Alex Wood. He has a 33.1% K rate, 7.6% BB rate and a 62.8% gb rate. All are elite and combine for a 2.17 xFIP, 48% better than league average. How is he doing this? Well, his starts have been @Cubs, @Arizona, @Giants, vs Giants, vs Pittsburgh and @ Colorado. Outside of the Cubs there aren’t any powerhouse offenses, but it’s 2 games in hitters havens, one of which he got hit around (Arizona) and the other he destroyed the Rockies, and loyal readers know what I think of the Rockies (hint: it rhymes with schmucks). He’s facing the Marlins this fine Friday and although the Marlins are an above average offense vs lefties this year, they don’t walk (8% BB-rate, 24th in the league) and are 16th in K rate (21%). Even though they have been above average so far, I don’t believe them to be an above average offense with the bottom of the order as bad as it is right now and nothing too good versus lefties outside of Stanton and Ozuna. Wood’s velocity has been ticking up after dropping to 88-89 in 2015. In 2016 it was 91-92 and he’s come out this year gassing it up to 93 (he only throws sinkers, very few 4 seamers). The other thing with Wood that keeps his price down is he hasn’t been allowed to go past 6 as a starter, in fact it’s a Dodger philosophy to (correctly) not let your starter go through the lineup more than 3 times and frequently it’s even less. Since Dave Roberts took over the Dodgers, no team has let their pitchers face fewer batters per start. The Dodgers starters have faced 22.3 batters per start, with the Reds coming in 2nd at 22.87. The Dodgers starters are also 2nd in fWAR since Roberts took over. The average fWAR rank of the non-Dodgers bottom 10 is 23.1. Most teams who don’t let their pitchers go far into games do it for good reason, the pitchers aren’t very good. The Dodgers let their pitchers air it out for 22.3 batters and then pull them to get better pitchers in. Given the times through the order penalty, this makes sense and is the future of baseball. But, in the meantime, for DFS, when there are teams like the White Sox (what?) and Giants who just let their pitchers throw until Dr. James Andrews tells them to stop, you will want to avoid non Kershaw Dodgers pitchers unless the price and matchup is right. This is especially true for FanDuel, because the QS bonus is a significant part of a pitcher’s overall DFS production, and the QS bonus requires you to pitch at least 6 innings.

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