Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, April 12th
CheeseIsGood, a winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize on both DraftKings and FanDuel, is here to give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate. Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Cheese has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks.
Happy Friday! We’ve got a big 12-game slate on tap tonight that has a whole bunch of everything. We haven’t seen a lot of slates like this yet, and it can be a little overwhelming when we find so many viable options on both sides of the ledger. I try to find a nice balance between talking about enough plays to give you a sizeable MME pool to swim in but without digging too far in the weeds of every possible viable option. As always, I’ll sort things into tiers, break down my favorite plays in each group, and try to wrap it up as cleanly as possible in the Cliff Notes.
Just know that when we have slates of this size, you may come to completely different conclusions, with bigger or smaller player pools, and that is completely OK. There are a lot of ways to look at this slate, and especially this early in the season, there are still a lot of unknowns.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
A little statistical housekeeping note before we get started today. The numbers I am posting alongside the pitchers names are going to be 2023-2024 combined from this point forward. I’ll still be talking about changes we see in the current season numbers. I just didn’t want you to be thrown off if you’re looking at 2023 numbers and see a little difference here.
There are a ton of pitching options. I’ll start with the bucket of pitchers above $8,000 on DK:
TOP-TIER PITCHING
Kevin Gausman vs. Rockies – 30.8% K, 7.2% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.36 SIERA
Freddy Peralta at Orioles – 31.1% K, 7.8% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.38 SIERA
Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Padres – 31.9% K, 6.4% BB through 3 starts
Bryce Miller vs. Cubs – 22.6% K, 5% BB, 4.21 ERA, 4.09 SIERA
Max Fried at Marlins – 25.1% K, 6.4% BB, 3.48 ERA, 3.47 SIERA
Reid Detmers at Red Sox – 27.3% K, 9.3% BB, 4.28 ERA, 3.99 SIERA
Michael Wacha vs. Mets – 23% K, 7.6% BB, 3.14 ERA, 4.29 SIERA
Tanner Houck vs. Angels – 22.8% K, 8.5% BB, 4.50 ERA, 4.07 SIERA
Andrew Abbott at White Sox – 25.4% K, 9.5% BB, 3.84 ERA, 4.38 SIERA
I love the matchup and long-term numbers for Kevin Gausman. But I am officially in red-flag territory until we see something more from him. He is not stretched out, and he is at a career-low velocity. This may all just be early-season, small-sample stuff, and he could be fine as early as tonight. If you want to play him in this matchup, of course, go ahead. He should project easily as the top pitcher on the board, and I fully understand why. But for me, I need to see some velocity and pitch-count ceiling before I’m jumping on board with a chalky, expensive pitcher.
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