distant third.
Carlos Rodon still has an ugly 14.7% walk rate this year. Control has never been a strength, but I also don’t really think he’ll continue to be that erratic. The Ks (26.4%) are in line with what we saw last year, and the Stuff+ still looks excellent. The White Sox have been pretty thunderous (.217 ISO) against lefties, while they only have a few high-strikeout hitters. Again, not a prime matchup, but I do believe in Rodon’s talent, and $8,700 is a reasonable asking price.
Kyle Bradish – like Kirby – will also be facing the same team for the second time in a row, this time in pitcher-friendly Seattle. I think there are more Ks in the offing than he’s shown (22.6%), while the walks (12.1%) have been problematic. Seattle (23.6%) has been a solid matchup for Ks, and it’s not a very patient lineup once you get past JP Crawford and El Dumper Grande at the top of the order. They have been slugging (.201 ISO vs. RHP), so there’s that. Bradish hasn’t been in good form, but I don’t mind the $8,300 salary. As is the case with seemingly every pitcher on the slate, the matchup isn’t giving me much confidence, but he’s another solid play given the context.
After that we can skip alllllll the way down to Javier Assad ($6,300) at home against Colorado and Brandon Sproat ($5,800) at home against Cleveland. There’s nothing eye-catching about Assad’s numbers (16% Ks, 6% walks, 4.32 SIERA), but he does have a decent groundball lean (47%), and, ya know, it’s the Rockies on the road. They’ll strike out (22.9%), but they only have a few high-groundball hitters. There’s also some decently hitter-friendly wind in this one, so that’s worth considering. Assad is cheap enough to be playable, but he won’t be a core part of my night or anything.
I think Sproat is pretty good. His season got off to a miserable start, and he’s still sporting an ugly 5.70 ERA. Strikeouts (21.8%) have been slow on the come-up, while the walks (11.5%) are obviously too high. His 4.48 SIERA is an upgrade on his ERA, and the Guardians sans Jose Ramirez are not a very good offense (.131 ISO, .302 wOBA). Cleveland’s patience (10.8% walks) is a potential speedbump for Sproat, but at $5,800, you don’t need him to go out there and score 30 points. Cleveland also has just a 3.6 implied run total here, so oddsmakers expect Sproat to find some success. For $5,800, I think that’s a solid deal.
SP Rankings
- Williams
- Kirby
- Rodon
- Sproat
- Bradish
- Assad
- Ashcraft
Top MLB DFS Stacks (June 17)
- A’s (vs. Ashcraft)
- Pirates (at Aaron Civale)
- Red Sox (vs. Max Scherzer)
- Giants (at JR Ritchie)
- Rockies (at Assad)
- Cubs (vs. Sean Sullivan)
- Braves (vs. JT Brubaker)
- Blue Jays (at Jake Bennett)
- Yankees (vs. Anthony Kay)
There are only 2 teams on the slate – the Cubs and Pirates – with implied run totals of at least 5. The Red Sox (4.9), Yankees (4.8), Athletics (4.8), and Braves (4.7) are not far off the pace, though.
The Cubs are at home with the winds at their pinstriped backs against Sean Sullivan, a left-hander set for his 2nd MLB outing. He only threw 49 pitches in his first start last week, so we’re probably looking at something like an extended opener followed by a bunch of bullpen. Chicago’s right-handed hitters – Seiya Suzuki, Nico Hoerner, Ian Happ, Alex Bregman, Dansby Swanson – will probably be the chalkier options against the southpaw, though the blazing-hot Pete Crow-Armstrong will attract some attention in stacks. They’re a fine stack, though I’m likely to take an underweight approach here again.
Aaron Civale just isn’t very good. He’s not striking anyone out (15.8%), while he’s served up an overall .223 ISO, .363 wOBA, and 8.5% barrel rate, including a particularly gross 13.2% clip vs. RHBs. Civale isn’t keepiung the ball on the ground at all, either. There’s nothing about his skill set that suggests he’s remotely equipped to pitch in these settings. So, Pirates. Their best bats are the lefties – Spencer Horwitz, Brandon Lowe, Bryan Reynolds, and Ryan O’Hearn. I do think it’s an awesome spot for Henry Davis and his underrated power, while I’m good with really anyone who cracks the order. I’m still prioritizing The Big Lefties, as usual.
