MLB DFS Pitching Primer for 8/24/21 (Premium Content)

MLB DFS Pitching Primer for 8/24

A beautiful slate on this August Tuesday night. Here's the SP analysis for tonight's DFS slates!

High-Priced Aces

These are your studs who are worth paying up for on this slate. It makes sense to deploy these guys as your cash game plays on FanDuel and as your SP1 on DraftKings based on their high floor/ceiling combination.

Corbin Burnes ($11,500 FD, $10,600 DK) vs. Reds

Burnes is fifth in the league in DraftKings points scored per outing (and really he's third because Shane Bieber and Tyler Glasnow are ahead of him and they've both missed most of the season). His 35.1% K% is fourth in the league, and amazingly it comes with a 4.6% BB% and a 52% GB%. This is more of an opinion, but to me, he trails only deGrom and maybe Carlos Rodon in terms of most impressive numbers posted this year from a starting pitcher.

My favorite way to evaluate pitchers is by looking at three things: strikeout rate, walk rate, and ground-ball rate. I like to filter my pitching statistics dashboard to find pitchers with elite values in all three of these categories. I've been doing this all year and Burnes has been at the top of the list the whole time. Here's a look at qualified starting pitchers with strikeout rates above 25%, walk rates below 7%, and ground-ball rates above 45%:

It's a short list full of elite starting pitchers, and Burnes tops them all.

The bad news is that the Reds have allowed the 8th fewest DraftKings points per start to opposing starting pitchers (12.57, trailing only TOR, HOU, BOS, WAS, LAD, CHW, and ATL). Burnes has faced them once, and had probably his best start of the year, striking out a dozen hitters in 8.1 shutout innings. I wouldn't be worried about this matchup here, as Burnes is just too good. He's the best play on the board, albeit the most expensive.

Tyler Mahle ($9,200 FD, $9,900 DK) vs. Brewers

Mahle's upside is monstrous. He's gone over 30 DraftKings points five different times this year, and over 20 points on eight occasions. He has scored fewer than ten points four times - so it's hard to know what you're going to get.

Take this with a grain of salt, but Mahle has been, overall, better at home than on the road. He has averaged 14.3 DraftKings points at home and then 21.7 on the road. Tonight he's on the road, but in another small ballpark in Milwaukee. The Brewers don't have the scariest lineup in the league to face, but they aren't a bunch of slouches either after adding Willy Adames and Eduardo Escobar in recent months.

For me, Mahle is a GPP-only consideration. He probably has the second-highest ceiling on the slate, and he's considerably cheaper than the only guy who beats him in that regard (Burnes). That makes for a very interesting tournament play.

Jack Flaherty ($10,300 FD, $9,600 DK) vs. Tigers

Flaherty has been somewhat eased back into things since returning on August 13th. He's thrown 81 and 92 pitches in those two outings, holding opponents to two earned runs on six hits in 12 innings, striking out 13. They were two very impressive starts. However, the SwStr% rates in those starts were a little lower than you'd expect, at 9% both times. Regardless of that, we know what Flaherty can do, and it's very encouraging to see him immediately coming in and getting strikeouts and limiting hits the way he has.

The matchup with the Tigers is also great. Only four teams have allowed more DraftKings points per start to opposing pitchers (15.76, those teams worse than them are CHC, MIA, SEA, and TEX). It's a good spot for Flaherty, but I would prefer to run it on DraftKings in cash given the somewhat limited ceiling he gives us tonight.

Charlie Morton ($9,600 FD, $9,000 DK) vs. Yankees

Morton has now gone over 20 DraftKings points in his last four starts and really hasn't had a bad outing since July 4th. Let's be really nitpicky with the data for a second. Since July 5th (see what I did there?), Morton is fifth in the league in DraftKings points scored per inning (Cole, Burnes, Buehler, and Montas are ahead of him). He's scored 185 DraftKings points in his 48 innings there with 57 strikeouts and 16 walks in 48 innings.

The way to beat the Yankees is undoubtedly by keeping the ball out of the air. This is true with any lineup, but I really think it's extra true with the Yankees. They have six hitters in their projected lineup with above-average home run rates (to me that means under 28 PA/HR), and they have four guys with elite home runs rates (Judge, Gallo, Stanton, Sanchez). Morton limits homers better than almost anybody, with a great 48 PA/HR this year. Morton sets up really nicely in this spot tonight, and I don't think many people will play him at these price tags with the other options on the board right around the same price or cheaper.

