Pitchers
Logan Allen- Allen has never been a truly hyped prospect for the Padres, he profiles more as a back-end rotation kind of guy, and that’s what he has shown us through his first few starts in the MLB, pitching to a 4.26 SIERA with just 20% strikeouts. That logic gets thrown out the window on a slate like this however, as we have just one pitcher priced above $10K in Mike Minor. Allen does get the benefit of a matchup with the San Francisco Giants, who come into tonight dead-last in the league in wRC+ against lefties (67) while striking out 24% of the time. There is also some hope for some positive regression coming in his strikeouts, as he has been able to generate over 11% swinging strikes. Allen appears priced up across the industry relative to his skill-set, but it makes sense for this particular slate given his opponent and he is viable in all formats tonight.
Mike Minor- As you can tell by me leading things off with Logan Allen, this is an extremely rough pitching slate which has me interested in Mike Minor even in a tough matchup with the Angels. Sure, he’s due for regression when looking at his advanced metrics, but his 24.4% strikeout rate is also tied for the highest on this slate if you take out the openers. The Angels do not strike out a lot against any pitcher, but Minor has found success against this team mainly due to his change up this season, a pitch that outside of Mike Trout and Justin Upton, this lineup generally struggles with. You probably don’t need to spend this high up in cash games on a slate like this, but I expect most people to overlook Minor based on that reason alone and that makes him a really strong leverage play in tournaments.
Ryan Yarbrough- Closing out what might be the ugliest pitching slate of the season for me is Ryan Yarbough, someone else that I’m really just not excited to play. Like Allen, Yarbrough has pretty meh advanced metrics with a 4.25 SIERA and just 18% strikeouts. There must be something that has me interested in him, and you guessed it, the common theme of this slate is bad pitchers in above-average matchups. The Orioles are also dreadful against left-handed pitching boasting the 8th worst wRC+ while striking out almost 26% of the time. For cash games, taking these guys makes sense but I also think that it presents strong leverage in tournaments.
Note: For GPP, and even cash games if the Allen/Yarbrough hype gets too out of control, I will most likely end up bumping up Adbert Alzolay and Tyler Mahle to playable in all formats.
Building Blocks
Cash Game Core: Christian Yelich, Kyle Schwarber, Whit Merrifield
Value Plays: Tyler Austin, Nicky Lopez, Logan Forsythe, Justin Upton, Kyle Schwarber (LOL)
HR Prediction: Cavan Biggio
Bold Call: No pitcher scores more than 17 DK points
Regular article back tomorrow for the big slate!
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
