Well hello. Fancy seeing you here. Today is MLB trade deadline day, so we won’t have to worry about late scratches or mid-game pulls anymore. There is a decent chance one or more of the pitchers currently scheduled to start tonight will be on the move before 3 ET, but we’ll have plenty of time to adjust accordingly.
This looks like a pretty horrific slate of pitchers once you get past the first few names, so I can already tell this is a slate where I’ll be doing some really nasty stuff on the pitching front. Let’s talk about some nasty stuff.
Best MLB DFS Pitcher Picks for Monday
- Cam Schlittler ($11,500, vs. Cardinals)
- Logan Webb ($9,500, at Rangers)
- Justin Wrobleski ($9,000, at Cubs)
- Matt Boyd ($8,300, vs. Dodgers)
- Brandon Sproat ($8,000, vs. Pirates)
- Ian Seymooooour ($6,900, at Rockies)
- Bubba Chandler ($6,600, at Brewers)
- Cal Quantrill ($6,000, vs. Giants)
We do have an ace on this slate, and his name is Cam Schlittler. The numbers have been excellent all season (30.7% Ks, 4.8% walks, 2.85 SIERA). I assume his 2.04 ERA will regress a bit between now and the end of the season, but it’s already August, and he has a 2.04 ERA, so, maybe it won’t.
Overall, I’d say the Cardinals are a plus matchup for a righty. Any power they have is really limited to Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson, and there’s an outside chance Burleson will be on another team by the time this game starts. St. Louis isn’t a high-strikeout bunch (19.9% vs. RHP), so maybe it’s not a particularly high-ceiling spot for Schlittler. I like it from a run prevention standpoint, but $11,500 is a high price to pay. I’m guessing most of the field will just play him by default because they won’t feel good about anything else, but I think there’s a pretty easy case for a fade. If he scores something like 20-25 points, you’re not necessarily cooked without him at that salary.
Unfortunately, the issue is figuring out who to play if you don’t just pay up for Schlitty. Logan Webb is real-life good (3.97 SIERA, 52.1% groundballs), but the Ks (19.1%) just haven’t been there at all this year. Texas is a pitcher-friendly ballpark, and there are some strikeouts here (22.6% vs. RHP). The Rangers are also a team involved in trade rumors, so who knows how they’ll look tonight. Decent chance they offload a bat or two, but we’ll see. I think Webb is fine and I expect him to turn in a decent start, but $9,500 is a lot for a guy with a sub-20% K-rate.
We’re just firing darts here, folks. Justin Wrobleski (2.88 ERA) has gotten good results all season, but I’ve been banging the He’s Not Really This Good Drum all year, and he then went out and served up 4 dongs to the Mariners in his last start. His SIERA is a more pedestrian 4.10, and he’ll go into wind-neutral Wrigley tonight to face the Cubs. Chicago isn’t the most high-powered offense vs. lefties (.164 ISO), but there are some strikeouts here (22%). To his credit, Wrobleski has also ramped up the Ks (32.9%) in a big way over the last month. I think he’s probably better than his season-long K-rate, but he’s not a 33% strikeout guy, either. I think the field is going to remain overconfident in Wrobo’s skills, so I’m planning an underweight approach here, too. $9,000 ain’t cheap, either.
This is gross and may well fail, but I’ll side with Matthew Boyd for $700 less on the other side of this matchup. The Dodgers are the Dodgers, but they’re not quite as mighty against lefties (.187 ISO, .343 wOBA. They are quite high-contact vs. LHP (17.5% Ks), but Boyd has been better than Wrobleski in a few areas, including strikeout rate (21.9%) and SIERA (4.00). Interesting! The Dodgers don’t have too many hitters who really scare you as a lefty, and Boyd’s elite numbers against LHBs (.051 ISO, .238 wOBA, 25.8% Ks, 64.3% groundballs) should (hopefully) help him neutralize guys like Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. I like this more than I should, but the ownership should be reasonably low, as well.
Brandon Sproat? He’s been a Wild Child all year, with a 24% K-rate to go along with an 11.5% walk rate. The walks are even higher over the last month (14.5%). Pittsburgh is a pretty patient lineup against righties (9.7% walks), though they’re also a group who’ll strike out (22%). He’s not very good yet, but nobody other than Schlittler is very good on this slate, so Sproat is, by default, on my radar at $8,000.
This is a free country and you’re allowed to play any of the $7,000-$7,800 guys, though I’m probably not doing much of that. Ian Seymoooooour ($6,900) has some of the best numbers of any pitcher on the slate (27.8% Ks, 7.4% walks, 3.49 SIERA), but he’s going into Coors Field, and the Rays have given him an extremely short leash even when he’s pitching well. While Colorado has hit righties well, the same cannot be said of lefties (.145 ISO, .329 wOBA, 24.1% Ks). It’s still Colorado and there is obvious risk, but a $6,900 salary mitigates some of that risk, so I don’t mind Seymour.
