MLB Pitching Pulse: 5-18-18

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.

Slate Notes: Weather is a concern again on the East Coast, and it starts with Washington and Max Scherzer. He is an excellent option against a struggling Dodgers offense, but rain looks like it will delay a Scherzer start yet again. Pittsburgh also has rain in the picture, and a guy like Tyson Ross would be an excellent GPP play if things settle down. Atlanta has their usual thunderstorms going on, but these seem a bit more risky than just a 30-45 min delay. Sean Newcomb is in an excellent spot, but weather stopped be from going in-depth. Cincinnati has weather concerns as well, which is for Jon Lester, but I do not have interest in him despite the rain. Hendricks struggles against lefties a bit, which Cincinnati can load up on in a good hitting environment.

At least the rain is going to likely hold off until this game is over, as rain continues to push towards the East Coast. There is concern with Jacob deGrom's health, and the fact he is on the Mets does not give me a great deal of confidence in how they handle these situations. He only threw 45 pitches last time out, and was inefficient with control. His velocity was the same which is encouraging, but we need to try and see if we get any news on a pitch count for deGrom tonight. His price is down across the industry and if he is 100%, we get one hell of a bargain. Arizona is a bottom three team against right-handed pitching and A.J. Pollock might have been the only thing from them being dead last so far this season. They have a 25% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching this season, and do not have a lot of bats that I think can get to deGrom. His numbers have been stellar this season, allowing a .226 wOBA to right-handers and a .251 wOBA to lefties. He is also inducing over a 25% soft-contact rate to both sides of the plate this season. We like pitchers with above average sliders who throw them often against Arizona, and that is the case with deGrom. He has a slider generating a 12.5% hard-contact rate and 37% whiff rate on the year, and uses it 24% of the time.