Adam Strangis Starting Rotation 5.9
We have 22 pitchers on the slate today and some uncertainty right off the top with the status of Jacob deGrom in flux as of Saturday night. Regardless of deGrom pitching or not, we do have some strong names taking the mound today. If deGrom does pitch, the slate is pretty straightforward but if not we could see the field run to many options. Let’s dive into the Starting Rotation 5.9 and go through our options to lay the foundation to find the green screens once again!
Starting Rotation 5.9 – Main Targets
Note – I’m not going to do a full write-up on deGrom since we don’t know if he’ll pitch. It’s fairly simple in my mind. If he’s on the mound, he’s a lock for cash. deGrom is the best pitcher in baseball and if the worst thing I can say about him is the D-Backs have some lefties in the lineup, that’s no reason not to pitch him. deGrom is “worse” to lefties and that includes a 42.9% K rate, a 2.20 xFIP, and a .254 wOBA. That’s going to play and in cash, I’m not sure you can mount an argument to not play him.
I’ve typically been in the camp of being overweight on deGrom in GPP, but this could be the rare slate where you don’t have to be. Look, if he pitches, there should be zero injury concern and the Mets will not let him out there if he’s under 100%. That doesn’t mean they may not baby him and let him throw 80-85 pitches. deGrom is so good that he could still pay off on that theoretical pitch count, but it could be worth a fade as well. If we have no news other than deGrom is pitching, he’s the cash play, a strong GPP play and you can get creative in MME formats but you must have exposure.
Lucas Giolito ($9,500 DK/$9,600 FD)
Maybe I’m just not adjusting quickly enough, but I still believe that there’s an ace in Lucas Giolito somewhere. For starters, his 4.99 ERA is still far above the 3.30 xFIP and that is very encouraging to me. His HR/FB rate has spiked to 21.4% while he hasn’t been over 13.6% in the last three seasons. That explains why the xFIP is so much lower and why the HR/9 is spiked at 1.76. That’s just simply not who he’s shown to be over the long-term and the K rate is still over 30%. Even the swinging-strike rate is 15.1% and the CSW is 29.7%. Both are down about 2% from last year but it’s not like those numbers are horrible.
His changeup has been more hittable this season with a .305 wOBA compared to .254 last year, but it still has 23 of 41 strikeouts so that is the out pitch. The whiff rate is within 1% over the past two seasons but the four-seam is down about 8% in whiff rate from 2020. It’s showing slightly less vertical movement but nothing so serious that I think it won’t recover to last year’s rates. The righty splits look worrisome against the Royals with a .381 wOBA and a 2.84 HR/9. However, the BABIP is also .323 and the HR/FB rate is over 36%, which is part of why the xFIP to righties is still just 2.89. This screams positive regression for Giolito at some point. The Royals are 13th against the changeup but have a negative rating overall and only two hitters (Whit Merrifield and Andrew Benintendi) are above a 1.0 rating against that pitch.
Sandy Alcantara ($9,400 DK/$9,000 FD)
A weird thing happened with Alcantara the last time he started against the Brewers. He whiffed four hitters in the first two innings, then proceeded to pitch another five without one single strikeout. It held his DK points down to 20.8, but I’m betting that doesn’t happen again. Do you know how hard it is to go five innings without striking out a Brewer? His K rate is over 24% for the first time in his career and the WHIP is only 1.01, while the hard-hit rate is under 25%. A big shift in his strikeout ability is coming from his swinging-strike rate, which is 14.4% and that is 12th in the league. It’s pretty impressive and the contact rate is down to 71.4%, a difference of 7.3% from last year.
With the Brew Crew still sitting top-five in K rate, Alcantara has some ceiling to hit. He scored almost 21 DK with only four strikeouts. What we have to like is the changeup for Alcantara.
He’s using it 13.2% more this year and it leads his pitch types in strikeouts at 16. It’s also the pitch yielding the lowest wOBA at .176 and has the highest whiff rate at 39.2%. When we look at that Brewers start, he only threw the change 15% of the time and got three swings and misses on it. If he had thrown it a bit more, maybe the whiffs follow. He is a bit worse to lefties so far this year with a 22.6% K rate and a 4.56 FIP, but the wOBA is still just .273.
