Three Pitcher Prop Bets for Tuesday, May 22

It’s time to take a look at three possible pitcher strikeout props for the day and how to take advantage of some *early* season biases around pitcher performance. Here we get a chance to look at three pitchers not typically on the DFS radar, but who are coming in with advantageous odds. All odds are courtesy of Bodog.

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Pitcher

James Shields
Opponent - BAL (Kevin Gausman) Park - BAL
Under 5 K’s Even Odds - Projected: 4.03 K’s
Shields is coming off a season-best eight-strikeout performance against the Rangers in which he went 7.1 innings and only allowed one earned run. This, my friends, is what we call an outlier game. The Rangers are a strikeout-heavy bunch (25.7% against righties this season) and it makes sense that Shields could pile up the swings and misses. The Orioles aren’t too far behind at 25% but it’s really more a Shields’ thing here than an opponent thing. He’s only equaled or exceeded five strikeouts in three of his nine starts on the season. Even in games where he’s luck boxed his way into six or so innings, the strikeouts haven’t been there. He’s K’ing 5.86 per nine on the season and one of the only reasons the cumulative numbers look *good* on that end is because he’s gone deeper into games than he should have. The .253 BABIP and 64% strand rate have him at six innings per start. This simply can’t last based on his pitcher profile. Look for him to make an early exit against the Orioles.

Lance Lynn
Opponent - DET (Matthew Boyd) Park - DET
Over 4.5 K’s -115 Odds - Projected: 5.1 K’s
Lance Lynn has had three major issues this season: Walks, BABIP and LOB%. The seven walks per nine are particularly disturbing and are way, way over anything close to resembling his career numbers. That being said, in his first 23 and two-thirds innings he walked 23 batters. In his last 13 and two-thirds innings, he’s *only* walked six. The reason this is important is that the walks are the main contributor to him not going deep into games. He’s also been crushed in the *luck* categories with a .394 BABIP and 67% strand rate. Simply put, he’s somewhat due to go longer into games and with even modest improvements in control he is a favorite to hit at least five K’s in this start. The Tigers aren’t huge strikeout guys (especially at the bottom of the order) but are worse without Miguel Cabrera. They strike out, per their projected lineup about 2% more than league average against righties. I’d like this slightly better at even odds, but still, I think Lynn gets there.

Luke Weaver
Opponent - KC (Jason Hammel) Park - KC
Over 5 K’s -105 - Projected: 5.7 K’s
Weaver hasn’t followed up the strikeout campaign from 2017 and is putting down under a batter an inning on the season. And the Royals strikeout out the least in the league against righties at only 17%. But I think we are buying a bit low on the over/under here if we can project anything like a mini-bounce back to Weaver’s strikeout numbers from last season. This will rely on him going to his fastball more. He threw 60% of the time over the last two seasons but is only at 53% of the time this season. The rest of the pitch F/X data tracks the same our projection model is working on the assumption that those percentages round back to his career form.

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