Yours truly is on vacay with the family. That doesn’t leave tons of extra time to plot lineups, so today I’m rolling with my first instinct. That can sometimes turn out well, as it did for me in Week 1 of MLB DFS Wars on Friday night—Eduardo Rodriguez was my guy on Fanball, due to no negative points for pitchers.
Anyway, let’s scope out my main man for Monday.
Pitcher
Yu Darvish ($7,100) at Miami Marlins
I like a few things about Darvish today. First, the Marlins played a 14-inning affair yesterday, in which they managed one run and five measly hits in a 3-1 loss to Philadelphia. Miami hitters struck out 18 times, and nine of those were by the 2-3-4-5 hitters in the lineup. As a unit, the Marlins have the worst strikeout rate in the Majors against right-handed pitching, at 31.3%. They don’t walk much, either, as the 7.5% walk rate is terrible and better than only four teams. Lastly, the team’s .123 ISO is nearly the worst in the MLB, as only the Rockies, Giants, and Tigers have been worse so far.
Darvish rolls in fresh off of allowing four earned runs to the Pirates over 5 1⁄3 innings. Not great, but on the season he’s been unlucky with a 30.0% HR/FB ratio. He does have a ghastly 11 walks against 10 strikeouts, but we already established that the Marlins don’t walk much and strike out a ton. The “good” is that Darvish’s 48.6% ground ball rate so far is a career-high, and he’s only allowing fly balls 28.6% of the time (also a career-best). More good is that Darvish’s 31.2% chase rate is the second-best mark of his career, and while his 17.5% strikeout rate is poor, his 11.1% swinging strike rate is right at average—which implies that a better K-rate is to come. On a day when he faces arguably the worst team in the league (for Ks) in a cavernous park, there won’t be a better time to use Darvish.
In short, if you don’t use Darvish today, you never will. Or, we never can. I’m doing it.
So let me know what bats you guys like. I’m headed back out to the beach.
What say you? Can you stomach Darvish today? I like that many touts will gravitate towards his opponent, Trevor Richards, in the same price range ($7,300). I don’t see a lot of ownership on Darvish today.