Many of the players featured as our daily fantasy baseball value pitchers are young and unproven. The only veterans at the low end of the pay scale are there for a reason. You generally don’t want to make them among your first choices. That leaves you looking at options that present the unknown.
At this point in the season, though, that may not be a bad thing. For a young pitcher to be a daily fantasy option, that means he at least made his team. Sometimes that may be because of injuries, but often enough he’s earned his spot after a strong spring.
And that’s what we have tonight. There are a few low-cost, high-reward types in Draftstreet’s player pool for tonight. If you’re looking to spend as much of your budget on offense as you can, you’d be smart to consider at least one of these pitchers.
Best Bet
Yordano Ventura – $6,981
At the very least, you’re going to want to watch this kid pitch. So you might as well put him into your lineup and root for him to run up the points as much as he does the radar gun. There are few, if any, players in all of baseball who can match his fastball. In his Major League debut last September, he unleashed a 102.8 mph fireball, which was the highest recorded speed by any pitcher all season. As you might imagine, that makes a hitter’s job even more difficult. In 15.2 Major League innings last year, batters hit just .224 against him. He limited opponents to the exact same average in 23.1 innings this spring. He matched that with a 2.70 ERA and a strikeout per inning. It was enough to earn him a spot in the Royals’ rotation coming out of March. The 22-year-old will make his 2014 debut tonight against the Tigers. Though Detroit does have one of the best lineups in baseball, they’ve been held relatively in check over the first two games. On top of it all, Ventura comes at a bargain basement price. It’s tough to pass him up here.
Double Down
Jesse Chavez – $10,505
While not as young as the others on this list, Chavez is still looking for an opportunity he hasn’t had before. He has spent most of his career in the bullpen, with just two starts under his belt, compared to 189 relief appearances. But he earned a spot as a starter with a March he will remember forever. He pitched in seven games, including five starts, ending with a 5-1 record, 2.22 ERA, and 0.99 WHIP. His strikeout totals also approached the one-per-inning mark. The highlight of the month came when he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning against the Giants in his final spring training start. It all led him to the number three job in the Oakland rotation. He’ll face off against the Mariners who have looked good so far, but with Chavez pitching as well as ever, he can slow them down.
Roll the Dice
Jacob Turner – $9,130
Another young pitcher, Turner has under 200 innings at the Major League level with varying degrees of success, though he has gotten better and more experienced with each year. His 118 innings last year more than doubled his previous year’s total and he lowered his ERA from 4.42 to 3.74. Now, he’s coming off the best spring of his career. He made five starts and ended up with an ERA of 2.79. He should also feel comfortable making his first start of the year against the Rockies. In two starts against Colorado last year, he came one inning shy of notching a quality start in each of them. In his first time seeing them, he allowed two runs on six hits in six innings, and he made it through 5.2 innings in another start against them a month later. Seeing them should give him a welcome feeling for his first start.
