Covering The Bases: MLB DFS Picks for Saturday, July 27th
Long-time grinder, stlcardinals84, is here to cover the bases for the upcoming MLB DFS slate. Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Cards has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his favorite MLB DFS picks.
Happy Saturday, Grinders! Welcome to the final weekend of July! It’s hard to believe that we have just two months left in the MLB regular season, but time flies.
We have our usual split slate Saturday on tap, but for the second straight weekend we have a Saturday that is more skewed toward the evening slate. We have a small four game early docket on tap, with nine games on the main slate tonight. I will offer a quick look at the four early games, but I will focus the article today on the larger night slate. As always, you can check out our MLB lineup optimizer for the latest projections.
Let’s dig in and see what this Saturday has to offer for MLB DFS picks!
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Saturday Afternoon Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
Michael King vs. Orioles
Kevin Gausman vs. Rangers
Andrew Abbott vs. Rays
Spencer Schwellenbach vs. Mets
Zack Littell vs. Reds
Tylor Megill vs. Braves
This is a weird little four game slate. We don’t have any true elite aces on the mound. However, we also don’t have any terrible pitchers. You could make a legitimate case for any of the eight pitchers that are going this afternoon, and it wouldn’t be crazy. I am excluding Dean Kremer against the red hot Padres and Michael Lorenzen given his poor underlying metrics, but I will at least give a thought to the other six. As usual, let’s start with the 2024 data.
King – 3.28 ERA, 3.55 xFIP, 28% K, 9% BB
Gausman – 4.55 ERA, 3.82 xFIP, 23% K, 6% BB
Abbott – 3.19 ERA, 4.92 xFIP, 19% K, 9% BB
Schwellenbach – 4.62 ERA, 3.74 xFIP, 23% K, 5% BB
Littell – 4.46 ERA, 3.92 xFIP, 22% K, 5% BB
Megill – 5.08 ERA, 3.97 xFIP, 28% K, 11% BB
If we are just looking at 2024 data, it’s pretty clear that Michael King has the best overall profile of any pitcher on the slate. His 28% strikeout rate is well above league average, and outside of an elevated walk rate, the overall numbers are very strong. In fact, if he were to get the walks down by a few percentage points, he could even be considered an ace. However, we can’t make the walks go away… and a high walk pitcher against the Orioles is a recipe for potential disaster. There is no doubt that King has the highest ceiling of any pitcher on this slate, but he is going to be popular because of that. I’ll loosely call him the SP1, but I don’t mind avoiding him (and targeting bats against him; more on that later) in GPP builds if you choose to follow that line of thinking.
In terms of the middle tier options, I am just out on Andrew Abbott. The advanced data is ugly, the xFIP is near 5.00 for the season, and his strikeout rate is under 20%. This is not the pitcher we saw as a rookie. Even though the Rays are in “sell” mode, they are not horrendous against lefties, as they rank 12th in team wOBA and ISO against LHP this year. Kevin Gausman and Spencer Schwellenbach are both better options, though they both have to face teams that are red hot right now (Gausman vs. TEX, Schwellenbach vs. NYM). Still, it’s just a four game slate, and we have to play someone. Both Gausman and Schwellenbach have decent control with league average strikeouts and xFIP marks in the mid-to-upper threes. Both will be in my GPP pool.
Given that there isn’t a lot separating the pitchers on this slate, I don’t mind going cheap. Zack Littell is your safe play, but give me some Tylor Megill today. He is the true definition of a wild card, and while I am not particularly keen on doing this on FD, there is absolute merit to using him as the cheapest pitcher on the DK board at $5,700. He is tied with King for the highest strikeout rate on this slate, and he gets to face an ice cold Braves team that has now lost six games in a row. Megill was a disaster last year but was once a highly regarded prospect, and I am intrigued by the cheap price, the 3.97 xFIP, and the electric rise in his strikeouts.
In fact, as of the time I am writing this, no pitcher on this slate has a sportsbook strikeout prop above 5.5, and Megill is sitting at 5.5 with more juice toward the “over” than any other pitcher — and we can get that pitcher on DK as the cheapest one on the board? Sign me up.
AFTERNOON PITCHING SUMMARY
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