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Starting Rotation 4.5

The Monday slate ahead of us seems a little weird. It’s always a fun time when we get Jacob deGrom on the mound because we can wax poetic on how awesome he is. The issue with tonight’s slate is the quality of pitchers goes downhill in a hurry. DK is going to be a challenge to find that SP2 but that’s what the Starting Rotation 4.5 is here to do so let’s dig in! 

Starting Rotation 4.5 – The Lock 

Jacob deGrom ($10,700 DK/$11,000 FD) 

FB – 44.9% (7th) SL – 35.6% (10th) CH – 16.9% (4th) CB was under 3%

Listen, we have a running joke in the Discord that if you don’t play a player that the staff thinks is a lock, you get The Slap. That means we send a GIF of someone getting slapped in the face. deGrom is that player tonight. The quality of the starting options is not that great after deGrom. He is a stone lock in cash games and honestly, I’ll happily eat this chalk in GPP as well. On paper, no alternative should get all that close as far as potential for fantasy points. 

Looking back at last season, deGrom had a K rate of 38.8% to go with a 2.38 ERA. That mark looks accurate with a 2.26 FIP and 2.46 xFIP with just a 0.93 HR/9. deGrom is also a pitcher that I don’t sweat the pitch data looking strong for the Phillies. The fastball/slider combo was valued at 11th each among starters last year via FanGraphs.com and he’s on the shortlist of the best pitcher in baseball. Even the splits favor deGrom as he held RHH to a .221 wOBA and whiffed them over 42% of the time. Philly is projected for five righties and the pitcher spot. Good luck with that. 

Note – If you want to get really crazy in GPP, a hitter like Bryce Harper could be interesting. deGrom gave up a 1.05 HR/9 to lefties and with the insane amount of popularity deGrom will carry, nobody will pay for Harper. 

The Best of The Rest

Dustin May ($8,800 DK)

FB – 56.9% (16th) CT – 24.6% (11th) CB – 13.4% (14th) CH was 5.1%

This is where it starts o get tricky. May checks in as likely the “safest” SP2 but I’m certainly not in love with him. His raw stuff is very good –

The issue for May is the stuff hasn’t exactly played as you would want in the majors. Over his 90.2 IP so far, the K rate is under 21%. He also started to get taken out of the yard with a bit more regularity, sporting a 1.45 HR/9 last season. I’m not super concerned with that as he’s never had a mark over 0.89 at any level in his career, but we have to at least note it. We do love to see a hard-hit rate under 29% ( I mean, you try to hit that two-seamer) and a fly ball rate at 26.1%. Oakland was a pretty average team in K rate last year at 23.7% but they’ve started out the year at almost 28% against righty pitching. 

One metric that could help May is the A’s are projected to be slightly righty heavy with five in the lineup. May held the right side of the plate to a .226 wOBA, .198 average, and whiffed 21.8% of them. Oakland was (and should continue to be) one of the friendliest parks to pitchers as well. May might not have the normal upside we want at this price range, but I do feel like he’s the best option as far as safety goes. I would likely lean towards him as my cash game SP2. 

Michael Wacha ($7,200 DK)

FB – 42.5% (9th) CT – 27.1% (22nd) CH – 29.2% (12th) CB was 1.1%

This might seem a little odd but I’m willing to test this Red Sox lineup while they’re down and out. They just got smoked over their three-game set against the Orioles and only scored five runs in the process. They tied for the second-worst OPS and the third-worst average through the three games. Now, it’s a three-game sample so let’s not get too nuts. At the same time, Boston’s lineup after J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, and Rafael Devers is questionable at best. Wacha hasn’t been super fantasy relevant for a little bit, but perhaps going to Tampa helps extract the best out of him. 

