MLB DW Slate Preview - May 12
Huge breakdown of all of the action on Tuesday, May 12th
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Big shout out to Trevor, who has been crushing with The Daily Slip. He’s been taking us through some of the data and tools that I offer at MLB DW and how to use them to be a profitable bettor and DFS player. He’s doing an awesome job and I personally really look forward to his articles daily. And it doesn’t hurt when he cashes there Ben Rice tickets and a pitcher K parlay in the same night to boost the roll!
But it’s Tuesday! My second-favorite day of the week for baseball. Let’s go through the turbo and main slate for DFS purposes today.
Weather
Weather report from Kevin Roth here
Too much to bother with an ugly screenshot again. But click that link to check it out.
It looks like we have only one spot to even think about. Royals at White Sox. But it’s just a 40% chance of rain and Roth has it as not an imminent PPD.
YELLOW/ORANGE - A few showers around pregame, those should clear without much concern. There’s another batch of storms that look to fire up after that, which could cause an issue. I’m starting this at YELLOW/ORANGE, which if you are new here is my default for “it’s gonna rain, but I don’t really know what they plan to do about it”. Best guess is that there’s some sort of delay but they manage to play ball, but I’ll try to add more details as we get closer to first pitch. Winds are ripping at 20mph, a bit out to left, a bit right to left.
That game is Stephen Kolek vs. Eric Fedde, so we’re not considering using those pitchers, which makes it a game not to worry about unless it goes to full orange/red in the afternoon update. We can play some hitters there, but hitters aren’t influenced by rain delays, so we’re in the clear for this slate.
Turbo Slate Preview
Game Data
I’m not sure when MLB moneylines started becoming available. Probably in the last ten years. I imagine that the Pirates have never in their history been a -350 favorite like they are tonight. They’ll host the Rockies with Paul Skenes on the board. The Bucs offense has also been above average, so they’re a massive favorite with the second-highest run implication (vs. Lorenzen) on this early slate.
The Reds are the top offense at home against Miles Mikolas. We have some really bad pitching on the board tonight. Mikolas’ sports a 4.62 JA ERA, which doesn’t even look that bad relative to some of these other gas cans going.
Mikolas has given up a homer every 16.2 PAs, and that’s the key point. In Cincy, it’s a spot for the Reds to hit multiple homers.
The Yankees (vs. Rogers in his return from IL) and Phillies (vs. Bello) also clear a five-run implication. That Rogers start hasn’t been confirmed by the Orioles, so it could be wrong I suppose. But I think that’s where they’re going. If it’s not Rogers, I imagine the Yankees implication would only go upward.
Pitchers
You don’t often see one pitcher being five points clear of the field, but this is the softest matchup of Paul Skenes ($10,000) career, probably.
Zack Wheeler ($9,800) gets a soft matchup against Baltimore. He’s still priced as though he’s Zack Wheeler. And he is Zack Wheeler. But I don’t think he is that Zack Wheeler. His K% is 26.5% this year with a 14.1% SwStr%. Those are good marks, but not up to his pre-injury standards. And he hasn’t had the elite command this year with a 35.5% Ball% and an 8.8% BB%. He has gotten ahead in the count just 28.5% of the time (the way I’ve decided to calculate it), which is three points below the league average.
The command will probably come around. But that’s no guarantee. His JA ERA of 3.52 just isn’t elite. And I’m hesitant to play him at these lofty tags, especially when there’s a $10K Skenes vs. Rockies available to us. I think Skenes is clearly the lock-button play for this one. Starters have averaged 16.3 fantasy points against the road Rockies this year. Only seven pitchers have been held below 10 points, and it’s mostly a list of bad pitchers or guys who got hurt. And then Jesus Luzardo.
Will Warren ($9,000) is coming off of his first bad start of the year, but still has an elite strikeout rate and has pitched very well. He’ll take on the Orioles in this one. I’m still balking at paying this kind of price for a guy I think is going to fall apart to some extent.
Both what other options do we have on the turbo?