MLB Pitching Pulse: 7-13-18

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.

Porcello is quietly having a pretty solid season, posting a 3.59 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 22.6% strikeout rate, and comes in as a pretty good option in all formats against the Blue Jays tonight. He is a -186) favorite against them, with the Jays projected at four runs, and he has already posted a 1-0 record and 3.29 ERA against them in two previous starts. He has pitched pretty well of late, with exception to the Nationals and Angels outings, and is coming off a solid outing with seven innings and nine strikeouts and three earned runs allowed. He rarely gets through games cleanly, as he has allowed at least two earned runs in all but one of his last ten games, but he is making up for it with strikeouts and going deep into games. He also has a pretty decent shot at a win tonight, with a young Ryan Borucki opposing him, so that is definitely a boost to his floor tonight. His issues with left-handed hitters are less pronounced this season, as he is allowing just a .304 wOBA and .175 ISO to them, and he has increased his strikeouts to that side of the plate to 26.9%. Hard contact and fly balls are still a bit of an issue for him there, as his sinker isn't generating enough ground balls, but he is doing a good job of mixing in his slider and curveball to adjust. He is throwing his slider to left-handed hitters about 29% of the time, which bodes well against a Blue Jays offense that really struggles against sliders, which has me intrigued tonight. Porcello will have to navigate around Justin Smoak tonight, as he owns a .500 ISO and .493 wOBA over the past two weeks, but the rest of this offense is pretty cold right now. Porcello comes in as one of the top names on the slate, of guys not coming off the DL, and will probably be a popular target tonight.