Million Dollar Musings: Friday, April 7
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first place prize in DFS, 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! Typically, Friday is a day where we can count on big evening slates. However, today has games spread out all over the place. The sites are also not aligned on their contests today, which makes things a little messy for content, so here’s how we’ll handle this here. I’ll start with a breakdown of the DK afternoon slate, which contains 6 games starting at 3:05pm ET. Then I’ll combine the FD and DK main slates, in which FD has added one additional game for an earlier start time of 6:40pm ET.
If you’re playing the main slate tonight, be sure to keep an eye on the weather in the Padres-Braves game, as Roth has that starting out as Orange/Yellow. The good news is that is not a key spot for pitching, so for now, I’m just playing bats as if that game is fine. And there are plenty of later spots with great MLB DFS picks to pivot to if needed.
Friday Early Slate Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings
The pitching looks fairly simple to break down into buckets, and I really end up with a pretty condensed pool. This is how I have things grouped to start:
Top Tier Trio
Zack Wheeler vs Reds
Hunter Greene at Phillies
Lucas Giolito at Pirates
Tier Two Is OK
Alex Cobb vs Royals
Jose Urquidy at Twins
Logan Gilbert at Guardians
Sonny Gray vs Astros
Aaron Civale vs Mariners
The clubhouse leader in strikeout rate is the Reds’ Hunter Greene, coming in at 30.9% last season. He opened this season with a good news/bad news situation of eight strikeouts in under four innings, but under four innings because he was walking batters and getting hit. That is the deal with Greene every time, think of him as a right-handed Robbie Ray. The strikeouts will be there, but so will the walks. And he’s always a risk for multiple home runs. I love the DK price tag and the upside potential, just be aware that you are taking on a lot of risk with him. So I wouldn’t blame you if you go elsewhere. I’m just letting you know that I’m going to play him early and often.
His opponent, Zack Wheeler, is the much steadier pitcher with far better control and still plenty of strikeout ability at 26.9% last season. His first start this year was not typical but mostly just due to silly bad luck on batted balls despite a 7:1 K:BB ratio and 50% ground balls. For me, he is the safest pitcher on this slate, while noting that I don’t actually think there is a ‘safe’ pitcher on this slate. I will officially recommend him as the SP1 and the cash game building block, but I’m not going overboard here in tournaments.
At first glance, I’m going to guess that Lucas Giolito comes in at similar ownership to Wheeler thanks to the matchup with the Pirates. He still seems to be thought of as a big strikeout pitcher, but the numbers have fallen the past two seasons, down to 25.4% last year. That’s still a decent number, but it’s below Wheeler, and his control is not as good as Wheeler’s. Personally, he’s just my SP3, and not really at all ahead of my 4th and 5th options, who we’ll find in the next tier.
Logan Gilbert faced Cleveland in his first start of the year and looked sharp with seven strikeouts and one run in six quality innings. While that’s all fine and nice and good, until we see more, I’m still viewing him at the 22.7% K rate from last season. Against a low strikeout opponent leaves him a tier behind the top three in my book and not at the top of the second group.
I’m completely out on Sonny Gray after a 1:4 K:BB ratio in his first start. He gets no credit from me for not allowing any runs. I simply don’t trust him at all against Houston. Feel free to disagree, but he’s not in my pool.
It doesn’t get much less exciting than Aaron Civale. He did boost his strikeouts a bit last season, but they were right back down to nothing in his first start. And I’m really not keen on a pitch-to-contact guy against Seattle.
Jose Urquidy is basically Aaron Civale, but with a Q in his last name. He throws strikes without much swing-and-miss, and he gets hit in the air. Any of these types of pitchers can work out on any given day, and there’s really nothing wrong with including any of them in your pool. Between the matchups and how they started the season, I have Urquidy well ahead of Civale if using one of these guys, and Urquidy will check in as my SP5. But I’m simply playing Hunter Greene ahead of them every time.
