MLB Pitching Pulse: 5-4-18

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.

Gerrit Cole is one of the few pitchers I am okay paying their price tags tonight. He has immense upside against an Arizona offense that I feel is way over performing this season. They have a 24.4% strikeout rate against right-handed pitching, and on of the lower implied totals on the slate. Arizona is a great fastball hitting team, but struggle with the off-speed stuff. Cole is throwing his slider 24% of the time this season, and his curveball 17% of the time. Dating back to 2016, nobody has over a .330 wOBA off sliders, and the same things go for curveballs. Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock hit Cole's fastball range well, but that is about it. Chase Field has been a more neutral park this season, sitting bottom half in runs and home runs. Cole is the most expensive pitcher on both sites, but the upside is still there. Fire away in all formats.