CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Thursday, June 2nd
Happy Thursday! We’ve got a slightly different look for the main slates tonight on DK and FD. DK is running a 6-game slate at the usual 7:05pm ET, and their slate includes the 2nd game of the Angels-Yankees doubleheader (weather permitting). FD is starting earlier at 6:40pm ET with a 7-game slate, which adds in two extra early games, but does not include the Yankees 2nd game. OK, so that’s that, and we’ll look at both.
Overall, it takes about 4 seconds of glancing at this slate to see the big decision point for tonight. The Braves are visiting Coors Field and are going to dominate projections and projected team totals. Everything else on this slate is affected by how you want to handle this tasty chalk. As usual, we’ll start with pitchers and then sort it out when we get to the bats in a little bit.
Thursday Night Pitching
Well, yikes! We have basically one sort of ace on DK, two on FD, and then it dries up quick.
The Small Top Tier
Sean Manaea at Brewers
Sandy Alcantara vs Giants (FD)
Well, here you have it. Sean Manaea is really not amazing, but he’s at least a pretty good pitcher who has been consistent with innings, up and down in strikeouts, and unable to keep runners from crossing the plate. He has an OK-ish 26.4% K rate with 8.4% walks and six of his nine starts have come with either 5 or 6 strikeouts. He’s fine, but that’s not an ace. However, on DK, he’s the closest thing to it and he’s just the default SP1. The matchup is good enough for strikeouts to expect his typical 15-20 point start, but while the upside is possible, it is not the likely case.
On FD, while he’s expensive, Sandy Alcantara looks like the ace to prioritize over Manaea. His huge 14-K start last week was certainly an outlier, but this is an elite real-life pitcher whose innings upside is unmatched by anyone in the league. Over his last four starts, we’re looking at no 7-8-8-9 innings with a grand total of three runs allowed. We saw this from Alcantara last year with long stretches of dominance and outside of two bad starts in a 33-start season, he was not allowing runs. You don’t have to spend up for an ace on FD, but if you do, I go Alcantara first, and then Manaea as a pivot.