If I’m playing someone in this second tier, my first choice is going to be Alex Cobb, at home against the Royals. He pitched outstanding in his first start but was pulled after 76 pitches, likely due to precaution from some knee soreness in spring training. My guess here is that he goes up to 80-85 pitches, but I don’t expect we see any big pitch counts from him yet. With that, his mix of average strikeouts, good control, and ground balls make him solid but not spectacular. That’s really not so different than what I’d expect from Urquidy or Civale, but Cobb has shown more strikeout upside. And he gets ground balls instead of fly balls, which would be my preference.
Early Pitching Cliff Notes
As we’ve been seeing regularly so far, the DK pricing is soft enough on pitchers that there just isn’t much need at all to goof around with cheap nonsense. The only combo that’s even moderately tough to fit is Wheeler/Giolito, and with three pitchers arguably better than Giolito under $8k, that is not really necessary.
Officially, my rankings sort out like this:
Zack Wheeler and Hunter Greene are my SP1 and SP2, and I’m happy to play them in the same lineup.
Lucas Giolito, Alex Cobb and Jose Urquidy are my three pivots, and I have them in that order. But it’s close enough that I’ll just be mixing and matching.
If you’re looking to jump into the Very Early Only FD slate, I would add Tylor Megill in as the SP2 once you have too much Wheeler in your lineups.
Friday Early Slate Hitting: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings
This slate is bunched enough and small enough that it will be another one of those days where every offense is completely viable in multi-entry. But for primary lineups, I have things sorted into these two buckets:
Top Tier Offense
NY Yankees at Dean Kremer
Baltimore Orioles vs Clarke Schmidt
Chicago White Sox at Rich Hill
SF Giants vs Brad Keller
Tier Two Offense
Seattle Mariners at Aaron Civale
Houston Astros at Sonny Gray
Twins Power vs Jose Urquidy
Phillies Power Or Stack vs Hunter Greene
Pittsburgh Pirates vs Lucas Giolito
Stacks And One Offs
What I like about most of the teams on this slate is that I can pick out individual bats to target, as well as making a case for full stacking. This should leave plenty of ways to construct lineups, either starting with your stacks or starting with the individual bats you want to be sure to fit in.
The first example is the Yankees against a low strikeout pitcher in Dean Kremer. His first start this season went the exact opposite of his 2022 season. Batted balls, particularly HR/FB, were fluky good for him last year, and that was never going to last. He may well be a guy who is able to beat his estimated ERA by getting some soft contact, but you know who doesn’t make soft contact? Aaron Judge. Also, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Gleyber Torres. Those four bats are exactly what I was talking about when I said this slate is good for stacking and good for picking out individual bats. Sure, play them all together, or a couple of them with the cheaper bottom-of-the-order bats, or use them on their own where salary allows. My favorites are Judge and Torres, due to the positional eligibility for Torres.
Baltimore is another one where you can build in multiple ways. We still have no idea if Clarke Schmidt is really cut out to be a major league starter, but from what I see, he is better suited for the bullpen. The trick here is that the Orioles are likely to see a lot of bullpen, but at this point, there is only one lefty back there for the Yankees. This makes me confident in just rolling with the top of the lineup, as there is a big drop-off after the top five hitters for Baltimore. The stand-out is Adley Rutschman, both in skillset and being able to fill your catcher slot with a top bat.
The White Sox are a team where I need a very specific type of pitcher to like them. And what do you know, Rich Hill is exactly that type of pitcher. The White Sox top bats are righties who don’t have a lot of fly ball ability on their own but hit the ball plenty hard. Hill is a lefty who will mostly throw hittable strikes and has a well below average ground ball rate. That is perfect for Tim Anderson, Luis Robert and Andrew Vaughn. I’m also going to look to get Yoan Moncada and Yasmani Grandal into stacks, and if Jake Burger finds himself in the middle of the lineup, then we have even more positional flexibility to be able to stack Chicago any way the lineup requires.
The Giants went bananas yesterday with 172 runs on 85 homers in Chicago. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was a lot. I love the matchup here as well against a low strikeout pitcher in Brad Keller. While Keller gets ground balls around 53% to both sides of the plate, the Giants are a team filled with fly ball hitters. The top five hitters in the projected lineup all come in over 42% fly balls. The note of caution here is that the Royals have three lefties in the bullpen, and the Giants will likely have a couple righties waiting on the bench to pinch hit. I am going to assume for now that LaMonte Wade is the biggest pinch-hit risk, but Joc Pederson and Mike Yastrzemski have some as well. That is what keeps the Giants at 4th on my list today.
