CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, April 14th
Happy Thursday! We’ve got a 30-minute gap in start times for the main slates on FD vs DK. FD is starting at 6:35pm ET to include the Nationals-Pirates and Phillies-Marlins games. DK will start at the usual 7:05pm ET and run a 6-game slate. Regardless of which site you’re on, you are going to have some good pitching as well as a Coors Field game to consider.
Thursday Night Arms
We’ve got a good group of top tier pitchers, all making their second starts of the season:
TOP TIER PITCHING
Walker Buehler vs Reds
Charlie Morton at Padres
Shohei Ohtani at Rangers
Joe Musgrove vs Braves
Sandy Alcantara vs Phillies (FD)
Kyle Gibson at Marlins (FD)
Luis Severino vs Blue Jays
Kevin Gausman at Yankees
Is Buehler The Ace? Buehler?
If you have salary, and it doesn’t even take that much salary on DK, Walker Buehler looks like the SP1 at first glance based on name recognition and matchup. Buehler doesn’t have quite the elite strikeout stuff of top DFS pitchers, but on this slate, his 26% strikeouts from 2021 plus outstanding control are more than enough to expect a strong outing against Cincinnati. He pitched respectably at Coors Field in his first start, and should move up from those 78 pitches. He’s only $9,700 on DK, which is not difficult to get, while on FD, he’s up at $10,500, where you’d really need to see the upside. I like Buehler, I trust him as much as I trust anyone at this point in the season, but let’s move on to the next guy before we get too excited.
Shohei Ohtani is also priced way up on FD, but down at $7,900 on DK. He struck out nine batters on 80 pitches against Houston and again showed the same type of control he displayed late last season. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but Ohtani has top of the league type of potential for DFS as long as this control continues. He’s way underpriced on DK for these skills, and he’s going to be my highest owned pitcher and first guy in most lineups. Ohtani was 3% ahead of Buehler last season in strikeout rate, and there is room for that gap to grow. For me, it’s Ohtani as the SP1.