Hello! It’s Wednesday, and there’s another solid main slate on tap featuring most of the same teams we dealt with last night. Pitching looks a little rough, but that’ll happen from time to time.
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On to the stuff!
MLB DFS Pitcher Picks for Wednesday
- MacKenzie Gore ($8,300, vs. Angels)
- Christian Scott ($7,200, vs. Royals)
- Connor Prielipp ($6,900, vs. Guardians)
- Roki Sasaki ($7,000, vs. Rockies)
- Jose Cabrera ($6,000, at Padres)
- Jake Bennett ($7,700, at White Sox)
- Kyle Harrison ($9,500, at Cardinals)
- Chase Burns ($10,500, vs. Phillies)
Based on salary and matchup, it’s safe to assume MacKenzie Gore will be among the highest-owned arms on this slate. Danger!
Gore does have strikeout ability (25.5%) – as do the Angels (23.5% vs. LHP), but Gore is not without risk. This guy has a 9.6% walk rate on the year, and his swinging strike rate and Stuff+ numbers are both down this season. The Angels have a little more thunder in the lineup (.176 ISO) against left-handed pitchers, and there’s a chance Mike Trout returns for this one. It’s a boom/bust pitcher in a boom/bust spot. I like the salary and matchup, but so does everyone else. I’ll still play Gore, but I’d be careful about going too overboard here if entering multiple lineups.
Chase Burns will presumably be popular, as well, because he always is. The peripherals suggest Burns’ 29.7% K-rate is actually lower than it probably should be, while he’s been average for walks. Barrels (8.6%) are a little on the high side, and he’s allowed plenty of power to left-handed hitters. That’s a potential concern in his homer-friendly home ballpark against a team with several powerful LHBs at the top of the order. The Phillies are also pretty average for strikeouts (21.9% vs. RHP). I think Chase is capable of flashing a ceiling in any matchup, but I can’t say I love much about this. I’ll be underweight his ownership.
The only other expensive pitcher on my radar (or on the slate, really) is Kyle Harrison, who draws the Cardinals in St. Louis. The former top prospect has, predictably, figured it out since coming to Milwaukee. His 30.6% strikeout rate is even higher than Burns’. I think Harrison is excellent, but I’m not quite buying that as real. His 3.04 SIERA is close enough to his 2.82 ERA, but the Cardinals are a very high-contact bunch against LHP (16.9% Ks). There’s not enough power here to make it a very scary spot for Harrison, but it’s also not an ideal spot to be hunting ceiling on a $9,500 pitcher. I’ll probably have more Harrison than Burns, but that’s not saying much.
That’s because we’ve got some solid enough cheaper guys to consider. One of them is Christian Scott, who checks in at a mere $7,200 for a matchup against Kansas City at home. The Ks (28%) have been there for him, but so have the walks (11.7%). He’s done a decent job of limiting damage, it’s just a matter of limiting baserunners. The Royals (22.4% Ks, .165 ISO, .317 wOBA) aren’t a scary offense, though they do have several hitters with double-digit walk rates. There’s potential for things to go south for Scott, but I’m willing to chase the upside at this cheap price point.
Connor Prielipp is probably in the best matchup on the slate. Cleveland is a poor offense by any standard, but they’re particularly pathetic against southpaws (.111 ISO, .285 wOBA, 22.9% Ks). Prielipp (23.7%) has shown solid strikeout ability as a rookie, and you’re not scared of anyone in this Guardians lineup. Plus, Prielipp is only $6,900, which is a total bargain given the dearth of quality in the opposing lineup here. Gimme all of that. I think he’ll be quite a bit more popular than Scott, so Scott is a logical pivot if you need the ownership discount.
