Pitching: Castillo (#1 Optimal), Ragans (#2 Optimal), Heaney (#1 GPP), Gibson (#2 GPP), Wood (#3 GPP Punt)
Hitting: LAD (#1 Optimal), KAN (#2 Optimal), TEX (#3 Optimal), OAK (#1 GPP), SEA (#2 GPP), MIN (#3 GPP)
Weather: All Clear, wind blowing in at Wrigley
Bad Chalk: Buehler
We have a six-game slate in store to kick off the work week and it is quite the interesting one with the return of some injured pitchers, to say the least! The pitching options on the slate are super sketchy at best with only a few viable arms in our estimation. Let’s get right down to business.
The top gun on the mound this evening comes from the best rotation in the bigs, the Seattle Mariners. Their horse, Luis Castillo, will be toeing the rubber and he looks to be in an excellent spot going up against the Minnesota Twins. Castillo got hit around a bit at the start of the season but has been excellent during this ungodly stretch of amazing starting pitching the Mariners have seen. The Twins have a ton of swing-and-miss in their lineup which makes this a good matchup for Luis in the strikeout department. He has thrown 96+ pitches in each of his last five starts and 101+ in four of them giving him exceptional length as well. There is some risk here though as his fastball has been hammered by lefties to the tune of a .233 xISO and the Twins have a number of lefties that crush righty fastballs. Kiriloff (.263/.395), Julien (.353/.375), Kepler (.382 xwOBA), Larnach (.937/.799), and Santana (.183/.350) all have the potential to ding him here. He will be very highly owned with the upside he possesses but there is some risk. If you wanted to stack the Twins in GPP formats, it would be a very GPP way to get elite leverage on the field. Just know the buzzsaw the Mariners pitching staff has been.
Cole Ragans is the second optimal arm on the slate as he prepares to do battle with the Milwaukee Brewers. He has fanned 25.0% of lefties and 29.9% of righties this season which gives him a very similar strikeout upside to Castillo at a slightly discounted price point. Milwaukee will send seven righties to the plate against him in all likelihood which actually works in his favor from a K perspective. Righties have dinged his fastball with a .209 xISO against the pitch but outside of Hoskins, the Brewers have a very laughable amount of power against lefties in their order right now as Contreras has the second-highest xISO on the team with a .106. These two clearly stand out as the two highest upside arms in our estimation but they will be owned as a result.
Walker Buehler is drawing a ton of ownership on both sites but we are very skeptical of eating that chalk. He projects well because he is going up against the Miami Marlins who have packed it in on their season quite obviously. However, this is Walker’s first big league start in nearly a year and a half after coming back from Tommy John and the chances of the Dodgers pushing the gas pedal on him in any capacity are slim to none. Yes, he has thrown 86 and 75 pitches in his two recent rehab starts. But he did not exceed five innings in either and the Dodgers are highly unlikely to let him move through the order for a third time in his first start back. The numbers were not eye-popping in AAA either as he held just a 24% K rate against sub-big league level bats. The amount of uncertainty around this spot makes it a hard pass for us. Were he projected for lesser ownership, we would be far more inclined to lean into the uncertainty. With him projected for similar ownership to both Castillo and Ragans, that has us licking our chops to get the two studs of the slate at lower ownership than they otherwise should be.
Turning to GPPs, the main man to consider is Andrew Heaney who will be going up against the terrible Oakland A’s offense. The issue here is that the Oakland offense is actually not that bad, (and dare we say somewhat good?!) against lefties. We called this the other day when they went berserk for 20 runs against another lefty and the numbers look somewhat similar in this spot. The numbers for Heaney this year are skewed a bit by him being blasted by Houston twice. He has a 23:2 K:BB ratio in his other five so looking back at his 2023 stats could be instructive. Last year, righties had a .238 xISO off his heater and that has mostly been the same story this year at a .212 xISO. For his price though, he has been more than serviceable in all of his non-Houston outings so this is a tough spot. Oakland has several bats like Ruiz (.206/.388), Nevin (.482/.467), Toro (.305/.422), Rooker (.310/.360), Davis (.366/.428), and Schuemann (.367 xISO) all crush the lefty heater which could make this a tough spot for him. Our inclination here is to play Castillo and Ragans in most lineups and then mix in Heaney if you want some value.
For value arms to consider that are not named Heaney, our first option is Kyle Gibson. He is coming off a 9 K outing that is more of an outlier than anything else. He has around a 19% K rate to hitters on both sides of the dish this year so we should not expect a repeat of that. With that being said, he too has major warning signs as lefties have a .713 xISO/.759 xwOBA off his cutter and righties have a .264/.426 line against his sinker. Nimmo and Lindor look like great options from the left side while Alonso, Martinez, and Taylor are the best options from the right side.
The final option to consider is more of a punt than anything else. Alex Wood grades out as one of the better point-per-dollar options on both sites. The issue is he has been bad and is going up against the powerful Texas Rangers. There really is no compelling reason to play Wood other than his price as righties have a .203 xISO/.450 xwOBA off his sinker which makes options like Semien, Garcia, Heim, Duran, Taveras, and Seager elite stacking options against him. They are projected as one of the optimal stacks of the slate and can be used in all formats.
As we turn to the bats, it should be apparent by now with the lack of viable arms that there are a TON of options to turn to on the offensive side of the ledger. We have touched on a number already above but will get to the rest now. The clear top optimal stack on the slate is the LA Dodgers who will be going up against the Miami Marlins. Roddery Munoz has looked excellent in his first two starts but that is going to come to an end in all likelihood tonight. Nothing about his minor league stats suggested he would strike out 41% of lefties and 31.1% of righties in his first two big league starts as he carried a career 22% K rate at AAA with a ton of walks. Lefties have hit him hard as they have a .325 xISO off his heater thus far which makes us love the upside of bats like Freeman, Ohtani, and Muncy in particular. The challenge here is finding the money to full-stack the Dodgers as the value pitching is quite sketchy. Most people will plug in Heaney in order to do this and keep things moving. But that comes with its own set of issues as we discussed. Finding a way to play a mini-Dodgers stack with the more expensive arms could make this a fun night in GPPs that would differentiate you from the masses.
The Kansas City Royals let us down yesterday but it appears people are going right back to them today as they face off with Bryse Wilson and the Brew Crew. He has very severe splits with lefties crushing him with a .365 xISO/.431 xwOBA overall and most of the damage coming off his cutter and sinker. With just a 16.8% K rate against righties as well, he looks enticing to target all the way around. Our top targets here are certainly Witt, Pasquantino, Perez, Massey, and Melendez. They will be a popular stack as well but for good reason.
The last GPP stack to call out that we have not yet touched on is the Seattle Mariners who will be going up against Simeon Woods-Richardson and the Twins. Woods-Richardson has seen his fastball get blown up routinely this year as lefties have a .377/.503 line against it while righties have a .524/.489 line themselves. Those are egregiously bad numbers and the Mariners, frustrating as they may be due to their Ks, have a ton of power in their lineup. Rojas, Haniger, Raleigh, Rodriguez, Polanco, Garver, Raley, and Moore all could knock one out of the park tonight with their numbers and we are super high on the upside for them in this spot. Consider them in GPPs!