Tyler Mahle ($8,400 DK/$8,900 FD)
We’re not even that far into May and yet, Cleveland has already suffered two no-hitters. That means pitchers are going to be appealing to them and that includes Mahle, who is looking to bounce back after getting whacked in the last start. He is quietly 10th in K rate in the majors among qualified starters at 32.8% and has the swinging-strike rate at 12.2% with a 32% CSW. His ERA/FIP/xFIP are all under 3.90 and when those numbers are relatively in harmony, I’m more inclined to believe them in the longer run. The nice thing is the HR/FB rate is 15.6% so that should be fairly stable, meaning the 45.7% fly-ball rate doesn’t have to totally scare us off.
It’s also interesting to note that the slider is performing differently this year. In 2020, it had a 41.5% whiff rate and a .253 wOBA. This season, the wOBA is .335 and the whiff rate is only 28.6%. It’s seeing less movement this year and I wonder if he gets this pitch “right”, what is going to happen. The profile already is strong. If the slider returns to 2020 form, it could get really fun. The splitter has picked up some slack as a strikeout pitch but the slider could still be a key for him.
Cleveland typically rolls six lefties in their lineup and Mahle has owned that side of the plate with a .201 wOBA, .415 OPS, and a 35.1% K rate. The lineup should break heavily in his favor and I think he gets the ship right after the last game out. he fact this next pitcher is likely chalk makes Mahle that much more appealing in the right contest.
Kenta Maeda ($8,300 DK/$7,400 FD)
Did we see Maeda getting it together in the last start or was that just a mirage based on the matchup? I’m not sure if we get the answer in this start, because the matchup is phenomenal again. Well, unless your name is Jose Berrios in which case you can’t strike out the heaviest strikeout team potentially in baseball history, but I digress. Man, Berrios and I do not get along. Anyways, Maeda is coming off his best DK performance of the year by a long shot and he recorded eight strikeouts in under six innings. The metrics still do not look pretty for him with a 5.24 FIP, 2.20 HR/9, and a K rate barely over 21%. However, there just might be light at the end of the tunnel.
The hard-hit rate is only 29.8% and the fly ball rate is 29%. Both are very good marks and it helps sustain the idea that the HR/FB rate of 25.9% is wildly out of whack. Granted, the career rate of 14.2% would already tell us that but still. It’s nice to see other metrics back it up. Also, Maeda has a BABIP of .341 compared to a .277 career mark. His slider is a big culprit right now as it has a .308 average, .428 wOBA, and four home runs allowed. It’s interesting because the whiff rate is exactly in line with 2020 at 33%.
His splitter has been an issue as well as it’s being hit more, and the whiff rate has bottomed out to 20.7% from 45.6% last year. In this last start, the swinging-strike rate overall was 36% even though the splitter was still down a bit. However, the slider generated a 43% swinging-strike rate, as did the four-seam. It was a hugely encouraging start overall. The lefty numbers aren’t the best but the BABIP is .383 to that side of the plate, and the HR/FB rate is over 30%. Maeda is too good to pitch so poorly for much longer and could flirt with 30 DK again.
German Marquez ($7,300 DK/$7,800 FD)
On the surface, this looks out of whack. Marquez is sitting at a 6.21 ERA and he’s been slightly worse this season out of Coors. However, the FIP/xFIP match exactly at 4.10. The BABIP is a career-high at .337 right now, which seems likely to come down. His ground ball rate of 57.4% ranks fifth in the league among qualified starters and the 22.2% K rate is fine, if not spectacular. It’s not helping him that the walk rate is 13.7%, easily the worst of his career but St. Louis should help there since they have the 28th walk rate to righty pitching. They also rank bottom-six to the fastball and that may come in handy.
The fastball has been a little rough for Marquez this season. It’s giving up a .362 wOBA and only generating a 14.5% whiff rate. That’s not that far off last season’s 15.1% rate and both the curve and slider have a whiff rate over 46% so far this season. They have also accounted for 27 of 34 strikeouts so far, so if the Cards continue to struggle against the four-seam we could see a big start from Marquez. His road numbers don’t look great but through 16 righties faced so far, they only have a .227 wOBA. I’m very encouraged by that because the wOBA last year to RHH on the road was .236 across 79 faced. With the Cards playing righty-heavy, that’s in the wheelhouse for Marquez. His only two road starts so far have been at San Francisco, which is a lefty-heavy lineup. I don’t believe Marquez should be overlooked in this spot.