Here we go again with Roki Sasaki, The Man Who Couldn’t Slow Down. The wheels have fallen back off over the last month, which is discouraging following a very encouraging stretch before that. The strikeouts have dipped to 18.3%, while the ugly walk rate (13.4%) is back. I suppose the matchup against the Rockies away from Colorado is supposed to be good, but, based on the numbers, it really isn’t. Tonight’s projected Colorado lineup has a .208 ISO, .354 wOBA, 21.1% strikeout rate, and 9.6% walk rate vs. right-handed pitching, and not all of those numbers are inflated by Coors Field. I do think Roki is cheap enough ($7,000) to make a player pool, but I suspect the field isn’t wise to the notion that this version of the Rockies is actually kind of good? Give me Scott or Prielipp over Sasaki.
There isn’t much to write home about with Jose Cabrera, but he’s $6,000 and taking the mound in a pitcher-friendly park against a trash-ass Padres offense. I suppose you are allowed to do that. You can say the same of the $7,700 Jake Bennett, a high-groundball lefty facing a White Sox lineup littered with groundball hitters. It’s not a comfortable play given the White Sox’ power bats, but Bennett will crack the lower end of my GPP player pool.
SP Rankings
- Gore
- Prielipp
- Scott
- Harrison
- Sasaki
- Burns
- Cabrera
- Bennett
Best MLB DFS Stacks for Wednesday
- Mets (vs. Steven Cruz)
- Padres (vs. Jose Cabrera)
- Dodgers (vs. Gabriel Hughes)
- Royals (at Christian Scott)
- Rockies (at Roki Sasaki)
- Brewers (at Michael McGreevy)
- Reds (vs. Brad Keller)
- Phillies (at Chase Burns)
Not a ton of offenses jumping off the page tonight. All of the viable cheap pitching does make it easy to simply stack the Dodgers, if that’s your cup of tea. The Rockies will start RHP Gabriel Hughes. This is probably more of a long opener situation after he threw 53 pitches in 3 innings in his debut last week, so it’s Hughes plus a lot of Colorado bullpen. I’m fine with that. You know who to stack with the Dodgers – Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, Andy Pages, etc.
I also like the Rockies, especially if people are going to blindly play the erratic Roki Sasaki against them. This is probably the best way to get direct leverage. Roki could just walk everyone – which is not exciting – but he’s also allowed a 12.9% barrel rate and a .244 ISO overall with power to both sides. Good stuff all around. Jake McCarthy, Hunter Goodman, Mckey Moniak, TJ Rumfield, and Cole Carrigg are all real MLB hitters with excellent numbers, so that’s my preferred 5-man right there. Troy Johnston and Kyle Karros are viable if you land there, too.
I also think you can play some Phillies against Burns. Better served as a mini-stack, but Kyle Schwarber/Bryce Harper/Brandon Marsh is a sexy trio.
Steven Cruz is slated to open for the Royals, and it sounds like Randy Dobnak is a candidate to pitch long relief here. I did not know Randy Dobnak was still kickin’ around the league, tbh. He’s been a good groundball pitcher over the years, but that’s where it ends. His career K-rate to lefties is barely north of 11%, for fuck’s sake. Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, AJ Ewing, Carson Benge, Jared Young, and Brett Baty will all have the platoon advantage here. I’m less into Bo Bichette as a high-groundball righty, but fine if you absolutely must include him in a stack.
Jose Cabrera doesn’t look very good, especially against lefties. The Padres are whatever, but I’ll go back to the well with these losers – Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado, and Gavin Sheets.
Brad Keller may open for the Phillies, though Alan Rangel is likely to factor in here in some capacity. Lefties have had some success against Rangel. Elly De La Cruz and JJ Bleday form a nice little mini-stack from the left side.
You can certainly roll the dice on the Royals against Scott and hope his control issues flare back up. Carter Jensen, Jac Caglianone, and Bobby Witt Jr. is a nice mini.
Michael McGreevy is heavily reliant on BABIP, but he hasn’t pitched poorly. I’m okay with some of the Milwaukee LHBs against him – Christian Yelich, Brice Turang, Jake Bauers.
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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