We’ve got a nice split slate here on this Wednesday with five-afternoon games and ten evening games. The main slate is large enough so we’ll only focus on that for the article today. The weather today looks solid with almost no threats of rain (yet) anywhere. We’ve got some really warm weather for the hitters in Philadelphia, Texas, New York, and Cincinnati. There’s not much in terms of forecasted winds. Wrigley is looking calm at this point. There are winds around 9 mph blowing in down in Texas. But remember, that ballpark is designed to minimize wind impact so you really don’t need to worry about that. Oakland will have winds blowing out between 8-9 mph which is a small boost to hitters in that large park. We shouldn’t have to make many adjustments based on weather factors today. As far as Vegas lines are concerned, we have a massive, Coors-like, O/U of ten down in Texas. The Yankees have a huge implied team total. We’ve also got a couple of games missing lines in Chicago, which is usually the case at this time of the morning for a game at Wrigley. That's also the case in Oakland, which I assume is because Seattle has several players listed as day-to-day and we’ll need to wait for their lineup. Let's jump in and see what we can find for our rosters tonight!

Power Pitching Targets ⚾️

Jacob deGrom, NYM (vs. MIA) (DK: $13.2K, FD: $10.4K)

Here’s your number one arm of the day and it’s honestly not close. deGrom shattered all concerns about his health, throwing 100 pitches with 13 strikeouts in his last start. He’s got a 1.75 ERA and a higher but still outstanding 2.66 SIERA with a 34.3% strikeout rate and a 15.5% swinging strikeout rate. He gives up 44.7% groundballs and allows only 23.9% hard contact. Today, he gets a very weak Miami Marlins team who strike out 23.9% of the time to right-handed pitching with only a .115 ISO, .279 wOBA, and a 76 wRC+. The only player in the Marlins lineup that makes me nervous is Justin Bour, but deGrom has a 2.62 xFIP and 33% strikeout rate while allowing only a .259 wOBA and 22% hard contact to left-handed batters. To right-handed batters, he has a 2.10 xFIP with a 35.6% strikeout rate while forcing 51.7% groundballs. He’s allowing just a .218 wOBA and 25.9% hard contact rate to righties so far this season. There’s nothing to overthink here. He’s a massive -210 favorite and he should dominate in this spot. He’s without question your cash game arm of the evening. In tournaments, you can make the ownership argument for fading as he should be very popular on this slate.

Kenta Maeda, LAD (vs. COL) (DK: $9.8K, $8.7K)

Maeda is sticking out to me as a second higher-priced pitching option. He’s got a 3.89 ERA and a 3.25 SIERA with a 28.6% strikeout rate and a 13.9% swinging strike rate this season. I like targeting the Rockies on the road as their numbers are always inflated because of how often they play at Coors Field. This is a huge negative park shift playing in LA. This year, their numbers aren’t very good to begin with. They strikeout 24.1% of the time to right-handed pitching with only a .150 ISO, .286 wOBA, and a 63 wRC+. Maeda has a 5.61 ERA and is allowing a .355 wOBA to left-handed bats but he has only a 3.10 xFIP and the BABIP is currently at a very unsustainable .400. He’s pitching better to lefties than the results would currently lead us to believe. He still has a 28.1% strikeout rate too. Against right-handed bats, he has a 3.10 xFIP with 29% strikeouts while only allowing a .268 wOBA. He’s a -168 favorite against a Rockies lineup that is batting just .220 against him in 58 at-bats. He’s nowhere close to the level of deGrom but he makes for an interesting tournament option at a significant discount and lower ownership today.

Value Pitchers

Luiz Gohara, ATL (@PHI) (DK: $6.6K, FD: $6K)

The highly regarded Gohara will be making his first big league start after a few outings from the bullpen. He’s one of the game’s top pitching prospects with a high fastball velocity and a swing-and-miss slider that should give a lot of teams trouble. I’d rather this game not be in a small ballpark in 80-degree weather but I think he’s worth a look in this spot today. Sample sizes are small but we’ll look at his career numbers to give us as much data as possible. We’ll start with pitch splits. He throws three pitches, a fastball, slider, and changeup. He hardly uses the changeup and throws the fastball and slider pretty equally. His fastball has a maximum velocity of 100 of mph so he’s a very hard-throwing lefty. The average velocity is around 95 mph. The slider is the key to his success, he’s allowing just a .167 wOBA and has a 23.2% swinging strike rate on that pitch dating back to the start of last season. As far as standard splits are concerned, he’s deadly against lefties allowing just a .161 wOBA with 30.8% strikeouts and only 20% hard contact. To right-handed bats, he can be vulnerable with a .344 wOBA and 34.5% hard contact rate allowed. He does still have an above-average strikeout rate, however, at 23%. I think it’s possible someone like Hoskins or Santana takes him yard but for his cheap price and the strikeout upside, I’m putting him on my tournament radar today.

