Howdy, folks. It’s Thursday, so there’s barely any baseball happening today, but there is still enough to get me to write about it. Tonight’s 4-game slate looks like a pile of dung, but it’s our pile of dung, and sometimes we can win money on dung-pile slates like this one.
I suppose we might as well just do that.
MLB DFS Pitcher Picks for August 6
- Ranger Suarez ($8,800, vs. White Sox)
- Michael Wacha ($8,500, vs. Twins)
- Bailey Ober ($7,900, at Royals)
- Martin Perez ($7,600, vs. Marlins)
- Luis Castillo ($7,300, at Red Sox)
- Janson Junk ($6,600, at Braves)
- Walker Buehler ($7,000, at DBax)
- Kohl Drake ($6,300, vs. Padres)
Yep, that’s all of ’em. In multi-entry, I will have exposure to 100% of the starters on this slate, for better or worse. Surely, for worse. The closest thing we have to an ace is Boston’s Ranger Suarez, who draws a home matchup against the White Sox. It sure looks like Suarez will be overwhelming chalk by default, which is Not Great.
Suarez has made 2 starts since coming off the IL, and he’s thrown 64 and 65 pitches in those starts, respectively. He was somewhat efficient in nearly completing 5 innings on those 65 pitches in the last game against the Dodgers. Suarez missed nearly a month with a groin strain, and the pitch count he’ll have tonight is certainly questionable. I suppose 80 is a reasonable target, but 70-75 wouldn’t shock me at all, either.
An $8,800 pitcher who will be lucky to throw 80 pitches sounds like a bad play, especially if he’s going to get 60%+ ownership. Suarez has pitched well this season (25.7% Ks, 3.55 SIERA), though his groundball rate (40.8%) is down considerably from his career 50.8% mark. Not a bad trade-off for the increased strikeouts, I suppose. The White Sox are pretty heavy on the Ks against lefties (24.6%), and the bottom half of the lineup these days is pretty weak. There’s still a lot of thunder at the top, though at least Suarez will hold the platoon advantage over Munetaka Murakami and Colson Montgomery.
Ranger is fine, but it’s a lot of ownership for a guy who may be wildly lucky to crack 20 DK points.
Michael Wacha has been real-life good, but fantasy is not real life, that’s why it’s fantasy. A 3.51 ERA is perfectly cromulent, though he doesn’t come with many Ks (19.7%) and tends to rely on soft contact and BABIP going his way. Wacha has limited damage, though right-handed hitters (.213 ISO) have done some slugging against him. The Twins (.184 ISO, .331 wOBA) have been a productive offense even without Byron Buxton, and their low-strikeout ways make it unlikely Wacha spikes a big score here. He’s steady enough to be a viable option at $8,500 on such a putrid pitching slate, but again, it’s not all that likely he puts up a score you have to have to win a tournament.
Bailey Ober was once a solid starter, but he’s done nothing but step on rakes over the past couple of seasons. His K-rate has dwindled all the way to 17.2% this year. The control is still there, but he’s as average as it gets in every other way. Lefties have really given him trouble, and the Royals can throw as many as 6 of those his way. Most of them aren’t particularly imposing LHBs, but I also don’t see much of a reason to expect Ober to thrive in this matchup.
Martin Perez will probably get some ownership at $7,600 for a home matchup against Miami. Perez randomly destroyed the Mighty Washington Nationals in his last outing. Over the years, he’s been one of those lucky, Nick Martinezy types who outrun Lady Luck and find a way to post a respectable ERA. His 4.58 SIERA puts him right around Ober this season, and he’s never been a source of strikeouts. Perez’s walk rate is also north of 9% over the past 2 seasons. He can generate groundballs, though, which could be a useful skill against a Marlins team with some high-groundball bats near the top of the order:
I will note that the Marlins are a decent offense with pretty good power numbers against LHP on the year (.201 ISO, .345 wOBA), but their 4.1 total is the 2nd-lowest on this slate, ahead of only the White Sox’ 3.8 mark.
Luis Castillo will make his White Sox debut against the Red Sox in Boston. Good on the Mariners for finding a taker for him, because he appears to be cooked. Castillo’s 19.4% K-rate is the lowest of his career, and he’s benefited quite a bit from making half of his starts in Seattle. Fenway Park does not have friendly confines for a pitcher, though Castillo does still have respectable numbers overall this season against same-handed bats. Almost all of his issues have come against lefties. For all of Boston’s recent success, this is still a pretty mediocre lineup vs. right-handed pitching (.170 ISO, .319 wOBA). They’ve been much more potent over the last month (.197 ISO, .349 wOBA).