The Athletics’ spot against Ashcraft is trickier, as this is actually a talented pitcher. I’d still rather play the A’s than play Ashcraft in this spot, but I still don’t have much conviction here overall. I am always game for one-offing Nick Kurtz or Shea Langeliers, but I’m not really thrilled with the rest of this lineup. Tyler Soderstrom, Carlos Cortes, and Zack Gelof have hit for power this season. Lawrence Butler really hasn’t, though we know he has the ability in there somewhere. Ashcraft has weird splits. He’s striking out lots of lefties (30.5%), while he’s generating lots of groundballs (56.9%) against RHBs. Langeliers is a low-strikeout righty who rarely hits the ball on the ground, so he’s probably my favorite individual bat for this matchup, followed by Kurtz, simply because Kurtz is unbelievably good.
The Red Sox are probably the only offense on this slate facing a future Hall-of-Famer, but Max Scherzer is not a future Hall-of-Famer because of how good he is in 2026. Through 6 starts, this guy has a 13.7% strikeout rate, a 10.8% walk rate, an ERA north of 10.00, and a SIERA pushing 6.00. He may go out there and occasionally put up a good outing, but at this point, any good outing is more luck-based than skill-based.
TLDR: He sucks now!
The field knows Scherzer sucks now, of course, so the Red Sox probably won’t fly under the radar. The counterargument is that Boston’s offense also sucks, so it’s a question of Who Sucks More. There isn’t much to like among Boston’s bats these days, but Wilyer Abreu, Jarren Duran, and Willson Contreras all have double-digit barrel rates this season against RHP, so that’s the mini-stack I’d prefer to roll with. There’s a chance Mickey Gasper leads off for this team – for some reason – so you can always play the cheap catcher as a part of your stack. Ceddane Rafaela would probably be my No. 5 for a full stack.
The Blue Jays take their swings against lefty Jake Bennett at Fenway, which is one of the best hitter’s parks in the league for right-handed hitters. Bennett has managed to strike out a whopping 8% of RHBs this season, so this is a pretty awesome spot for George Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ernie Clement, Kazuma Okamoto, Brandon Valenzuela, and Charles McAdoo. This might be my favorite stack on the entire slate, especially given what looks like reasonably light ownership.
The Braves will face JT Brubaker to start, but this is more of a bullpen game for San Francisco. I’m really not that interested in the Braves as a result, but you can always make a case for a dusting of guys like Matt Olson, Drake Baldwin, Michael Harris, Austin Riley, and Ozzie Albies.
I prefer the Giants’ side against JR Ritchie, a rookie with a SIERA pushing 5.00. Ritchie has been able to generate groundballs (62.1%) against righties, but there isn’t much there for lefties. Great spot for Rafael Devers, Bryce Eldridge, Jung Hoo Lee, and Luis Arraez. Willy Adames and Casey Schmitt are RHBs, but both have low groundball rates. The Thing That Sucks is that Devers and Eldridge are both 1B-only.
The last team on my radar is the Yanks against Anthony Kay. The problem is the Yankees’ best hitters are lefties, and Kay has really been unhittable for LHBs. The opposite is true of righties, so Paul Goldschmidt, Amed Rosario, Anthony Volpe, and Jose Caballero are fine plays. Not exactly a murderer’s row there, though.
I don’t hate a dusting of the Rockies’ lefties (plus Hunter Goodman) against Assad – Jake McCarthy, TJ Rumfield, Willi Castro, Cole Carrigg.
Stack Confidence-o-Meter
- Pirates
- Blue Jays
- Giants
- A’s
- Red Sox
- Cubs
- Yankees
- Rockies
- Braves
Noah Simpson is a New England-based DFS writer who has spent the better part of a decade obsessing over MLB DFS. He got his start playing DFS recreationally before realizing he was spending more time building spreadsheets than actually watching games, and decided to make it official. At DFSBuild, Noah covers MLB DFS strategy with a focus on finding edges that casual players overlook. When he’s not staring at Statcast data, he’s somewhere on a hiking trail in Maine with his two dogs, Sandboy and Johnner, who are undefeated at ignoring his lineup advice, because they are dogs. They don’t have the cognitive or motor skills required to operate a computer, let alone process complex theories and information.
Want more winning DFS plays like this? Get our daily core plays, leverage spots, and strategy sent straight to your inbox.
Leave a Reply