Seattle and Minnesota are in similar situations, facing strike-throwing pitchers who will allow fly balls and power. Jose Urquidy is a low enough strikeout pitcher for me to put Byron Buxton and Joey Gallo up near the top of the list, but they are my only two primary targets here. Most of the fly balls from Aaron Civale come against lefties, and the top Mariners bats are the righties. I will play them all, and I like the stack, but the primary stand-out for me is Eugenio Suarez, with his big 46% fly ball rate.
Just in case you haven’t heard me say this yet, you can hear me say it now. Every time that Hunter Greene is on the mound, I will play Hunter Greene and I will also stack against him. He is as boom-or-bust as any pitcher in the league, with big-time strikeout ability but also shaky control and a ton of fly balls to both sides of the plate. There is also the fact that, because of his pitching style, he’s also going to be prone to short outings at times, regardless of how well he pitches. I don’t officially love anything on the Phillies, though of course I’ll play some Kyle Schwarber, and then Trea Turner and JT Realmuto will make the primary pool based on their overall skill level and positions. Mostly, this is just a spot where I’ll have the Phillies as probably my #6 stack on the slate, which means they will make it into my first 20 lineups, perhaps multiple times.
With what we saw from Sonny Gray on Opening Day, and my general distrust of his consistency, I’m all about some Astros today. I also don’t expect much ownership here due to the low-ish team total, weather, and the name recognition on Gray. Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker are two of the best hitters in the league, and I love them to an unhealthy extent. After those two, it’s just mixing and matching. But although I can’t rank them as a top tier stack, I will tell you that if I were only allowed one lineup today, it would have a Houston stack.
It’s starting to get pretty thin when we get down to the Pirates and everything past them, but on a small slate, I think it’s worth throwing a couple darts against Giolito. Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds are always going to be playable, and then they get super cheap after that. So yeah, throw that dart.
You can feel free to include every other team in the MME mix, with Jose Ramirez standing out in the Don’t Forget About Me club. Which reminds me, I need to finish breakfast.
EARLY HITTING CLIFF NOTES
As far as stacks, there is really not a huge amount of separation, but I’ll manage to group things like this:
Top Tier – Yankees, Orioles, White Sox, Giants, Astros
Tier Two – Phillies, Mariners, Pirates, Twins
As discussed above, with most of these teams, I am just as happy with picking out a couple individual bats or mini-stacking, with my preference of spend-ups looking like this:
Aaron Judge, Adley Rutschman, Yordan Alvarez, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton, Kyle Tucker, Byron Buxton, Eugenio Suarez, Luis Robert, Cedric Mullins, Jose Ramirez
Even though the pitching is not expensive, because of how many high-end bats I love, there is a need to do some value hunting on this slate. Pending lineups, these are some of my favorites:
Aaron Hicks, Oswaldo Cabrera, Anthony Volpe, Bryson Stott, Corey Julks, Chas McCormick, Cal Raleigh, Jarred Kelenic, Yasmani Grandal, Jake Burger, Michael Conforto, David Villar
Friday Main Slate Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel
There is not much jumping out on the pitching side tonight, but we do have two big name aces with Woodruff and Kershaw and then a handful of somewhat viable cheaper options. We get a little extra help on FanDuel, with the addition of the earlier game giving us one more cheaper option to focus on.
Top Tier Pitchers
Brandon Woodruff vs Cardinals
Clayton Kershaw at Diamondbacks
Zach Eflin vs A’s (FanDuel)
Leftovers
Jack Flaherty at Brewers
Patrick Sandoval vs Blue Jays
Chris Bassitt at Angels
MacKenzie Gore at Rockies ??
On most slates, I would prefer not to have to play a chalk pitcher against a tough opponent like St. Louis, but Brandon Woodruff is simply better than everyone else on this slate. You could certainly argue that Clayton Kershaw is better in real life, but for DFS purposes, Woodruff tops the slate by a healthy margin with a 30.8% K rate last season, opening this year with eight strikeouts in six innings, and just as impressively, 97 pitches. His mix of high strikeouts, low walks and a higher pitch count make him my clear SP1 ahead of Kershaw.