Marco Gonzales, SEA (@OAK) (DK: $6.1K, FD: $7K)

I know the idea of rostering a lefty against Oakland makes your stomach hurt but they are significantly less intimidating without Kris Davis in the lineup. Only Semien, Chapman, and Pinder have an above average ISO against left-handed pitching. Power-bats like Olson and Lowrie are way less of an issue against left-handers and guys like Piscotty and Lucroy are struggling this season. This is far from a sure thing but there’s a case to be made here, given the current lineup, for Gonzales to put up a solid outing tonight. His SIERA is a full run below his ERA at 3.60 and he’s got a 21.4% strikeout rate so far this season. If we look at his career splits, he allows just a .294 wOBA and 20.5% hard contact to left-handed batters. Right-handed bats are where he can get into trouble with a .380 wOBA and a 36.4% hard contact rate allowed. But, without Davis, are you really going to run away from the righties here? Semien could pose a problem and even Chapman but outside of that, there’s not enough here for me to cross Gonzales off my list. I’d never go here in cash but he’s firmly in consideration for tournaments tonight. There’s no line on this game as the Mariners bats are dealing with several injuries but I would still expect them to be favored even not at full strength with Daniel Gossett and his 11.05 ERA and 3.68 K/9 taking the mound for Oakland today. Gonzales is a very sneaky option tonight.

#HomeRunWatchlist 💥

>>> HRW brought to you by Daily Matchup Tool <<<

Stacks on Stacks 🥞

• Cincinnati Reds (vs. Chad Kuhl): I love playing the Reds when they are at home. They have some powerful left-handed bats and Great American Ballpark is outstanding for left-handed home run power. The hot weather today will only help with this. Chad Kuhl has a lot of trouble with lefties which means he’ll be in for a long day in this spot. So far, this season, he’s allowing a 21.4% HR/FB rate and 39.4% hard contact to lefties. I really love Votto, Gennett, and Schebler and I wouldn’t leave Suarez or Duvall out of full stacks if you want to go that way.

• Pittsburgh Pirates (vs. Homer Bailey): You know the drill. Attack Bailey when he’s on the slate and even more so when he’s at home. Like the Reds, the Pirates have some serious left-handed power that can do a ton of damage in this ballpark. Polanco, Dickerson, Bell, Meadows, and Moran are some of my favorite bats on the entire slate today. Bailey is allowing a .399 wOBA with just an 11.9% strikeout rate to lefties this season.

• New York Yankees (vs. Doug Fister): The Yankees have the highest implied team total by over a half of a run today at 5.57. Doug Fister has a SIERA that is nearly a full run higher than his ERA. His luck will run out today against this lineup. He’s got only 17.1% strikeouts with just a 6% swinging strike rate and allowing 37.1% hard contact. All the Yankees bats are in play.

• Baltimore Orioles (vs. Dylan Covey): The first thing that stood out to me when I started looking at this slate today was that Alex Cobb is a -123 favorite. How bad do you have to be to be an underdog against Alex Cobb this season? The answer is as bad as Dylan Covey. The sample size is very small but he profiles as a very low strikeout and very high hard contact allowed type of pitcher. He walks more people than he strikes out. His only positive is he appears to force some groundballs but that’s not going to be much help. All the Orioles bats are in play but something I noticed in my research is Covey actually struggles more with right-handed bats than left-handed bats. Machado, Schoop, Mancini, and Jones are my favorites and you can mix in Alvarez, Davis, and the others depending on who makes the lineup today.

• Seattle Mariners (vs. Daniel Gossett): There’s no line on this game yet and my assumption is because the Mariners have several players listed as day-to-day and we don’t have any insight on what their lineup will be. I love this because I think it will make them under-owned tonight and I really don’t care who is in the lineup when they are facing Gossett. The sample size this season is small but if we look at his career splits he allows a .390 wOBA and 31.4% hard contact with only a 12% strikeout rate to lefties. To righties, he’s allowing a .380 wOBA with 37.6% hard contact and a better but still average 20.1% strikeout rate. Both sides of the plate are in play and with the potential injuries, they could be an excellent source of value to help you fit in Jacob deGrom tonight.

Sneaky Stack Call of the Day

• Tampa Bay Rays (vs. David Price): The 237 million dollar man finally looked the part after throwing a complete game his last time out and only needing 95 pitchers to do it. But, we all know he’s not the pitcher he once was and he’s still prone to getting blown up even after coming off a strong performance. This will be the fourth time already this season that Price has faced the Rays and he really hasn’t done anything special against them. He’s had a quality start in two of the three but only five strikeouts in each game. I think Price could be a popular option today against a Rays team that strikes out a lot, and Price carrying some name value and coming off of a strong performance. The mid-tier pitching options aren’t great and I was drawn to him initially until I looked at the numbers. If he’s going to be popular I’m going to roll out some Rays stacks as a leverage play. They have solid numbers against left-handed pitching with a .330 wOBA, .160 ISO, and 110 wRC+.

Kind of an ugly slate. There are a ton of options on offense I didn’t even get to that I really like today. Pitching is just not great. In cash it’s deGrom. He should be 100% owned in cash games tonight (he won't be but he should). For tournaments you can make a case for a few guys such as Maeda, Freeland, and the cheaper guys we discussed like Gohara and Gonzales. I’m going to do my best to fit in deGrom even in tournaments and then differentiate myself from the field through bats and my SP2. You just aren’t going to be able to beat deGrom’s upside today in my opinion but I understand the game theory perspective to fade him due to ownership. Good luck! As always, feel free to tag me in the LineStar chat rooms @glandry or you can find me on twitter @GP_Landry. Thanks for reading!

Catch us on LineStar MLB Chat and don't forget to enter the freeroll today!