Bubba Chandler isn’t all that different from his mound opponent, Sproat. Like Sproat, he’s a big-time prospect, but we really haven’t seen it all season (20.1% Ks, 12.1% walks, 4.95 SIERA). Chandler also hasn’t really shown any signs of coming around over the last month. That said, the Brewers will do some whiffing against RHP (23.4%), and it’s not a power-heavy group aside from a couple of bats. Most notably, Chandler is only $6,600 on a shit pitching slate. If you just want to get out of here with something cheap that isn’t pitching in Colorado, I’m good with it.
I have even more interest in Cal Quantrill, a sentence I never expected to type. His 4.72 SIERA sure makes that 3.84 ERA look fake, and his 15.7% K-rate is incredibly low. The case for Quantrill is that he’s $6,000 and taking the mound in a pitcher-friendly park against a Giants offense that just traded its lowest-strikeout hitter, Luis Arraez. He hasn’t really been bad in terms of yielding power or damage. At $6,000 on this slate, I’d probably be thrilled with 12 points. I think he can do that.
SP Rankings
- Schlittler
- Boyd
- Quantrill
- Chandler
- Sproat
- Seymour
- Webb
- Wrobleski
Best MLB DFS Stacks for Monday
- Rays (at Michael Lorenzen)
- Rockies (vs. Ian Seymoooooour)
- Yankees (vs. Michael McGreevy)
- Padres (at Brandon Pfaadt)
- Blue Jays (at Cristian Javier)
- Astros (vs. Shane Bieber)
- DBax (vs. Michael King)
The obvious first stop for most will be Coors, though, for the second straight series, we have a pretty underwhelming offense coming in here. The Rays’ great win-loss record isn’t a result of their offense, but that isn’t to say they don’t have some capable hitters. More importantly, they’re facing Michael Lorenzen, who is awful even if he’s not pitching in the game’s most hitter-friendly setting.
I don’t care about splits in this matchup, though Lorenzen has had far more success vs. RHBs this season. That doesn’t necessarily jive with his long-term track record, plus the Rays’ best hitters are the right-handed Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz. The lefties with power are Jonathan Aranda, Cedric Mullins, and Victor Mesa, but speed tends to thrive in Colorado, which also puts Chandler Simpson, Taylor Walls, and Richie Palacios on the radar. Yeah man, just play ’em all.
I kinda like Seymoooour, and the Rockies are atrocious against southpaws, but it’s still Coors, so I’ll play the Colorado side, too. Hunter Goodman is extremely obvious. Cole Carrigg, Jake McCarthy, and Kyle Karros are the only other Rockies with remotely good numbers vs. LHP on the year. Tyler Freeman and Willi Castro are cheap enough.
The Yankees are a good stack against Michael McGreevy, a right-hander with a lowly 13.6% strikeout rate against left-handed hitters. As we know, Yankee Stadium is an elite home run park for left-handed hitters, so it’s a good situation all around for Trent Grisham, Ben Rice, Spencer Jones, Jazz Chisholm, Jasson Dominguez, Ryan McMahon, and Austin Wells. If Luis Garcia is ready to make his team debut, all the better.
The Michael King/Brandon Pfaadt matchup seems exploitable on both sides. The DBax have been worse than I expected them to be offensively, but I’m still always happy to play a Corbin Carroll/Ketel Marte/Geraldo Perdomo mini. The Arizona stack is further dinged by the Padres’ elite bullpen, but it is what it is. Stacking the Padres is rarely not a regrettable endeavor. Pfaadt also hasn’t been as power-prone this season, though lefties (.185 ISO) have still gotten to him a bit. Jackson Merrill and Gavin Sheets are the Padres’ only useful LHBs. Jake Cronenworth is cheap, at least, while paying up for Fernando Tatis Jr. is still something I’d do in a stack.
Both sides of the Toronto/Houston game are also interesting. Cristian Javier is bad. We’ll see if the Blue Jays trade some guys. They’ve also been quite the disappointment offensively, but, again, Cristian Javier’s badness probably wins out. George Springer (revenge), Nathan Lukes, Daulton Varsho, Kazuma Okamoto, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., come on down. Vladdy will hit a homer again at some point, I assume. Might as well be tonight. Jesus Sanchez (revenge!) is also cheap.
The Astros will take on the withering husk of Shane Bieber, assuming he’s still a Blue Jay by then. The Astros, despite lacking talent, just keep hitting. Yordan Alvarez and Jeremy Pena do not lack talent at all, while Christian Walker, Yainer Diaz, and Isaac Paredes are probably next on the list.
I also do not mind a mini-stack of Cubs righties (Suzuki, Bregman, Kelly + PCA), assuming Wrobleski is popular.
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.
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