With the NBA season having come to an end last night with the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Game 7 victory over the Indiana Pacers, it’s officially time for baseball to take the center stage.
There are only eight games as part of tonight’s featured DFS slate at DraftKings, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of good pitchers to choose from. Here are my three favorite options from the slate.
Set your DraftKings fantasy baseball lineups here: MLB $200K Knuckleball [$50K to 1st].
1. Chad Patrick, Milwaukee Brewers ($8,600)
Through the first 13 starts of Patrick’s career, he was pretty elite, pitching to just a 2.62 ERA across 68.2 innings (15.4 FPTS per game). Then he got blasted twice in a row, conceding five runs and seven hits in five innings against the Atlanta Braves (11.25 FPTS) on June 11 before allowing four runs and six hits to the Chicago Cubs in five innings (7.85 FPTS) six days later, causing his ERA to balloon to 3.50 and his FIP to rise more than half a run. Still, the Braves and Cubs are fairly good offenses, especially Chicago, which has posted the league’s fourth-best OPS so far this season. His loss to Atlanta also came on the road, where he’s nearly a run and a half and more than seven fantasy points worse than he has been at home.
Patrick’s opponent tonight — the Pittsburgh Pirates — don’t have nearly as dangerous an offense as either the Cubs or Braves do. In fact, the Pirates rank second-to-last in the OPS both on a season-long basis and in the month of June. Pittsburgh’s offensive profile should mesh well with Patrick’s strengths and weaknesses; he induces ground balls at just a fourth-percentile rate, and the Pirates hit grounders more frequently than all but three teams. He also ranks in just the 25th percentile at forcing whiffs, with 8.3 per game, and Pittsburgh has the ninth-highest whiff percentage.
2. Nick Lodolo, Cincinnati Reds ($8,000)
Is it smart to fade an offense featuring Aaron Judge ($6,600), Jazz Chisholm Jr. ($5,100), Paul Goldschmidt ($4,500), Giancarlo Stanton ($3,900), and more? Ordinarily, it obviously wouldn’t be, but with the exception of a nine-run outburst against the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday, the New York Yankees have been all out of sorts recently, dropping seven of their last 10. I went to their 4-2 win on Sunday, and the Bronx Bombers barely did any damage against Orioles hurler Dean Kremer, who sports a 4.60 ERA. I’m not sold on New York.
Lodolo, like Patrick, has been somewhat inconsistent as of late, but he’s had three quality starts in his last four, averaging 13.6 FPTS per game across that span. His changeup is a 97th percentile pitch, and he has exceptional control, posting a 91st percentile walk percentage and an 88th percentile chase rate while ranking near the median in virtually all other Statcast metrics. His ability to keep extra runners off the base paths should benefit him against the Yankees, who have posted the league’s highest walk percentage this season.
3. Spencer Schwellenbach, Atlanta Braves ($9,800)
Schwellenbach is the most expensive option on tonight’s slate, but it’s for a reason; his ceiling is the highest of any pitcher on the slate. On May 31, in a win over the Boston Red Sox, he pitched 6.1 shutout innings, walking none and striking out 11 (37.25 FPTS). Then, two starts later, he outdid even himself, giving up just five hits and two runs in a complete game (37.75 FPTS).
He’s not a perfect pitcher — he’s allowed four or more earned runs on four separate occasions — but the 25-year-old flamethrower has all the tools necessary to become a star. He almost never walks batters, which is impressive for a pitcher whose fastball regularly sits above 98 miles per hour, and he’s a workhorse, ranking third in the NL this season in innings pitched.
The New York Mets, especially at Citi Field, are a very tough opponent, as they rank seventh in OPS so far this month, fifth overall, and eighth at home. Still, because of his exceptional control, Schwellenbach is well-suited to neutralize one of their biggest strengths, the fact that they walk at the league’s third-highest rate. He’s also solid at avoiding home runs, and the Mets have a fairly homer-reliant offense.
