CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Wednesday, September 28th
This DFS content is a part of our Premium Content Schedule and designed to help you build better lineups on DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo!, SuperDraft, and other daily fantasy contest providers. Access MLB Projections, Expert Rankings, Projected Ownership, MLB DFS Picks, and other Data Tools using this content hub. For our world-class optimizer that offers a suite of tools and information designed to help you crush the competition, please head to LineupHQ!
Happy Wednesday! We are officially one week from the end of the regular season. There are a lot of aces on the mound tonight, with several of them already having clinched playoff spots and/or been eliminated. Most likely, the teams that have clinched will not fully push their aces too far here, but it’s also not a case where they need to go too far in that direction either. Everyone on the mound tonight would be normally scheduled for one more regular season start, which means if we’re going to see them extremely limited, it would happen next start, or their final start will just be skipped. This adds more mystery than usual, but I’m expecting close enough to normal starts tonight.
Something that I’ve tried hard to do with the Musings over the years, which hopefully separates this from other content around the industry, is that I will always tell you exactly what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. You will notice as we get into the pitching tonight that I seem to have a very condensed pool for such a loaded slate. Folks, the truth here is that I have the flu or something like it, so I am going to be sleeping this afternoon when I would normally be building lineups. This means I will have far fewer lineups in play than usual, which naturally gives me a smaller pool. I just want to make sure you understand that me saying I might go all-in on Aaron Nola tonight, while skipping Verlander, Cole and Woodruff, is based on probably 10-15 lineups. If I were doing 50+ lineups, of course I’d include the other aces.
Wednesday Night Pitching
Aces and More Aces
Aaron Nola at Cubs
Gerrit Cole at Blue Jays
Justin Verlander vs Diamondbacks
Brandon Woodruff vs Cardinals
If you want to play the motivation game here, Cole and Verlander have clinched, while Nola and Woodruff are still in must win games. But like I said at the top, we’re still seeing 90-ish pitches from Verlander and 100-ish from Cole, and I don’t have too much concern about them dropping below five innings here. But when we bring in matchup and salary, Aaron Nola would be the SP1 anyway. Tack on the need to win against a high strikeout Cubs team in good pitching weather, and Nola ends up close to Don’t Overthink It territory. Cole, Verlander and Woodruff are all facing better opponent who have lower strikeouts and more patient lineups. I am never going to tell you not to play elite aces like Cole, Verlander and Woodruff, but I will tell you that I am starting with Nola and possibly locking him in, and would be into MME before I get to the other three.