MLB Pitching Pulse: 4-3-18

Pitching is the lifeblood of a DFS lineup, and an important part of keeping those tabs open deep into the night. For those new with us, the Pitching Pulse is focused on providing information on four to five pitchers that are viable in various formats. This is a premium article that will give away one free preview pitcher, while the rest will be for premium members. We take a deep dive into pitchers across all salaries, looking for exploitable matchups, game theory plays, and identify the nightly chalk. Our information comes from our optimizer, FanGraphs, and other various MLB sites listed below. Feel free to comment below, or find us on Twitter at @BrentHeiden1, @JGuilbault11, and @dfcafe. We focus on Main Slates across all content, but will feature blurbs about other slates at times, and can be reached via Twitter or comments.

Despite Clayton Kershaw being on the slate, Justin Verlander is my favorite arm. He is cheaper, and the upside against this strikeout happy Baltimore team is too good to pass up. Verlander is coming off a strong game against Texas, throwing six shutout innings in a win. Velocity looked good for Verlander, averaging 95mph, and he secondary pitchers were there as well. While this Baltimore team has some pop, they also strikeout a lot. Projected lineup owns a .206 ISO against right-handed pitching, but a 25.2% strikeout rate. In a line start last season against Baltimore, Verlander fired off ten strikeouts over seven innings, allowing just two earned runs. I am expecting strikeout stuff to be a bit enhanced tonight given you have a back end of the lineup that consists of Colby Rasmus, Pedro Alvarez, Caleb Joseph, and Tim Beckham. All these names have strikeout rates over 25% against right-handed pitching, and you also have Chris Davis leading off with a 36.1% strikeout rate.

Verlander has continued his hot second half from last season, where he had a 1.95 ERA and allowed a .233 wOBA. As I said on Opening Day, expect more of an in-between Verlander from the first and second half of last season. HIs strikeout rate hovered around 25%, and his 21.7% strikeout rate so far this season should go up after this matchup. He is a huge home favorite, and Baltimore has one of the lower run totals on the night. So far this season, they are dead last in wOBA and wRC+ as a team, with a 27.1% strikeout rate. While it is only a few game sample size, this Baltimore team last season went through stretches of looking like a bottom five offense. I don't see them improving tonight, and find Verlander to be the safest, but also the highest upside play on the board.