CheeseIsGood's Million Dollar Musings - MLB DFS Strategy: Wednesday, May 4th
Happy Wednesday! We’ve got a big day of baseball with multiple doubleheaders leading to 17 MLB games being scheduled throughout the day. For DFS purposes, we’re looking mostly at a 6-game early slate starting at 12:40pm ET and then a 7-game main slate at 7:05pm ET. I’ll start with a quick look at the early games and then I’ll be back shortly with analysis on the later slate.
Early Slate Pitching
The early slate is basically Justin Verlander, then a group of 5-6 options for SP2. This is what that group looks like:
Justin Verlander vs Mariners
Tylor Megill vs Braves
Elieser Hernandez vs Diamondbacks
Zach Plesac vs Padres
Mike Clevinger at Guardians
Adam Wainwright at Royals
Ian Anderson at Mets
Verlander is in a tier of his own here with 30% strikeouts and just 4.3% walks while piling up innings so far this season. Ownership would be the only reason to fade him. Hopefully, by the time I post the article, this will no longer be an issue, but at this moment, Houston players are not showing up in the FD player pool, even though the game is listed as part of the slate.
After Verlander, it’s a tangled mess. Tylor Megill looks like the best pitcher of the remaining group, but he’s also expensive and facing the Braves. A Verlander/Megill pairing is tough, and while I do like Megill as SP2 for raw points, I’m hoping to find one of the cheaper options to focus on.
I’m crossing Mike Clevinger off the list right away. This is his first start of the season, after three minor league rehab starts, topping out at 67 pitches and failing to make it out of the 4th inning. The mix of the time missed and the pitch count ceiling are riskier than I want to mess with today at his price.