Mid-Tier Pivots

These are potentially underpriced and/or just "safe" options to play if you don't have the money for stud pitchers.

German Marquez ($9,000 FD, $8,200 DK) vs. Cubs

Marquez is on the road, which you might get excited about. However, he's actually been better in Coors than elsewhere this year (19.1 average DK points at home vs. 17.0 on the road). Here's how that has broken down this year by start.

I don't think it's good to get hung up on home/road splits, even in the special case of the Rockies pitchers. The real reason to play Marquez tonight is this Cubs lineup. Since the trade deadline, starting pitchers have averaged 20.4 DraftKings points per start against the Cubs. That is a really high number. It's even more eye-popping when you see some of the scores that mediocre to bad pitchers have posted against them. Here's a quick peek at that:

Another foolish thing to do is to look at one week of data and take anything from it, but man - look at the last six games there. Wade Miley, Brad Keller, Kris Bubic, Carlos Hernandez, and Antonio Senzatela putting up really good scores. The Cubs lineup is just awful right now, and I don't think Marquez should have much trouble with it.

The best part about all of this is the DraftKings price on Marquez, which is significantly cheaper than what we'd expect to see in this spot. Marquez may be my favorite per-dollar play tonight.

Tanner Houck ($6,700 FD, $7,900 DK) vs. Twins

Houck returned from injury on July 22nd. Since then he's made five starts, and he's posted the league's highest strikeout rate (35.6%) over that time period. The league's highest strikeout rate! Here's what that looks like on the pitcher dashboard:

That number comes with an elite 14.1% SwStr%, an equally elite 4.6% BB%, and a good-looking 87 PA/HR (although this is a little less believable given the low 37% GB%). Over the same time span, Houck is seventh in the league in DraftKings points scored per inning (trailing Scherzer, Buehler, Cole, Morton, Burnes, and Ohtani).

So it sure looks like Houck is an elite arm right now. The thing keeping these prices (and our interest in playing him) down is the pitch counts. In these five starts, he's thrown 87, 75, 74, 89, and 58 pitches (that's from oldest start to newest). I would really like to believe that he can throw 90 pitches tonight against the Twins and rack up all kinds of strikeouts against this weak Twins lineup, but I would be lying if I said I'm confident in that. That said, he's an elite tournament play because of how many strikeouts he's getting and how cheap he is.

Bargain Bin

These are cheap pitchers with upside, but often big risk as well.

Tylor Megill ($7,300 FD, $6,900 DK) vs. Giants

First thing to say is that I don't think we need to go this low on such a big slate with all these great arms to pick from. But if you do want to go this low in price, Megill is a considerable option. He flashed a huge 18% SwStr% in his last outing over 90 pitches thrown against these Giants (giving up one run over six innings on six strikeouts and scoring 19 DraftKings points). His season high in draftKings points is 21, so the ceiling is low here. He has never gotten a ton of strikeouts at any level, and the Giants are a tough offense to face this year.

Megill seems to be good enough to post a non-terrible score much more often than not, but I don't see it being a viable play on this slate.

Jesus Luzardo ($6,500 FD, $6,400 DK) vs. Nationals

This is a punt-GPP option only.  Luzardo has been awful this year. He's given up a 10% barrel rate this year with a low 22% K% and a 12% BB%. He's also allowed 25 earned runs in his last six starts.

So why am I even including him? Well, he's still getting tons of whiffs. His SwStr% over his last five starts are 19%, 15%, 14%, and 15%. Those are tough numbers to post. There's obviously all kinds of command issues here, and high swinging-strike rates don't tell us much all by themselves (you can get a bunch of whiffs just by being super wild, but that causes more problems than it prevents). There is a chance that Luzardo really has it going tonight and racks up a bunch of strikeouts and crushes these prices tags, but again - it's not a +EV bet on a slate of this size.

Cash Game Rankings

1. German Marquez
2. Corbin Burnes
3. Jack Flaherty
4. Charlie Morton
5. Tylor Megill

GPP Rankings

1. Corbin Burnes
2. Tanner Houck
3. Tyler Mahle
4. Charlie Morton
5. German Marquez