Today, history will be made. Just 19 pitchers are in the elite 3,000-strikeout club, with the most recent addition being Max Scherzer in 2021.
Barring a catastrophic performance, Clayton Kershaw ($8,000) will join that list tonight when the Los Angeles Dodgers host the Chicago White Sox for a 10:10 p.m. ET clash. The three-time Cy Young Award winner is just three strikeouts away from the vaunted mark.
Kershaw and the Dodgers highlight tonight’s 10-game featured DFS slate on DraftKings, but he’s far from the only talented pitcher cresting the hill tonight. Here are my five favorites:
Set your DraftKings fantasy baseball lineups here: MLB $200K Bat Flip [$50K to 1st].
1. Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers ($8,600)
It’s only right to put Kershaw first on his milestone day. The 37-year-old is hardly the flawless pitcher he once was — he gives up too many hard hits and barely touches 90 miles per hour with his fastball — but his solid placement and baseball IQ still makes him an effective hurler. Over his last four starts, he’s shown flashes of the vintage Kershaw, pitching 23 innings, giving up just four runs, walking four and striking out 21 (22.4 FPTS per game). His effectiveness will depend on how quickly he can get through batters — he hasn’t yet been pushed past 92 pitches, which is probably smart given his injury history.
Thankfully, the White Sox shouldn’t present Kershaw with too much of a challenge. They’re better than they were last season, when they went 41-121, but their offense is still the worst in the majors by 20 points of OPS. Chicago has also been poor on the road and at night, and last night, it managed just three hits and two walks against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jack Dreyer, and Anthony Banda. It might be fair to expect a little bit more from the White Sox tonight — they’ve been better against lefties than righties, and Kershaw is not as good as Yamamoto — but I still think Kershaw will hit the milestone in style.
2. Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee Brewers ($10,500)
This list goes from a surefire future Hall of Famer to a talented youngster with the potential to reach Cooperstown one day. To be fair, Misiorowski already has a cap in the Hall of Fame after opening his career with 11 consecutive no-hit innings, the longest such streak in MLB history. The flamethrower has as many wins in his career as hits allowed, as he out-dueled the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes his last time out, giving up two hits and two walks while striking out eight in five shutout innings (28.85 FPTS).
Normally, the New York Mets would be a bad matchup, but they’ve been in a massive slump recently, losing 13 of their past 16 games as they’ve been hammered by injuries to their starting pitchers. Across that span, their offense has been bad too, as they’ve posted just a .660 OPS — a mark that would rank third-to-last across the full season. There isn’t really an area in which Misiorowski has struggled in his first three starts; though he has a high average exit velocity and a high walk rate, he cleaned up his control after a four-walk (22.85-FPT) debut.
3. Brayan Bello, Boston Red Sox ($6,400)
There are a lot of expensive options on tonight’s slate — I’ll get to more of them later — so for a change of pace, I’ll offer a budget pitcher. Bello has been in hot form for a Red Sox team that has largely stayed out of the national spotlight since trading Rafael Devers ($5,000) to the San Francisco Giants. He’s really had one bad start this season — a 4.1-inning, 10-hit, seven-run (negative-7.25-FPT) clunker against the Atlanta Braves on May 18 — but since then, he’s pitched to a 2.93 ERA over 40 innings (14.4 FPTS per game), regularly throwing more than 100 pitches.
It’s not a perfect matchup for him, but it shouldn’t be a challenging one, either. The Cincinnati Reds have a roughly average offense, ranking 13th in OPS, 15th in hits, and 10th in runs. They have struggled to get much power behind the ball, too, ranking fifth-to-last in average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage. Cincinnati also hits ground balls at a the 10th-highest rate and strikes out more frequently than all but five teams. Given that the Reds’ weaknesses are Bello’s strengths, he should be able to continue his strong form.
4. Hunter Brown, Houston Astros ($10,300)
The 26-year-old has unexpectedly broken out this season, leading all of the MLB in ERA, and while his 2.69 FIP figure isn’t quite on top of the league, it’s still pretty elite. Like Bello, he’s only had one poor start this year, when he gave up five runs in five innings (3.85 FPTS) in a loss to the Tampa Bay Rays on May 21, but given how elite he’s been since then, that blow-up feels long in the past. In his other 15 starts, he’s pitched to a 1.35 ERA (26.3 FPTS per game). He’s above average in all 13 Statcast categories.
The Colorado Rockies actually aren’t as easy of a matchup as their record would indicate. Colorado has been atrocious this season, with a .224 winning percentage that is the worst of any team since 1900. The pitching has been the main issue; in June, the Rockies actually posted a .737 OPS, the 11th-best mark in the league. Plus, on a season-long basis, they’ve had the 15th-best mark at home, thanks to the fact that they play at 5,280′ in their eponymous mountains. Colorado managed five runs last night against Houston’s elite pitching staff, which scares me just enough to not rank Brown in the top three.
5. Shota Imanaga, Chicago Cubs ($8,500)
Last Thursday, Imanaga made his return from a hamstring injury that cost him seven weeks, and he didn’t look as if he had missed a beat, tossing five innings of one-hit ball on just 77 pitches, walking one and striking out three (20.05 FPTS). Despite the relatively short outing, it was his fourth-best fantasy output of the season. Now that the 31-year-old is stretched out, I expect a longer outing tonight — he’s averaged 85 pitches per start so far this season and 89 per start in 2024.
He should be extremely effective against the Cleveland Guardians, who had the league’s worst OPS by 36 points in June, a month in which they went just 9-16. Imanaga ranks in the 93rd percentile in fastball spin and the 88th in chase rate, which makes him a good matchup for a Guardians team that has chased at the fifth-highest clip this season. He also gives up barrels at just a 22nd-percentile rate, but Cleveland has the third-lowest barrel rate in baseball. Wrigley Field is also one of the league’s most pitcher-friendly venues.
