MLB Pitching Pulse: 5-14-18

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 concerns about his velocity, Patrick Corbin has managed pitch solid outings against the Dodgers and Nationals in his last three outings and he will look to build on that tonight against the Brewers. In those three outings, Corbin has still managed to strike out 19 hitters in 17.2 innings, but unfortunately, the Diamondbacks have not been able to put up enough offense to help him secure a win. He has allowed just one earned in each of his last two outings, and two or fewer in all but two of his outings, so the concerns about his velocity haven't slowed him down when it comes to run prevention and strikeouts. His increased slider usage has led to much of his success and setting himself up in counts by using it at multiple speeds. The velocity issues could be just noise, as Corbin claims to be completely fine and the results suggest the same, but it is something of note when looking at him tonight. There were some red flags in his last start, mostly his slider control, but again, he still managed a good outing and it didn't effect the overall outcome of his game. Corbin's slider usage is of significance in this spot, as the Brewers are putrid are against the pitch, and it what I hope he relies on tonight against them. He is throwing the pitch to left-handed hitters 49% of the time and right-handed hitters 35% of the time, and he has seen several outings this season where he hurled the pitch over 40% of the time for the entire game. As I mentioned, the Brewers are putrid against the pitch, as every member of their roster has a SwStr% in the double-digits against the pitch, and the right-handed hitters, are especially bad against it with Ryan Braun's 12% SwStr% being the lowest on the team. I mention the right-handed hitters here because Corbin has allowed a .329 wOBA and 34.2% hard contact to the handedness dating back to last season. He has held them, however, to a .242 wOBA and .155 ISO so far this season, which could be a by product of his increased slider usage. I have made it through this entire paragraph without mentioning the most important part of Corbin's game, his strikeouts. Corbin has posted an eye-popping 34% strikeout rate on the season, and 24% dating back to last season, and has struck out 34.8% of right-handed batters faced. While the Brewers aren't a strikeout heavy team, striking out just 20.7% of the time against LHP, they do lack power and the ability to string together offense, making Corbin one of the top options across the board.