Justus Sheffield ($6,400 DK)
We’ve hit the point where I’m willing to take some chances for my SP2 on DK, but not on FD and this would be GPP only. I would bet the Seattle/Texas game is going to draw some attention for offense, but both pitchers have some potential (more on that in a minute). Texas whiffs a little over 24% of the time to lefties but is also 23rd in OBP, 19th in slugging, 21st in OPS, 25th in ISO, and 20th in both wOBA and wRC+. Better still, they are sixth in ground ball rate while Sheffield is over a 47% rate on his own with just a 31% hard-hit rate.
The projected lineup for Texas features six righties, and that should work to Sheffield’s advantage. He has a 20.6% K rate and a 1.30 WHIP to that side of the plate, with a .306 wOBA. I really like the fact that his slider should be heavily featured, as he throws it to righties a good bit. It has a 37.5% whiff rate and 17 of 24 strikeouts, so he’s going to need it. Both the sinker and slider have a wOBA under .300 and this isn’t a salary we need a ton of strikeouts to pay off.
Dane Dunning ($5,200 DK)
Some of the reasons I like Dunning are the same as Sheffield, although Dunning has a real K rate at 24.6%. His FIP is all the way down at 2.23 and the xFIP is still quite strong at 3.22. If Dunning qualified, he would be about 11th in ground ball rate at 53.7% and that could help counteract Seattle sporting the lowest ground ball rate in baseball to righties. It’s not going to hurt Dunning that they are eighth in K rate, either with his 29.5% CSW. Dunning also has the wOBA to both sides of the plate under .295 and his K rate is even to each side as well, so the lineup construction isn’t a make-or-break facet for him.
I’m not typically a fan of the sinker (call it trauma from being a Pirates fan and seeing Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow be forced to be “contact pitchers”) but Dunning has his working for him. It has generated 14 of his 29 strikeouts on just a 15% whiff rate and he’s throwing it nearly 60% of the time. The slider and changeup are working with it as they both have a whiff rate over 38% and Dunning has only given up seven extra-base hits through 28.1 IP. For the cheapest price on the board, I can’t see a reason not to pair him with deGrom in some GPP’s to afford the best pitcher on the planet and still get some bats.
Starting Rotation 5.9 – In Play
Nick Pivetta – He’s in play by the slimmest of margins since I think he’s too expensive. I’m just going to play Giolito more often than not, though in fairness Pivetta averages more DK points this season. The walks are really threatening to blow up for him as it is 15.1%. Among qualified pitchers, German Marquez leads at 13.7% so that tells you how high Pivetta is. He’s throwing his four-seam over 54% of the time and Baltimore is 13th against that pitch, but the slider is right behind the fastball in strikeouts and the Orioles are bottom 10 against that pitch. With Baltimore ninth in K rate to righties this year, Pivetta makes sense as a play. I’m just not sure if the ceiling is there when he’s pushing five figures on DK.
Domingo German – His tier of salary is pretty crowded, so I don’t think I end up playing him. Still, the 3.88 xFIP is encouraging and the 2.16 HR/9 is a bit high with the 19.4 HR/FB rate. German has generated a 23.4% K rate and an 11.9% swinging-strike rate, which are both respectable. The overall issues he could run into are the Nationals are top-five in whiff rate and they are 12th against the curveball, which is the most-used pitch for German. I won’t be surprised if he posts a solid game but LHH are the best way to go against him with an 18.4% K rate and a .277 average.
Adam Wainwright – He gets the flow chart spot of Rockies away from Coors, but that didn’t work out well yesterday. I struggle getting Waino right and he got hit around in the last start. Colorado is ninth against the curve, which could be a large issue for Wainwright. The curve and sinker have 25 of 37 strikeouts for him, and the curve has the best whiff rate of any pitch at 35.6%. Keep an eye on the lineup. Wainwright has a .433 wOBA to righties, but a .247 mark against lefties. That’s a major split and the RHH also sport a 2.35 HR/9 and 21.1% K rate. Three of the Rockies hitters are top 25 against the curve in Trevor Story, C.J. Cron, and Raimel Tapia. Story and Cron are the righties and both have a wOBA over .350 against RHP while Story is over .210 for the ISO. I do prefer others right around him but have no issues playing him either.
