Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 4/18

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-04-18 16:19:35 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks. Cheese, one of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy sports and 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.

Happy Friday! We’ve got a good-looking 11-game slate tonight at the usual start time of 7:05 p.m. ET. It looks to have a good split between pitching and hitting, with plenty to like on both sides.

Weather is going to play a key role tonight, most notably in Colorado, where Coors Field may find itself buried under snow. However, they may end up just playing a cold, snowy game that weakens the upside for bats. In addition to that game, we have a lot of good hitting weather on the East Coast, so before you make your lineups, head on over to the MLB weather page to see where everything stands.

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Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

We have a sizeable top tier, headlined by an intriguing matchup between the Dodgers and Rangers.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Yoshinobu Yamamoto at Rangers – 29.5% K, 6.4% BB, 2.65 ERA, 3.00 SIERA
• Jacob deGrom vs. Dodgers – 25.2% K, 6.5% BB, 3.20 ERA, 3.50 SIERA
• Freddy Peralta vs. A’s – 27.9% K, 9.3% BB, 3.52 ERA, 3.71 SIERA
• Bryan Woo at Blue Jays – 21.8% K, 3.1% BB, 2.89 ERA, 3.70 SIERA
• Logan Webb at Angels – 21.2% K, 6.1% BB, 3.38 ERA, 3.54 SIERA
• Drew Rasmussen vs. Yankees – 29.4% K, 4.7% BB, 2.06 ERA, 2.62 SIERA
• Carlos Rodon at Rays – 26.9% K, 8.3% BB, 4.14 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
• David Peterson vs. Cardinals – 20.3% K, 9.3% BB, 2.88 ERA, 4.28 SIERA

This is a perfect day to have Jacob deGrom back on the mound, because we can discuss what’s going on without having to worry about whether or not we need to be over or under the field on a super chalky pitcher in a good matchup like the past couple of games where he’s disappointed. Between the strong top tier of pitchers, his current form, and the matchup with the Dodgers, deGrom will not be chalky, he will not project well, and you can just skip over him if that’s what you want to do. But he is such an interesting case and was once an otherworldly ace that I still want to talk about him first. The first thing I think we can all agree on is that no one anywhere thinks deGrom is still the pitcher he was in 2021-2022. The question is whether or not he can be the pitcher he was in 2018-2019, or even briefly in 2024, which is something around a 31-32% K% pitcher with elite control. Because that pitcher would still be a top-of-the-league ace. So, here’s what I think:

Through 3 starts and 14 innings, deGrom’s fastball velocity is at 96.6 mph. In 2021-2022, he was throwing 99. How about 2018-2019, you ask? 96 mph and 96.9 mph. Sound familiar? I thought so. In 2018-2019, he was generating a swinging strike rate of 15.1-15.4%, which is elite. So far this year, you ask? 16.1%. Elite. We didn’t have Stuff+ in 2018-2019, but he is currently at 108 overall, with a 115 on his slider. That is not as elite as 2021-2022, but this is still a pitcher with outstanding stuff. This is all telling me that I don’t question his arm one bit. That leaves us to ponder the once-elite control and the power he’s allowed the previous 2 starts. All his issues this season have come from those 2 things, mostly the home runs. He is not allowing a lot of hard contact, and all I can say is that a 20% HR/FB rate looks like a simple fluke and nothing else. Obviously, he’s rusty and still rounding into form, but my official opinion is that this guy is still an ace. Not the same ace he was, of course, but still, an ace. It’s all just guesswork until we see him more, but if I had to guess at the range I think he ends up in, well, it’s his opponent tonight, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. I think something like 30% K% and 6% walk rate is what we’re going to see from deGrom moving forward. It’s just a guess; I certainly don’t know, but I am far from out on deGrom. We’ll discuss where he lands on this slate as we move along.

Since we just invoked the name Yoshinobu Yamamoto, let’s start there. This guy is good and has upside in any matchup. We’ve already seen 2 starts of 9+ strikeouts and back-to-back starts over 95 pitches. The matchup with Texas is just tough enough that I don’t think he has to be prioritized as the most expensive pitcher on both sites, but he is my top overall pitcher if salary doesn’t matter. I expect to have him in my primary pool on DK, but I don’t think I’m going to end up with much of him at all at $11,000 on FD.

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