FanDuel Price: $9,200
Patrick Corbin looked on his way to a breakout campaign through his first six starts. He had a 2.11 SIERA over this span and looked on his way to making the next step.
Then his velocity sank like a stone. Corbin went from averaging roughly 93 miles-per-hour on his fastball to barely being able to average 90 on the radar gun. This wouldn't be a big deal if his performance didn't suffer, but it did. Corbin's SIERA since his first six starts is 3.57, still a solid mark but far off his pace to open the year. Most notably, his batted-ball profile suffered, as he has allowed a 33.8% fly-ball rate and 47.9% hard-hit rate over his past nine.
With batters proving to have success against the slower Corbin fastball, he should struggle against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Generally, the Pirates have not hit the ball hard this year against left-handed pitching, but that hasn't been a problem for Corbin's opponents, so they should be able to put up some runs. The Pirates rank 2nd in walk-to-strikeout ratio against left-handed pitching thanks to a top-10 walk rate (10.3%) and top-10 strikeout rate (20.5%).