MLB Pitching Pulse: 5-8-18

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.

Corey Kluber will head to the NL tonight, where he gets a small bump because he gets to face the pitcher two times or so, which is unfair against Kluber. The Brewers offense has yet to really click this season, boasting pedestrian numbers against right-handers, and even over the last two weeks they have the worst wRC+ in the league. Kluber's cutter, changeup, and curveball have been his best pitches, generating whiff rates over 33%. He is throwing his cutter 23% of the time, which has just a 28% hard-contact rate. His curveball is also posting elite whiff rate numbers, sitting at 38% and a 19% hard-contact rate. Nobody on Milwaukee grades out well against the curve, outside of Domingo Santana, who has a .332 wOBA and .191 ISO, but only makes contact 60% of the time. Nobody else has over a .300 wOBA off the pitch. As far as cutters go, it is about the same thing, where Santana is the best at it, while nobody else is over a .310 wOBA off the pitch. It is safe to say Kluber is an elite option tonight, and is someone I don't mind paying a premium price on.