Happy Monday! We’ve got a / slate on tap for tonight, so I’ll be dipping into the heartburn medication early today for preparation. We start with a 6-game slate, however, the first game has a Red/Orange from Roth this morning, so I am leaving that out of my plans for tonight. That game with the high PPD risk is the first game of the night, and it was the reason the slate was scheduled to start 20 minutes early at 6:40pm ET. If that game gets postponed early enough, we could see the sites push back to a 7:10 lock, but for now, it’s a 6:40 start. Between the rain and wild card lefties, it’s going to be an interesting night!
Monday Night Pitching
For now, I am leaving the Arizona-Cincinnati game out of my analysis, assuming a PPD is on the way. This leaves me with this as the top four for tonight:
Four Almost Aces
at Astros
vs Mariners
at Padres
vs Mets
Is This The Old Ray?
After the past few starts, I’ve been wondering aloud to myself if it is time to go back to the old rules. If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, prior to his 2021 breakout season, the Rule was ‘fade him when he’s chalk and play him when he’s not’. He was one of the least predictable pitchers we’ve even seen with big time strikeout ability, but completely unreliable control and home run issues. Last season, he figured out the control and became a trustable ace. So far this season, everything has just been a little worse than 2021, but it’s by no means anywhere near as bad as the old Ray. But it’s still a guy with serious home run issues and the control has been just sketchy enough to hurt his innings upside. Officially, I do not see this as the old , and I’m not instating the old rule, but I also no longer planning to see the 2021 ace version.
As far as tonight, the matchup is about as bad as it gets for Ray, however, that’s where the old rule would come into play. It’s never really Ray vs his opponent, it’s pretty much always Ray vs himself. The combination of the matchup and the highest salary on the slate should keep his ownership in check, even on a small slate without a lot of options. So yeah, I’m playing him as a part of the primary pool, but he’s not officially my SP1.
Present day is much more of the old . 30% strikeouts, 13% walks, power risk, inconsistency. He’s just three starts into his season, but it’s already clear that this is the same old as always. Like Ray, while it’s not an ideal matchup, but it’s more about Snell vs himself than it is Snell vs the Mets. With a lower price tag and starting with a higher projection, I am assuming we see much more traffic on Snell tonight. That puts me on Ray ahead of him. Both are firmly in the primary pool based on the slate overall, but neither is an SP1.
The SP1 discussion for me comes down to vs . Javier leads the slate with a 31.5% K rate this season and acceptable 9.1% walks. His 55% fly ball rate leaves him at some power risk, and he is due a good bit of regression in that category. His 2.41 ERA is fluky low, but even if things go south, a 3.18 SIERA says this is a very good pitcher. He’s good, but he lacks consistency. We also still haven’t seen enough of him as a full-time starter to know where the true baseline is. For now, he’s basically close to the Ray/Snell pitcher type.
is lower strikeouts with better control. I’d love to say this makes him more consistent, but he’s been a bit more all over the place than I like to see. With just a 21.4% K rate, he needs every bit of his elite control to compete with the top three, and in his last start, he walked a disturbing five batters and he hasn’t reached six innings in any of his last four starts and it’s clear that while his pitch count is not a concern, it’s also capped under 100. None of this gives me the warm fuzzies and to call him the top pitcher is to fully buy into the struggles of the Padres offense so far this season.
In comparing the matchups for Javier and Carrasco, while it’s close, the Padres have been worse than the Mariners across the board against righties, which is a bummer of a sentence for Padres fans.
OK, so what do we do with all this information? I can tell you what I’m doing with it. After looking at Snell, Ray, Javier and Carrasco, I quite simply cannot find an SP1. If I have to choose one guy to ride with tonight, it’s going to be . I trust him slightly more than Ray/Snell, and the strikeouts are enough better than Carrasco. But this is absolutely a 4-man top tier who will all be in my primary lineup builds.
On FD, we see a significant discount to , and my hunch is that this leads him to be the chalk here. Not a one of these pitchers deserves to be chalk, and I lean even more to Javier and Ray on FD for that reason. On DK, Snell is enough cheaper that it’s pretty easy to build a lineup with Snell plus any one of the other three. Again, my hunch is this results in Snell chalk, meaning my first lineup build is going to be Javier/Ray or Javier/something cheaper.
Tier Two Pitching
at Guardians
vs Rangers
vs Red Sox
at Angels
Because the top tier all come with question marks, I’m going to be willing to mess around with cheaper pitchers tonight. However, is not one of them. He’s coming out of the bullpen to replace an injured Ryu, and we haven’t seen more than 40 pitches in the past month. He could get 4-5 innings if all goes well, but there’s not enough discount here for me. is my other X button tonight against Toronto.
On FD, the remaining pitching options are in the same pricing tier as Snell and Carrasco, so I’m going to be a bit pickier. is the only one of these guys I’m willing to consider on FD. He had a huge 12-K outing last week, and while we should assume that it was an outlier, he’s been decent all season, and at least has shown us two starts with strikeout upside. The low strikeout Guardians make it unlikely we see another, and at $8,100 on FD, he just barely cracks the MME pool.
On DK, I’ll start by giving the X button. A pitcher with a 15.1% K rate at $8,500 on this slate is just not OK.
has been all over the map this season, basically showing Ray/Snell inconsistency, but without nearly as much upside. The entirety of his upside comes from innings, and I just can’t bring myself to play a 16% strikeout pitcher against Boston at his salary. I’ll go Gray ahead of Syndergaard.
is another pitcher that just has no realistic upside. He has reached six innings only once in eight starts, and hasn’t topped five strikeouts in any outing. This is just a no thank you.
