MLB Pitching Pulse: 6-20-18

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.

Price has been outstanding over his last seven starts, going 6-0 with a 2.64 ERA and striking out 47 over that span, and will face off against the Twins at Target Field tonight. Price is always tough to trust but he comes in as a pretty good option in all formats tonight due to the lack of top-tier arms on the slate. Price owns a pretty solid 23.8% strikeout rate dating back to last season and has exhibited some pretty solid contact numbers with a 76.9% contact rate. He is holding opponents on both sides of the plate to a sub-.300 wOBA this season and is inducing a 23.5% soft contact rate. Price is mixing his pitches fairly well, throwing his slider about 30% of the time and his four-seam fastball about 39% of the time, while mixing in his changeup and sinker the rest of the time. The Twins offense got hot in Cleveland but they still own a putrid .301 team wOBA and 87 wRC+ against southpaws this season and they are striking out 24% of the time against them as a whole. Their projected lineup has just one player with an ISO over .160 against LHP this season, and that is Eddie Rosario, while four of their projected hitters own GB rates over 45% against them. They struggle against sliders, with seven of their projected hitters posting a WHIFF rate north of 30% against the pitch, while only Brian Dozier and Eddie Rosario have posted solid numbers against Price's four-seam fastball. Because their is a lack of top-tier arms on the slate, Price may actually end up being one of the top options on the slate.