Heading out of spring training, that theory looks like it could hold water. Through 15 innings, he gave up one run and whiffed 12 hitters. Last season he had issues with home runs with a 2.38 HR/9, in part due to a fly ball rate over 40% for the first time in his career. The changeup is his strikeout pitch with 24 of his 37 coming from that pitch. Only Bogaerts had a FanGraphs rating over 1.0 against that pitch last season, which is interesting. The splits didn’t look great for Wacha last year with at least a .347 wOBA to each side of the plate. You’re banking on Tampa Bay voodoo and Boston staying mired in a slump to start the year. 

Carlos Rodon ($6,700 DK)

Only pitched 7.2 innings in 2020 

This…this is a leap of faith. Rodon has gone from being a top-five pick in his draft to not being offered a contract at first during this past offseason. He eventually came back to the White Sox on a one-year prove-it deal and this will be his first start of the season. Rodon is in better shape this season and has worked on a fourth pitch this spring training. He’s always been a fastball/slider/changeup pitcher but did add a curve this year. It might only be spring training but he did whiff 16 hitters in 13.2 innings so perhaps things might just be clicking with a new approach to the game. 

Seattle has added Mitch Haniger and Taylor Trammel from 2020 but my goodness were they awful against lefty pitching last season. They were dead last in average, OBP, OPS, wOBA, and wRC+. That came with a 27.3% K rate which was the third-most in baseball. Due to injury and other factors, Rodon has pitched a combined 42.1 innings since 2018. This is an unknown commodity but with a career 22.6% K rate, he’s cheap enough to take some chances with tonight. 

Honorable Mention – Adrian Morejon carries a pedigree and a big fastball, sitting around 96 MPH. The young lefty hasn’t fared well over 27.1 IP so far in the majors and facing the Giants is not a great spot to trot out an unproven lefty. Still, young pitchers with talent can find things quickly and he does sport a K rate of 28.1% in his career with just a 5.1% walk rate. The price is a touch too high for my liking overall. 

Gas Can To Attack – Brian is going to preach the White Sox stack which I love and agree with so I’ll take a different track. The Houston Astros could be slightly overlooked on this slate because the Angels starter Jose Quintana isn’t frightfully bad. However, the Astros smack lefty pitching and have for a while. The main three that I want are Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, and Yuli Gurriel. Bregman and Guriel both have ISO’s over .250 and wOBA’s over .365 while Correa is not far behind in wOBA at .330. If you go back to 2019 (i.e. not a 60 game season) Correa had a monster .405 wOBA and .231 ISO against southpaws. 

Quintana only threw 10 innings last season so I’m more looking at his 2019 year when he only whiffed 20.4% of the hitters he faced. He’s used a three-pitch mix of fastball/curveball/changeup but it was mostly the first two offerings. Dial it back to 2019 and Gurriel and Bregman were third and seventh against the curve in all of MLB. I really like this spot and with the price of Correa and Gurriel, the stack is easy to build salary-wise. 

Secondary Pieces – Kyle Tucker, Martin Maldonado, Yordan Alvarez

Starting Rotation 4.5 Betting Section 

Free Strikeout Prop 

Every day, I’ll have one prop that I’m chasing for free in the article. Anything else that I’m playing will be located in our Premium Sports Bets! 

Jacob deGrom O 8.5 K’s -139

Record – 2-2

Thank you for reading my Starting Rotation 4.5 and make sure you follow me on Twitter at @bucn4life! Be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!

Starting Rotation 4.3

Saturday brings us our first split slate of the season and both sides have it split right down the middle with five games on each. When we hit those days, the game plan for this article will be to have a notes-based approach to one slate and then the full breakdown to the other. For today, we’ll hit some notes for the early slate and then breakdown the “main” slate that starts at seven o’clock. Let’s get right into the action on the mound for the games today in the Starting Rotation 4.3 and find the green screens! 