The only lefties scheduled to face Castillo are Nick Sogard, Wilyer Abreu, Masataka Yoshida, and Jarren Duran. It’s also worth adding that Fenway is generally a much more favorable park for right-handed power bats. Boston is going to be the chalk stack on this slate, so I don’t mind hunting leverage with Castillo in some lineups. I’d say it takes some courage to play him, but it takes courage to play any of the pitchers on this slate. At least by playing Castillo, you’re potentially flying past half of the field if he manages to keep the Red Sox in check.
Strikeouts are not a part of Janson Junk’s game (18%), but he has good control and a solid groundball lean (44.8%). Atlanta is one of the slate’s more strikeout-heavy offenses (23.4%), so maybe Mr. Junk can find a few extra Ks. They also hit for a lot of power against RHP (.201 ISO, .331 wOBA). He’s $6,600 and likely to be one of the slate’s lower-owned pitchers, so I’ll have a dusting of him in larger-field stuff. No need for this in single-entry or anything.
The same can be said of both pitchers in Arizona, Walker Buehler and Kohl Drake. Buehler isn’t anything close to what he used to be. While his overall numbers this season aren’t bad, over the last month he’s started to look a little more like the gas can we saw last season between Boston and Philadelphia. He’s a low-strikeout guy with control trouble these days, so he’s living up to his name in that regard. The DBax are one of the weaker offenses on this slate (.150 ISO, .317 wOBA vs. RHP), but they’re also patient. I’d rather take the $400 discount with Junk.
The Padres (.107 ISO, .308 wOBA) have been awful enough against lefties to make Kohl Drake look viable, especially after Mitch Bratt dominated them just last night. The issue is Drake has also been miserably bad, so we’re really just throwing darts here. Better play than Buehler, I guess.
SP Rankings
- Suarez
- Perez
- Castillo
- Wacha
- Ober
- Junk
- Drake
- Buehler
Best MLB DFS Stacks for Thursday
- Padres (at Drake)
- Red Sox (vs. Castillo)
- Braves (vs. Junk)
- Marlins (at Perez)
- Royals (vs. Ober)
- DBax (vs. Buehler)
There’s no such thing as a bad play on this slate on the hitting side. The White Sox and Twins are certainly viable against pitchers likely to generate significant ownership.
If you’re playing Suarez + Wacha + Red Sox + Royals, congrats, you’re playing the same thing everyone else is playing. All good plays individually, but you’ll have to tweak your #combinatorics if you’re trying to do anything better than crawling across the cash line.
Castillo has been quite the horror show against lefties (.247 ISO, .371 wOBA, 12.4% barrels), so most Boston stacks out there will likely include Wilyer Abreu, Jarren Duran, Masataka Yoshida, and Nick Sogard. Willson Contreras will presumably be the popular No. 5 to slot in there by default. I doubt Ceddane Rafaela and Caleb Durbin will be contrarian by any means, but maybe subbing them in for one or two of the lefties is one way to make your Sox Stax look a little different.
Ober’s numbers against lefties are similarly atrocious (.242 ISO, .332 wOBA, 12% barrels). Jac Caglianone, Carter Jensen, Michael Massey, Isaac Collins, John Rave, and Kyle Isbel, come on down. I’m still jamming Bobby Witt Jr., obviously, though maybe swapping Sal Perez in for Jensen is something you can do.
People love to play the Braves. Junk isn’t great, but he’s also not quite as inflammable as some of the other pitchers out there. The Big Lefties (Baldwin, Olson, Ozzie, Harris) are going to look good here by default. I’ll probably be underweight.
Perez isn’t good chalk at all, so back to the well with these shysters, I guess. Heriberto Hernandez has nuked right-handed pitching, while the best numbers otherwise belong to Otto Lopez, Javier Sanoja, Esteury Ruiz, and Agustin Ramirez. That’s what we call a Murderers Row, folks. Good leverage stack, obviously. “Good” is relative.
Both offenses in Arizona are gonna look good, as well. I’m as sick of the Padres as the next fella, but if I’m playing one lineup on this slate, it’ll probably be a Padres stack, because I’m a sicko. Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Ty France have double-digit barrel rates vs. LHP. Jackson Merrill, Xander Bogaerts, and Luis Rengifo aren’t fun guys to roster, but Drake hasn’t figured out hitters of either handedness so far.
Left-handed hitters have shredded Buehler over the past month, and it just so happens that Arizona’s best bats are the lefties – Corbin Carroll, Lars Nootbaar, Ketel Marte, and Geraldo Perdomo.
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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