Speaking of Kershaw, he looked fantastic in his first start with a sparkling 9:0 K:BB ratio against this same Arizona lineup. I am not anywhere close to buying that type of strikeout boost, but even at his usual 28% K range with elite control, I’m fully on board with him as the SP2 on this slate. The pitch count is likely to be an issue all season, though I’d expect he can get up towards 85-90 here. Most likely, in his first start, he was only pulled at 76 pitches because that’s where he finished the 6th inning, and I’d guess he could have thrown a few more if it were needed.
On DK, Woodruff and Kershaw are so far ahead of the pack, that I would gladly lock button them as the pitching combo in every lineup if salary allowed. They are pricey enough that I don’t expect that to work, but anywhere I can fit them both, I am not going to overthink it.
On the FanDuel side, Zach Eflin looks like the best cheaper pivot if you can’t afford the price tags on the top two. It’s not that Eflin is some superstar, but he’s a decent pitcher, and he’s at home against Oakland on a slate with no other great options. He got five innings and 74 pitches in the opener, and with a little room for growth, a quality start should be within reach here.
The reason I’m so intent on Woodruff/Kershaw is the shakiness of the rest of this group:
Jack Flaherty didn’t allow a run in his first start, but goodness gracious man alive, the dude walked seven batters in five innings. And this coming after several injury-riddled seasons and a horrible 13.2% walk rate with below average strikeouts in his 36 innings last year. I just don’t trust this guy one teeny iota right now.
I trust Patrick Sandoval more than I trust Flaherty, but he has shaky control as well, he did not look sharp with strikeouts in his first start, and he’s a lefty facing the Blue Jays. None of this is good news. It is gross saying this, but I think I’d play Flaherty ahead of him on DK with the $1,000 savings. I would not touch either of them on FD.
Chris Bassitt? The dude was shellacked in obscene fashion in his opening start, allowing four homers and nine runs with no strikeouts in three innings against the Cardinals. Yikes. I’d love to just give the guy a full pass and say that he’s been steady enough the past two years to call him the SP3. However, and it’s a big however, his fastball velocity was at a career low in that first start, which tells me he just wasn’t ready to start the season yet. Now, it was only three innings, so maybe he got it out of his system, and he just pops back up to normal here, I do not know. But what I do know is I can just downgrade one hitting spot and play Woodruff or Kershaw instead of him.
UPDATE – As I’m building lineups on DK today, it is really tough to get the offense I want, even with a pitcher in the Bassitt/Flaherty range. I just wanted to pop back in and tell you that I am begrudgingly adding MacKenzie Gore into my player pool for tonight. There are simply some hitting combos that are not possible any other way. I’ll just hope this is the night he finds his control.
Folks, I’m just done here with the pitching already. I can’t sugarcoat this one. Theoretically, any of Flaherty, Sandoval or Bassitt could jump back up to their previous levels and be the pitcher you needed on this slate. But with the matchups and what we saw in the first starts, it would be foolish to project that for any of them. I’ll throw some darts where needed, but ideally, I want as much Woodruff/Kershaw as possible, with Eflin added in on FD. And that was the Cliff Notes.
Friday Main Slate Hitting: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel
The first Coors Field game of the year was a 1-0 laugher of nonsense, which goes back to what I said yesterday…this may be Coors Field, but it’s also the Nationals and the Rockies. The Rockies have just enough that I do expect we’ll still see them as one of the best home teams in the league, but this Washington team is just nonsense. Of course, Jose Urena is a good bit of nonsense himself. Good times!
Top Tier Bats
Colorado Rockies vs MacKenzie Gore
Washington Nationals at Jose Urena
LA Dodgers at Madison Bumgarner
Toronto Blue Jays at Patrick Sandoval
Atlanta Braves vs Nick Martinez
SD Padres at Jared Shuster
LA Angels vs Chris Bassitt
Milwaukee Brewers vs Jack Flaherty
TB Rays vs Ken Waldichuk (FanDuel)
OK, wow. Nine of the 12 teams on this slate qualify as top tier for me. That means that the Diamondbacks, Cardinals and A’s are basically off my list. Though, just to cover all my bases, in 150 MME, I’m absolutely going to throw a couple Cardinals stacks in simply based on how good the lineup is. For the rest of this slate, I will give you some rankings of my preferences, but just know that my lineups will be as spread out on the hitting side as they are focused on the pitching side.
