Straight Cheese! Streaming Starting Pitchers Versus the Rays, Phillies and Giants

Mike (@DraftBuddy) told me that I needed to come up with a title for my weekly fantasy baseball column. Since I’ll be focusing on pitching (mainly starters), and the article will undoubtedly be amazing (mostly the opposite), there was only one choice. Welcome to the inaugural edition of…

Straight Cheese

Last week, I mentioned rolling the dice with some pitchers of questionable talent. After reading it you might be asking yourself why you even have to pick up the dice. Well, your drafted guys aren’t going to be enough. In fact, they’re only going to get you about 70% of your counting stats. The other 30% will come from these undesirable undrafted chumps out on the wire. The price? Damage to your ratio stats.

In an attempt to minimize this damage you’ll need to pick your spots when you stream a pitcher from the wire. That is what I hope to help you with here at Straight Cheese.

The mindset you adopt when figuring out when to pick these spots is very similar to choosing a pitcher in Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS). In DFS you select pitchers that will return value based on their price. In other words, more bang for the buck.

The big name, high priced guys are probably already owned in your season-long roto fantasy leagues, so more often than not the low price guys in DFS are also the guys out on the wire. You are bargain shopping but you are trying to squeeze the most value out of your purchase. How do you do that?

Choosing a pitcher to stream isn’t just about the pitcher, it is also about the lineup he is facing. Unlike the elementary school playground it is okay to pick on the weaklings.

Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA)

I like to use Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) to identify weak hitting teams. It is a nice catch-all stat that attempts to capture overall offensive quality at the plate by combining all the aspects of hitting into one metric.

You can read more about wOBA at FanGraphs. The wOBA general rule of thumb is .400 is excellent, .370 is great, .340 is above average, .320 is average, .310 is below average, .300 is poor and .290 is awful.

All 2018 stats are through Monday, April 9. This is important because we’re dealing with such small sample sizes that by the time you’re reading this the 2018 numbers may have changed. Ownership info from Yahoo! (Y) and ESPN (E) is as of Monday as well, but I don’t expect those to change even if all five of our readers pick up all of these chumps.

Here are the bottom 10 wOBA’s from 2017 and so far in 2018:

Look at those 2018 numbers! Everyone sucks, right? Well, the MLB wOBA sits at .311 compared to 2017’s .321 wOBA. So, it is down across the league. There are some repeat offenders on both lists, the Royals, Rays, and Giants.

Strikeout % (K%)

The other stat I like to use is Strikeout % (K%) which is simply the number of strikeouts divided by plate appearances. It tells you who strikes out a lot and most roto leagues count strikeouts, so…. Here are the highest K% teams:

League average K% is 22.7% so far in 2018 up from 21.6% in 2017. Repeat offenders are the Rays, Phillies, White Sox, Orioles and Rockies.

Splits

wOBA and K% provide an overall picture of offenses. The low hanging fruit, if you will. Another strategy is to dig deeper and find any splits stats you can exploit.

The righty/lefty split and the home/road split are the most well-known and for good reason. Historically, right handed batters hit left handed pitchers better and vice versa. Some teams perform better at home versus on the road and vice versa.

There are many theories as to why the splits are the way they are, but do you really care? No, you want me to cut to the chase and serve up some of that straight cheese! So, here we go. I’m not going to list the stats here for you but you can take a look for yourself:

vs. LHP	vs. RHP	Home Teams	Visiting Teams
2017 wOBA vs. L 2018 wOBA vs. L 2017 K% vs. L 2018 K% vs. L	2017 wOBA vs. R 2018 wOBA vs. R 2017 K% vs. R 2018 K% vs. R	2017 wOBA Home 2018 wOBA Home 2017 K% Home 2018 K% Home	2017 wOBA Road 2018 wOBA Road 2017 K% Road 2018 K% Road

I stared at this data for hours until the numbers started speaking to me ala John Nash. Here are the MLB averages before we dive into three teams with poor offenses to “pick on” to identify our pitcher streaming options.

Pitcher Streaming Options

Versus Tampa Rays

The Rays are bad all around but even worse against LHP at home. Good news! They start a nine game home stand on Friday. Bad news is that it looks like they will only be facing southpaws in three of the games.

Solid streaming options

LHP Mike Minor, TEX (owned Y10%/E8%) on Wednesday, April 18th – 12 strikeouts in 10 2/3 innings.

Intriguing options

LHP Matt Moore, TEX (owned Y1%/E1%) on Tuesday, April 17th – he’s been awful so far (9 earned runs in 7 1/3 innings) but those were against stronger lineups (Toronto and Houston).

RHP Vince Velasquez, PHI (owned Y11%/E6%) on Friday, April 13th – 10 strikeouts in 8 2/3 innings.

RHP Ben Lively, PHI (owned Y4%/E4%) on Sunday, April 15th – 12 strikeouts in 11 1/3 innings.

To Be Decided, MIN on Friday, April 20th – if a lefty makes the start for the Twins consider streaming him.

Less than desirable option

LHP Martin Perez, TEX (owned Y1%/E1%) on Monday, April 16th – although he is a lefty, he was lit up on Tuesday night (8 earned runs in 3 innings) and only has three strikeouts over his two starts.

Versus Philadelphia Phillies

At first glance, Philadelphia looks like a good hitting team (high wOBA) that strikes out a lot (high K%). But looking at the splits you can see that their numbers are inflated from their home games and against lefties. They are not as good when facing righties away from Citizens Bank Park, which is where they are for their next six games!

Solid streaming options

RHP Mike Foltynewicz, ATL (owned Y38%/E30%) on Monday, April 16th – hasn’t given up more than 2 ER in any of his 3 starts in 2018, but also hasn’t gone deeper than 5 1/3 innings.

RHP Brandon McCarthy, ATL (owned Y11%/E6%) on Tuesday, April 17th – nine strikeouts in 11 1/3 innings.

RHP Anibal Sanchez, ATL (owned Y0%/E0%) on Wednesday, April 18th – six strikeouts and two earned runs in five innings in his only start in Colorado.

Versus San Francisco Giants

The Giants don’t strike out enough to get me excited, but they look like a team you can pick on when they are on the road. That is where they will be for the next ten games!

Solid stream options

RHP Tyson Ross, SD (owned Y3%/E2%) on Friday, April 13th – nine strikeouts in 12 innings.

LHP Clayton Richard, SD (owned Y5%/E9%) on Saturday, April 14th – Hey, I mentioned him last week!

LHP Joey Lucchesi, SD (owned Y11%/E3%) on Sunday, April 15th – yet to give up an earned run in 2018.

Less than desirable option

RHP Bryan Mitchell, SD (owned Y0%/E0%) on Thursday, April 12th – only one strikeout in 10 2/3 innings.