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.
Noah Syndergaard (R) vs Milwaukee Brewers | ||||||
Splits (2017-2018) | wOBA Allowed | K% | BB% | GB% | Hard% Allowed | ISO |
Vs. LHB | .266 | 32.3% | 4.3% | 43.6% | 27.3% | .086 |
| Vs. RHB | .278 | 22.8% | 4.3% | 59.2% | 24.8% | .097 |
Opposing Team Splits Vs. Pitcher Handedness | ||||||
wOBA | ISO | wRC+ | K% | BB% | Hard% | Implied Run Total |
| .323 | .173 | 101 | 24.8% | 8.3% | 36.7% | 3.7 |
Before we dive into the five pitchers for this article we have an absolutely loaded pitching slate ahead of us and it was very tough to narrow down. Max Scherzer is pitching against the Marlins, but the price tag is his only flaw these days. I don't mind him in any format, and of course Corey Kluber is in play against a Houston team that hasn't quite been the offense it was last year. Kluber was the odd man out of this article, and the same goes for Luis Severino. While the Angels are not an offense that we usually pick on, they are heavily right-handed lineup and Severino is in the elite tier of pitchers around baseball. Keep an eye throughout the article for other honorable mentions in the various price range.
Noah Syndergaard is going up against a Brewers offense that is starting to find itself a little bit, and maybe more so Jesus Aguilar. While Syndergaard will have to dance around a few hitters, I really like the upside for him in this spot. Christian Yelich and Travis Shaw are two lefties that I tend to worry about, but Syndergaard's 30%+ strikeout rate against lefties is always something to note. Syndergaard is also someone who doesn't allow much power. I mean those ISO numbers allowed dating back to last year are outrageous. Syndergaard tends to get let down by high pitch counts, cheap hits, and bad defense, which is why we haven't seen a consistent ceiling this season. It is weird to think Syndergaard has been unlucky this season with a 2.91 ERA, but it stems past that stat a bit. It is about how deep he should be pitching into games and for a guy with only one out of ten starts allowing more than three earned runs, he should have more than four wins. Unfortunately Thor continues to deal these downsides, but that shouldn't deter you away. Thor has five pitches, and they all are top notch. His fastball is averaging 97mph this season, which has been hit the most out of any of them. His slider and changeup boast whiff rates over 40% this season, and outside of the slider and fastball his pitchers are generating less than a 20% hard-contact rate. We saw a few times this year where Thor would throw two of his off-speed pitches over 20% of the time, and I would like to see more of that here. Milwaukee has some poorer contact bats against the off-speed pitches Syndergaard throws. Thor has the upside of anyone on the slate, and is rather cheap when comparing the aces tonight.
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