Starting Rotation 4.3 – Early Slate Notes 

Cash – Pitching on both slates isn’t anything to write home about but it’s a big yikes on the early slate. I honestly wouldn’t play cash on DK as I can’t find a second pitcher I’m comfortable with. Zach Plesac is almost surely going to be chalk on each site and it’s hard to argue. He boasted a 27.7% K rate last season and the Tigers whiffed 14 times total in the first game. Sure, most of that was Shane Bieber but this is still an offense that struck out at the highest percentage against righties last season. Plesac featured a pitch mix last season of a fastball, slider, and changeup. Detroit was 29th against the slider and 20th against the change and those two pitches made up about 52% of Plesac’s offerings in 2020. 

GPP – So we’re not going to mess with cash on the early slate, at least on DK. FD it makes a little more sense because you just lock Plesac and move on. The other options on DK include a completely unknown version of Corey Kluber against a Toronto offense at over $10,000. That’s a hard pass for me. He’s coming off injuries and ineffectiveness. The “best” option in my eyes may just be the debuting Kohei Arihara. We can use this blog from fangraphs.com to get an idea of what to expect from the Japanese player. His fastball is around 92 MPH which can play in the majors. Seeing as how he’s less expensive than some hitters on this slate, I’m willing to punt and hope he’s passable with 10 DK or so. Kansas City was about average in K rate last year and Arihara is the least scary option. 

Gas Can To Attack – I’m going to add this section to the article. We always talk about who I’m playing but not who I’m attacking. The early slate brings us plenty of options but the main two I’m going after are Matt Harvey and Tyler Anderson. Harvey hasn’t been good in…well… a long time. In 2019 over 59 innings he had a 7.09 ERA with a 9.45 FIP. His HR/9 in that season was over 1.73 to either side of the plate and last year he only pitched 11 innings. Wheels up with the Boston offense like J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts, and Rafael Devers especially. 

As far as Anderson goes, I love playing Cubs against lefty pitching. He pitched for the Giants last season and when he was away from San Francisco, the ERA ballooned to 6.83. The K rate is 21% for his career and it fell to 15.8% last season so there is production to be had. I will say the Cubs as a team took a dip last year against the lefties but this is where I feel the 60 game schedule plays a role. In 2019, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and Willson Contreras all had ISO’s over .300 against lefties. Even Ian Happ was above .230 in that category and they all had wOBA’s over .320 (the first trio were over .400). The early look at the weather has the wind blowing out on top of it, which is always a boon to Wrigley hitters. 

Starting Rotation 4.3 Cash Picks – Main Slate 

Corbin Burnes ($8,000 DK/$9,200 FD) 

FB – 36.5% (17th) CT – 31.4% (23rd) all other pitches were under 13%

Much like yesterday, there’s not a pitcher that is a slam dunk option in my eyes. Burnes is going to be the closet for two main reasons. First, he’s sporting the best K rate from 2020 on the slate at 36.7% and that is massive. He does walk his fair share of hitters at 10% but the K rate makes up for it. Burnes also cut into a monster HR/9 from 2019. That season it was 3.12 but last year it went down to 0.30. The biggest reason (and the second reason I like Burnes) was he added a cutter in 2020 and it was positively evil. 

Only two other pitchers had a higher valued cutter in 2020 and they were Dallas Keuchel and Yu Darvish. That’s not bad company to keep. He threw it 300 times total and recorded 34 of his 88 strikeouts with it. Opposing hitters managed just a .169 average and a .085 ISO against it, and the Twins were near the bottom of the league against that pitch last year. The pitch hovers around 96 MPH with some nice vertical movement. The cherry on top is Burnes shut righties down last year, holding them to a .207 wOBA and a .140 average. With Minnesota’s projected lineup sporting five RHH and a pitcher’s spot, things line up very well for Burnes. The Twins are a dangerous team but they can be had with a 24.4% K rate last year against RHP. 