Kyle Hendricks – This man has been wildly up and down this year, with plenty of down. However, the Pirates may now be without Colin Moran and yes, that’s a big loss. Shush, I know the Pirates aren’t very fun. This is frightening with a 3.34 HR/9, 7.29 FIP, and a 6.07 ERA but at least the xFIP is a respectable 4.57. The 19.6% K rate isn’t that bad for the salary range and if the Buccos are fielding a AAA offense, he’s worth some risk with a shot at over 20 DK points. It may be best to not look until after the slate to see how he did.
Tyler Anderson – It’s undeniably a tough matchup, but so were the Padres. Anderson has been a seriously good find for the Bucs this season, and he’s not being priced like it yet. His K rate is 23%, the barrel rate is 7.5% and the swinging-strike rate is a career-high 13.5%. The main three pitches are the cutter, four-seam, and changeup and they have all but two strikeouts. The only pitch the Cubs are above average against this season is the cutter, and that’s the third pitch in the mix for Anderson, under 30%. The righties are the tougher side for him but they only have a .292 wOBA and Anderson balances that out with a 24.3% K rate. Chicago whiffs 28% to lefties so I think Anderson gives up a couple of runs but still has a solid outing.
Starting Rotation 5.9 – Out of Play
Zach Greinke – I swear the DK algorithm for salaries is three games behind for some pitchers. Greinke’s last three starts have scored 17.8, 6.8, and 6.8 DK and somehow he’s $10,800. The FIP/xFIP combo is both over 4.20 and the K rate is down to 18.8%. Since the WHIP and HR/9 are both inching up, it’s hard to want to go after him in this spot. He’s also surrendering nearly a .340 wOBA to righties, not what you want when facing the Jays.
Brett Anderson – I can’t get behind the price tag here for a pitcher with an 11% K rate (not a typo) and a 5.10 FIP. The ground ball rate is 55.9% but even then, Miami is sixth in ISO and ninth in OPS. This seems like a tougher spot, not to mention he’s been out for about two weeks and it’s his first start back. His lone start over 20 DK of his four so far came against the Pirates, so grain of salt with that.
Riley Smith – In 22 IP this season, he’s sporting a 5.51 xFIP, 11.5% K rate, and a 1.55 WHIP. He was never above a 23.8% K rate in the minors, so the strikeout concerns seem real. Both sides of the plate are over a .320 wOBA so there’s not even a lineup that would look appealing to attack.
Sam Hentges – The Reds have really scuffled against lefties as a team but maybe this is the spot they turn it around a bit. We only have nine innings from Hentges but the 7.75 FIP is ugly, as is the 4.00 HR/9. His hard-hit rate is over 43% and the swinging-strike rate is 6.6%. I’m not that interested in that.
Matt Boyd – There’s no doubt he’s been much better this season, but I’m sketchy here. He’s coming off a knee injury, so there’s a risk before the game even starts. His best start DK point-wise came against these Twins, and they are missing Byron Buxton now but a knee issue just scares me. Even though he’s pitching better and has a 2.94 FIP to back up the 2.27 ERA, the 17.3% K rate is a small issue. I’d rather play Anderson in a tough spot.
Joe Ross – The Yankees are still having some issues with consistency if nothing else but Ross has a 2.03 HR/9 so far this year and it climbs just a bit to righties. Furthermore, his K rate drops to 14.1% to that side of the plate and the FIP is 5.77. If you’re lacking strikeout upside, I’m not that willing to risk playing you in New York.
Mike Minor – The White Sox eat lefties and Minor is getting popped for a 1.67 HR/9 to righties. There’s no reason to play him when the Sox are top-five across the board to lefties (higher now after last night).
Dean Kremer – He is better than the 6.43 ERA shows, but going against Boston is not very fun. The K rate is 23.4% but both sides of the plate are over a .380 wOBA.
Nate Pearson – Ghost is a happy man knowing Pearson is with the big club, but I think (and I bet Ghost agrees) we should pump the brakes as far as playing him yet. The results in the majors last year were fairly ugly with a 2.50 HR/9, 7.19 FIP, and 6.04 xFIP. His K rate was under 20% and the Astros don’t whiff a whole lot, a top-three rate in baseball. He did throw 78 pitches in his lone minor league start this year but only made it through 3.2 IP. We’ll be playing him, just in better spots.
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