In tonight’s slate I am going to use Jordan Zimmerman (home to the Braves) and Clay Buchholz (home to the Orioles) as my two starting pitchers. I love Gerrit Cole and he’s my number one option, but everyone is going to use him in a GPP format.

Zimmerman has been very hittable this year, but his hard hit average is only slightly higher than last year, which indicates the .340 BABIP has more to do with bad luck than him being very hittable. I’ve seen a couple of his starts and his command been off, which has led to balls getting hit hard. However, the Braves will not have Freddie Freeman in the lineup so Zimmerman should be able to coast through this Triple-A offense.

The reason why I’m using Buchholz is fairly simple. Blind resume time. There are three pitchers and one of them is Buchholz. Can you pick which one is him?

Player A is David Price and C is Felix Hernandez. I was shocked myself when I took a deep dive into Buchholz’s numbers. He’s basically performed just as well as Price and Hernandez but his salary on DraftKings is $3,500-4,000 less. Obviously Buchholz carries a lot more risk because on a 1-10 scale for consistency he rates as a two, but at his salary he provides the highest ROI opportunity (also, you could make the argument Price and Hernandez are priced too high and I would agree with you).

Other Pitchers I considered:

Mike Bolsinger – @CHC

Bolsinger falls into the Tyson Ross and Carlos Martinez class of pitcher in that they’re high strikeout, high walk and high ground ball rate pitchers. However, Bolsinger is a far lesser than pitcher because his hard hit rate is 18.4 percent, which is league average. The fact he’s facing the Cubs making him an intriguing option. Against righties, they have the second highest strikeout rate, seventh lowest hard hit rate and the lowest in-play rate.

Roenis Elias – KC

I’ve been saying for a couple of weeks Elias is going to regress and he hasn’t. The Royals are an above average offense against lefties in terms of wOBA and hard hit rate. Elias is a fly ball pitcher so pitching at home increases his value. The Royals do not hit a lot of ground balls so a lot of balls will be hit in the air. Elias’ hard hit rate is 19.5 percent which is below average, which means I think he’ll allow 1-2 home runs.

Jimmy Nelson – NYM

I considered Nelson because he’s facing the Mets offense, but he’s been a far less effective pitcher in his last seven starts than his first seven starts (table below).