Joe Musgrove ($8,600 DK/$8,600 FD) 

FB – 39.1% (29th) SL – 24.2% (4th) CB – 19.9% (7th) CH was under 11%

I don’t totally love Musgrove for cash but this is a tough slate for pitching generally. That isn’t to say he doesn’t sport some positive metrics. Last season (39.1 IP so the sample was small) saw Musgrove have his best stretch as far as K rate at 33.1%. He’s never been over 21.9% in a season so we have to expect that to come down somewhat but even 25% would be solid. Big Joe has always had good raw stuff and maybe he started to put it together. 

The D-Backs don’t strike out a ton at just 20.3% and that is a slight concern here. The flip side of that is Musgrove allowed a hard contact rate under 25% last year along with a fly ball rate of just 31.2%. Another factor that helps Musgrove is he was actually slightly reverse splits last year. RHH hit him better with a .333 wOBA to a .290 mark to LHH. That’s out of character over his career so I don’t expect it to stick around but I won’t complain if he keeps Ketel Marte under wraps. Last year saw Musgrove display a 2.15 xFIP and a 35.3% K rate to the right side of the plate and that’s enough for an SP2 tonight. 

Honorable Mention – Perhaps Lance Lynn but I don’t like using a lot of pitchers against the Angels

Starting Rotation 4.3 GPP Picks – Main Slate

Jose Berrios ($8,800 DK/$8,800 FD) 

FB – 51.5% (24th) CB – 29.8% (21st) CH – 18.8% (24th) 

I’ll be quite honest, myself and Mr. Berrios…we simply don’t get along. Listen, when his curveball is on, it’s a thing of beauty and he can get after any lineup. I’m just not sure I’ve ever rostered him on one of those days. Berrios can just be…underwhelming. That’s easy to say from my Lay-Z-Boy but hey, that’s what I’m here for. His K rate was 25.1% last year which was about his career-best number. The 4.00 ERA is fine and in line with the 4.28 xFIP and 4.05 FIP but again, there’s nothing spectacular there. 

Berrios splits the fastball into a four-seam and a sinker about equally. He needs the curve to work because his four-seam gave up a .339 average and a .286 ISO last season. In contrast, the curve sat at a .169 average and a .060 ISO. There’s still upside by the splits because Berrios kept the ball in the yard against RHH last year with a 0.58 HR/9. Lefties displayed a 1.69 mark (hello Christian Yelich one-off) and the Brew Crew lineup is projected for four righties and the pitcher slot. Still, don’t be lulled into any thoughts of safety with Berrios. 

Chris Flexen ($6,000 DK/$6,500 FD) 

N/A as he pitched 2020 in the Korean Baseball League 

I know Ghost is happy as he held down the KBO end of the Win Daily coverage when we had no sports to play. I’m looking at Flexen tonight in part because he’s quite cheap. We saw last night that Yusei Kikuchi was somewhat popular as a $6,000 pitcher and that could replicate. The Dodgers are still in Coors facing bad pitching, so we know the drill. To get a little bit of a better idea of Flexen, you can check out this short profile from USA Today.

The short story is Flexen went to Korea, lost around 35 pounds, and jumpstarted his career. He flopped with the Mets to the tune of an 8.07 ERA but found himself in the KBO. That doesn’t guarantee success by any stretch tonight. However, Flexen offers a curve, cutter, change, and fastball if he keeps the same repertoire with Seattle. He pitched 16 innings in the spring and whiffed 17 batters, capping it off with three scoreless innings. There’s no telling how he pitches tonight but he’s cheap enough to find out. 

Honorable Mention – None

Gas Can To Attack – Jon Gray pitches in Coors tonight against the Dodgers. In the truncated season last year, he had an 8.39 ERA at home with a .412 wOBA and a 3.77 HR/9 to lefties. I’m not sure we need to go much further. 

Starting Rotation 4.3 Betting Section 

Free Strikeout Prop 

Every day, I’ll have one prop that I’m chasing for free in the article. Anything else that I’m playing will be located in our Premium Sports Bets! 

Record 1-1

Thank you for reading my Starting Rotation 4.3 and make sure you follow me on Twitter at @bucn4life! Be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!