MLB

KBO Daily Fantasy Baseball Helper: Friday 6/5/20

Tyler Saladino's bat has heated up of late, and his Samsung Lions are in a plus spot for hitting. Who else should we target for Friday's KBO DFS slate?

We've got a pretty obvious choice at the top of the pitching pool for Friday's KBO daily fantasy slate. Mike Wright (NC Starting P; $27) has been impressive to open his KBO career, and he gets to face the lowest-scoring offense in the league. Using Wright makes a lot of sense.

The question is whether we have palatable pivots for tournaments. The answer there is less definitive.

Because Wright has performed well and is in a plus spot, we know he'll be popular. Thus, if we lock on a different option instead, we'll have a major leg up on the crowd should Wright struggle or have just a middling day. That incentive is even greater with Wright being the highest-salaried pitcher available.

To get the initial run at trying to answer this, here are the starters on the slate, sorted by the salary of their starting pitching slot on FanDuel. All individual stats -- with the exception of Min-soo Kim's -- are from 2020. Kim's marks are from 2019 (noted in italics) as this will be his first start in 2020. The opposing runs per game totals are available at My KBO Stats, and team strikeout rates are up at Baseball Reference. The park factors are multi-year run factors via STATIZ with 1000 being neutral and a larger number favoring hitters.

PitcherSalaryL/ROpp.ERAWHIPK%BB%HR%Opp. R/GOpp. K%Park Factor
Mike Wright
(NC)
$27R@HAN3.211.2120.5%10.3%3.4%3.4819.6%978
Min-woo Lee
(Kia)
$26R@DOO3.231.1118.4%8.8%0.0%6.3814.9%959
Chan-gyu Lim
(LG)
$24R@KIW4.431.4323.0%6.0%1.0%6.0718.1%979
Won-tae Choi
(Kiwoom)
$24RLG3.671.2217.7%5.3%0.9%6.1217.0%979
Shi-hwan Jang
(Hanwha)
$24RNC6.932.1124.2%14.1%1.6%6.6218.0%978
Jun-won Seo
(Lotte)
$23RKT4.231.309.6%6.1%3.5%6.5417.1%1022
Dae-woo Kim
(Samsung)
$23R@SK4.501.449.7%9.7%4.2%4.2318.7%1038
Ricardo Pinto
(SK)
$23RSAM4.711.7812.5%12.5%0.7%5.1117.7%1038
Young-ha Lee
(Doosan)
$22RKIA5.141.8212.7%14.2%0.0%5.1516.6%959
Min-soo Kim
(KT)
$20R@LOT4.961.4315.8%8.5%2.8%4.1516.9%1022


It's clear that we should be in on Wright, especially in cash games. But you can also likely spot some legit alternatives. Let's dive in and see how we should attack this one.

Pitchers

First, let's go through Wright's outlook as deciding whether to pivot or not will partly depend on the stability of his profile. It looks pretty rock solid.

Wright's first five starts have gone swimmingly as he holds a 3.21 ERA with a 20.5% strikeout rate. He's putting that up against the Hanwha Eagles, who are averaging just 3.48 runs per game and have the league's highest strikeout rate by a full percentage point. Because of this, Wright is the optimal choice in cash games.

However, we do have some reason to pivot in tournaments. Namely, Wright has had some troubles with walks and dingers, and this will be his second time facing Hanwha in his past three starts. They scored four runs against him across six innings in the previous meeting. There is a path to disappointment for Wright, so we should at least give thought to going elsewhere in tournaments.

The top alternative seems to be Chan-gyu Lim (LG Starting P; $24). Lim is second on the slate in both strikeout rate and walk rate, and his 18.4% strikeout rate last year is high enough for us to believe his early success is legit.

The reason Lim is a tournament-only play is that he's facing the Kiwoom Heroes. Kiwoom ranks third in strikeout rate, but they're also averaging 6.07 runs per game. It's very much a boom-or-bust matchup. Lim has the ability to hit the "boom" end of that spectrum, which is what makes him one route we can take while deviating from Wright.

The other option is Won-tae Choi ($24). Choi is following up last year's 3.38 ERA by starting off 2020 with a mark of 3.67, and he rarely issues free passes. With this being Choi's age-23 season, seeing him put together back-to-back impressive campaigns gets our attention.

Choi does have a major blemish, though, and that's his matchup. He's facing the LG Twins, who both score 6.12 runs per game and do a good job of avoiding strikeouts. If not for the matchup, Choi would be firmly up by Wright. But with Choi's popularity potentially being lower due to the tough matchup, he's another name we can turn to if we want to avoid the crowd plugging in Wright.

Stacks

Both Lim and Choi carry $24 salaries, which will allow you flexibility with your stacks. As a result, we should check out the KT Wiz against Jun-won Seo.

This is Seo's age-19 season, so it's understandable that things would be a tiny bit rocky. Although he has a 4.23 ERA, his strikeout rate is 9.6%, down from last year's mark of 13.5%. In that season, Seo had a 5.47 ERA, and we should expect some regression from his current number going forward.

Luckily for us, KT has a high-upside hitter whom we can target even when we pay up for Wright. That's Jeong-Dae Bae ($10), who hit second last night against a righty. Bae is slashing .374/.418/.560 through his first 100 plate appearances, and he has added a couple of steals to boot. Bae would be the first hitter to plug in here before seeing if you can afford their remaining healthy stud, Mel Rojas Jr. ($16).

Elsewhere, the Samsung Lions' offense hasn't been as good as KT's this year, but they are in a solid park for hitting, and their matchup is tasty.

Samsung is squaring off with Ricardo Pinto, who is in his first year in the KBO. His first five starts have seen him walk as many batters as he has struck out, leading to a boatload of base-runners. That could help Samsung get its offense on track.

Samsung can be a major crutch for those trying to jam in some studs, whether that's at pitcher or hitter. The reasoning is that nobody on this offense has a salary higher than $9. That's despite having three hitters -- Dong-Yeop Kim ($9), Tyler Saladino ($8), and Won-Seok Lee ($8) -- who have hit four or more homers this year. Kim didn't start last night's game, so you will want to be awake to check the lineup if possible, but Samsung is the first outlet we should turn to when looking for high-upside salary-savers.

Because we have hitters like Kim, Saladino, and Lee, we have leeway to check out the NC Dinos for our third stack. They're facing Shi-hwan Jang, who has the highest strikeout rate on the slate. However, he also has the highest walk rate, and he finished last year with a 4.95 ERA despite his 19.1% strikeout rate. Jang has gotten poor results thus far when he hasn't gotten the punchouts, and we have reason to believe that could continue going forward.

The ideal player to target here is Sung-Bum Na ($16), who has effectively given the middle finger to all KBO pitching he has seen this year. If you can't get there, though, Suk-Min Park ($10) and Jin-Sung Kang ($10) are superb fallback options. The two are slashing .288/.390/.530 and .444/.514/.762, respectively, and have been holding down the fifth and sixth spots in the order of late. Na should be in play with the other options on the slate, but you should check out NC regardless of how much salary you have left to burn.