MLB Pitching Pulse: 6-26-18

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.

We get The Big Maple in a good spot tonight, but he is just a tournament option for me. Kluber and Severino are safer cash game options, there isn't really much of a discount to get excited about, and there probably shouldn't be one. Paxton gets a projected lineup that has a .293 wOBA and .126 ISO against southpaws this season. The strikeout rate look slower, but a few bats with low at-bats this season drag it down. Digging into Paxton's pitch mix, he relies on that high velocity fastball, a cutter, then a curveball. He has whiff rates over 35% on both his cutter and curveball, then a 22% whiff rate on the fastball. There is only two bats that have over a 70% contact rate against curveballs, which is Caleb Joesph (Lol) and Manny Machado at 71%. The cutter is a little bit more of an issue, but because it is a damn good one I am not worried. Machado, Danny Valencia, and Jonathan Schoop have some decent numbers against the pitch, but contact rates are still rather poor. Paxton has plenty of upside tonight