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.
Max Scherzer (R) vs Arizona Diamondbacks | ||||||
Splits (2017-2018) | wOBA Allowed | K% | BB% | GB% | Hard% Allowed | ISO Allowed |
Vs. LHB | .288 | 27% | 8.7% | 32.8% | 26.3% | .172 |
| Vs. RHB | .190 | 44.6% | 5.1% | 44.6% | 29.1% | .097 |
Opposing Team Splits Vs. Pitcher Handedness | ||||||
wOBA | ISO | wRC+ | K% | BB% | Hard% | Implied Run Total |
| .304 | .161 | 90 | 24.8% | 11.2% | 33.4% | 3.2 |
Max Scherzer heads back to Arizona where he was drafted back in 2006. Since then he has been one of the most dominating pitchers in the game, and that has been the case again this season. Scherzer has a 40% strikeout rate on the season, and continues to be the arm I want to pay up for. He is holding right-handed bats to a .190 wOBA and .088 ISO, and wait for it... A 51.1% strikeout rate. Arizona had six right-handers in the lineup last night, and that will likely be the case again tonight. You could see Alex Avila in there catching, who is familiar with Scherzer, but has a 48% strikeout rate against right-handers this season. The Arizona projected lineup has just a .296 wOBA and .145 ISO off right-handed pitching this season, and a 22.6% strikeout rate dating back to last season. Scherzer continues to work magic on most of his pitches, not throwing his secondary stuff more than 20% of the time. His slider and changeup both are generating over a 35% whiff and the same goes for his fastball. Scherzer has 80 strikeouts over eight starts, tallying double-digits in five of them. He has gone six or more innings in all but one start this season, and has yet to allow more than two earned runs in a start. While Scherzer is the most expensive pitcher on the board, this is like a Gerrit Cole situation where I can feel comfortable paying up, and hell we should get another double digit strikeout start. Scherzer is the number one option for me tonight.
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