NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/3)
Alex Christenson
So yes, Sonny Gray has a better matchup, because the only better matchups available than the one Sonny Gray has are not major league teams and thus will not be available on DFS slates, but what are we doing here with this George Kirby price? Kirby’s signature trait thus far in his career has been an elite ability to avoid walks, which he has exhibited so far this year with only 4 BBs in six starts, including two starts that ended in disaster (but not due to walks). Where he often fell short for DFS purposes was not with the baserunners or even run prevention, but because he was so good at those things and not good enough at piling up strikeouts that he often ended up overpriced for his matchup and overall slate context.
That is, uh, not the case here. Kirby is coming off a ridiculous 12-strikeout performance against a not-terrible Diamondbacks offense that also has the third-lowest K% in MLB. So a guy whose one weakness is not enough strikeouts just had a career game against a team whose calling card is that it doesn’t strike out, and you’re going to price that guy lower than his last start. You’re weird, DraftKings, but I love you.
For what it’s worth, I am very much a Kirby enthusiast, and while I’m confident I will not be the only one who realizes the price is far too low here, I am going to let the underlying talent drive my decision making, and hoping the matchup against the sometimes-dangerous Astros helps suppress rostership to reasonable levels.
We’ve talked about two pretty chalky options so far, with Sonny Gray in the intro and George Kirby as our standard bearer of the slate, so it seems only fair to talk about an option that is likely to be less popular. Like Kirby, Sears has generally traded primarily on his ability to limit the pass, but in his last two games (against AL East powerhouses the Yankees and Orioles, no less), he’s struck out 7 and 8. Whether this is a blind squirrel eventually finding a nut, lighting in a bottle, or whatever other metaphor you’d prefer to indicate that this is not sustainable, I don’t disagree.
However, a modicum of success may be sustainable against the flailing Fish, as the Marlins have struggled mightily against LHP in particular so far this season. With the fourth-lowest BB%, fourth-lowest ISO and sixth-lowest BABIP against LHP, virtually nothing is going right for them whether they put the ball in play or not. Sears should be aggressive in the zone early, and if the offense is able to string together some runs against the recently beatable Ryan Weathers, Sears should be in line to cruise to a win (not a thing you’re accustomed to thinking about A’s pitchers, I realize).
Today’s theme is starting to look like it is guys who don’t walk anyone. Of qualified pitchers, Kirby has the second-lowest BB% at 3%, and Houck is right on his heals at 3.2%. Also like Kirby, Houck is coming off an extremely impressive 9-K performance on Sunday night baseball against the Cubs. He gets the always juicy but somewhat volatile matchup against the Twins, that could result in lots of strikeouts, lots of hard contact, or both. We also aren’t getting much of a discount for his services, and so a fair market priced Houck may carry lower ownership given the elite matchup for Gray and the elite price for Kirby. I definitely have interest here as a mid-tier pairing option to go alongside either of Kirby or Gray. I would trend toward deploying Houck more in large field GPP than in cash, just due to the volatility of the matchup.
With our second Tanner recommendation, I do feel obligated to make one of the following jokes:
“We haven’t seen this many Tanners since an episode of Full House.”
-or-
“We haven’t seen this many Tanners since an SEC frat party.”
I’ll let that be a bit of a choose your own adventure, pretend I only wrote the joke you like better. If you like neither of them, then you can go ahead and skip to the part where we talk about baseball for a little while longer.
It’s been an up-and-down year for Tanner Bibee, but the ups and downs aren’t really occurring when or where you might expect. In his first start, he was dreadful against the A’s of all teams, walking 5 and striking out only 4. He’s also had three excellent starts, including his second turn against the A’s, piling up 9 Ks against the Twins, and another 7 innings of shutout, 9-K ball against the Braves.
The team that has given him the most trouble this season is, well, the White Sox, of course. Whatever you think is going to happen with Tanner Bibee, know that you’re probably too confident about the outcome. That said, I don’t think he’s jumping off the page with regard to high rostership, so deploying him against a Mike Trout-less Angels lineup could prove worthwhile if good Bibee shows up.
José Soriano doesn’t have enough innings to be a qualified pitcher, and that is mainly due to his propensity for walking opposing hitters (14.4% BB rate) leading to not throwing many innings per start. If he were a qualified pitcher though, he would have the higher BB% by a good margin, as the current highest BB% among qualified pitchers belongs to Michael King with 13%. That is a larger gap than the one between King and the pitcher with the fifth-highest BB%, Nathan Eovaldi.
The point being, Soriano is going to walk some folks. Throw in a disciplined team of bats as the opponent like Cleveland (their 25.7% team CSW% is second lowest in MLB) and I would venture to say that Soriano is going to have a tough outing with plenty of traffic on the basepaths. Cleveland is exactly the sort of offense that thrives on stringing together consecutive baserunners and shooting the gaps to drive them in as opposed needing to rely on solo dingers. With a not-so-dominant Angels bullpen behind Soriano, I would expect plenty of crooked numbers on Lake Erie.
The only reason not to deploy massive amounts of Cardinals stacks is that rostership will be through the roof, with Brad Keller followed by the depths of the White Sox bullpen is too juicy a scenario to fully ignore. Be mindful of which spots you pick and how those positions lineup with your other stacks in your individual lineups, but please, I beg of you, get sone Cardinals exposure one way or another — they are capable of doing just enough damage to make you suffer with a full fade.