I was hoping to find more cheap pitching to want, but it’s only on DK.
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
This is a weird little pitching slate with several upside options, but all with some lack of consistency and/or tough matchups. In reality, I simply have a 4-way tie for a top tier with , , and . My first lineup build will start with Javier, and assuming the projected ownership leans to Snell, my second lineup will start with Ray. I’m going to be most heavily invested in Javier, with a mix of Ray, Snell and then Carrasco. On DK, is the cheaper SP2 that will make my player pool, and that’s really it for me tonight.
Monday Night Bats
As with the pitching side, I am leaving Arizona-Cincinnati out of the analysis here. What we end up with is a 5-game slate where all 10 offenses are completely viable for full stacking, plus with plenty of reason to find individual bats from each team.
If there’s a top tier, it’s basically just the Toronto Blue Jays against . The projected team totals and the bigger name pitchers elsewhere should lead to Blue Jays chalk with all the right-handed bats against Lynch. Lynch’s propensity for hard hit fly balls to righties does line up perfectly for Toronto, and I can’t give you any reason not to consider them the top offense on this slate. The top six batters in the lineup are all above a .195 ISO against lefties since the start of last season, and the hard hits are still there this season, making it way too early to have any concern about small sample surface stats. Before accounting for ownership, I’d call , , and Teoscar Hernandez the top of the slate quartet to build around.
Next In Line
Texas Rangers at
LA Angels vs
Houston Astros vs
Boston Red Sox at
NY Mets at
Cleveland Guardians vs
KC Royals vs
Seattle Mariners at
SD Padres vs
Well, that’s everybody! I’m going to start by saying that this is a clear full stacking slate for me. I do not see enough top tier offense to pick out a lineup full of one offs or mini stacks. What I see is a slate filled with teams that can break the slate with that little ‘If this’ going their way.
The first team on that list is the Houston Astros. The ‘if this’ is the control of Ray, along with the power risk. We actually have even more paths to a big game for Houston, as Ray could strike out 12 batters in five innings while allowing a couple homers, and then coming out of the game due to pitch count. If you want to try to pick out those homers from someone like or , be my guest, but it’s really a coin toss situation. The main thing I’ll point out here is to make sure to include at least one of and in some stacks, and don’t get too tied into any lineup build until we see the lineup. We have no idea which of or will start, or if we’ll see in the lineup. I will be building around Bregman/Altuve, then adding in Alvarez and then mixing and matching the values, led by and whichever of McCormick/Siri gets the start.
Just as I expect to see Snell chalk over Ray, I expect we see the Astros offense being played far more than the Mets. The Mets are in the same situation, and they have the best righty power bat of either team, along with an incredibly cheap middle of the order behind him. If the good Snell shows up, the Mets stack loses, and that is OK. If the bad Snell shows up, we get 10 runs in the first three innings and a slate winner. There is no reason to overthink it with here, and then I will stack around him based on positional needs. Against pitchers like Ray and Snell, it’s much less about breaking down matchups.
If I’m going to pick out individual bats on this slate, it will start in the Red Sox-Angels game. Both of these starters are below 19% strikeouts to both sides of the plate. Syndergaard is keeping the ball on the ground to lefties and limiting hard contact to righties. Wacha is getting hit in the air more, but is also limiting hard contact so far this season. With both of these pitchers, I need batters who hit the ball hard and in the air. Well, bonjour! , and are all jumping off the page at me, and these are guys I’ll pair together, or use as one offs around other stacks where possible. I’m a little more wary of picking on Syndergaard, so Boston comes in behind the Angels with being the only bat I have strong interest in targeting.
is a similar pitcher to Wacha with low strikeouts and plenty of fly balls to lefties. I love and here, and then we can also count on the righties seeing pitches to hit, so I’ll be adding and to the primary list. As a full stack, I have the Rangers 4th overall, behind the Blue Jays, Astros and Angels.
With the Guardians, it’s really just as an always elite option, and then only stacking or maybe playing on DK where he’s still almost free.
The Royals? This is a tricky spot to figure, as they will likely only see a couple times through the order, followed by a parade of relievers. The Toronto bullpen is nothing special, but certainly not the worst either. If this were a bigger slate, I’d probably cross off everyone outside of , but tonight, they are really not far at all behind all these other teams. If I were making 5-10 lineups, I would not end up with a Royals stack, but in 20, they’d hit the list.
The Padres? Eh, and then the same thing as the Royals.
The Mariners? It’s the same thing all over again. Javier’s fly balls could result in a couple homers, but it’s tough to pin down. This is just a leftover MME stack.
Well folks, that’s the whole slate, and it really doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything here. But, that is OK, it is what it is. My goal here is never to tell you who to play and it’s never to find some certain sized list or group of options. My goal here is to break down the slate and tell you what I see and what I’m doing about it. Tonight, I just see a glob of 10 teams. I’ll give you some official ranks in the Cliff Notes, but my lineups are going to be absolutely all over the place.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
This is a really strange little slate. I kind of like nothing, and I kind of like everything. The only team that looks like it would be a top tier offense on most any slate is the Blue Jays, and I would assume that is where the ownership flows. This is how I have things ordered overall:
Full Stacks – Blue Jays, small gap, Astros, Angels, Rangers, small gap, Red Sox, Mets, Guardians, small gap, Royals, Padres, Mariners.
Favorite Individual Bats – , , , , ,
Favorite Values – , , McCormick or Siri, , , ,
Image Credit: Imagn
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