As bad as Jose Urena is, the one thing he can sort of do is keep the ball on the ground. And you know what Washington doesn’t have? Fly ball hitters. It’s a ground ball pitcher against a bunch of low power ground ball hitters. That is just not what I want on a slate where elite teams like the Dodgers, Braves and Blue Jays are also in favorable spots. I have more interest in the Rockies side, with MacKenzie Gore not yet showing any signs of being able to reign in his sketchy control. He has some strikeout ability, but a guy giving out free passes at Coors Field backed by a bad bullpen is not a good combo. I have only nominal interest in picking out individual Rockies, which would be Kris Bryant and CJ Cron, but I do like the full stack at the top of the board.
Out of the rest of this loaded group, the Dodgers are the team I find the most interest in. Madison Bumgarner is simply not good at all anymore, and it’s possible he just falls even further off the cliff this season. I’ll gladly play Mookie Betts or JD Martinez on their own here, but with the way the pricing is, the bottom half of this lineup makes stacking my preference.
The reason I prefer the Dodgers ahead of the Blue Jays and Braves is that Patrick Sandoval is certainly better than Bumgarner, and Nick Martinez is at least moderately better, with a better bullpen behind him. However, batter for batter up and down the lineup, the Braves and Blue Jays have more talent than the Dodgers vs lefties. So, this puts them all in the same basket (good weekend for baskets by the way), and I’ll be going Toronto first because of the way the lineup matches up. If Sandoval has a weakness, it’s allowing hard contact to righties, and his strikeout ability is more than offset by the contact from guys like George Springer, Vladimir Guerrero, Bo Bichette and Alejandro Kirk. This is simply an elite team against lefties, and I’m not going to overthink it.
After the Rockies, Dodgers, Blue Jays and Braves, I would put a slight gap before the next team. However, I’m going to put the Angels right there with them in the hopes that Chris Bassitt is down in velocity again for another struggle. There is so much power in this Angels lineup with the Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Taylor Ward trio leading the way. If Bassitt gets back to his usual self, it’s a strong lean to lefties, so Ohtani is the one I’d use on his own here.
It’s a similar situation with the Brewers, where the long-term numbers aren’t going to look great, but it’s quite possible that Jack Flaherty is just not supposed to be pitching in the majors right now. I will include Rowdy Tellez and Willy Adames in my pool of individual bats, but I’m stacking here for the event that Flaherty just keeps walking everybody.
As bad as Flaherty was, the Braves Jared Shuster was even worse in his first start, and unlike Flaherty, he doesn’t have a previous track record of being a good major league pitcher. Between that first start and just OK Triple-A numbers, I don’t think Shuster is ready to be in the show. The thing keeping me from loving the Padres is that the Braves have a good and deep bullpen that they won’t be afraid to use. I will absolutely play some Manny Machado, but then this San Diego team falls down to the bottom of my top tier.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
This is a slate where everything that I really love as an individual bat is covered within the primary stacks. I’ll give you the same lists here as usual, but know that this is a very spread out, closely bunched top tier for me tonight.
Top 1-A Stacks – Dodgers, Rockies, Blue Jays
Tier 1-B Stacks – Braves, Angels, Nationals
Tier 1-C Stacks – Brewers, Rays (FD), Padres
Favorite Spend Ups – Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Vladimir Guerrero, Mike Trout, C.J. Cron, Ronald Acuna, Kris Bryant, J.D. Martinez, George Springer, Taylor Ward, Manny Machado
FanDuel Values – Isaac Paredes, Rowdy Tellez, Willy Adames, Jesse Winker, Nelson Cruz, Jurickson Profar, Alejandro Kirk, Hunter Renfroe, Chris Taylor, Trayce Thompson
DK Values – Rowdy Tellez, Jesse Winker, Garrett Mitchell, Eddie Rosario, Jurickson Profar, Elehuris Montero, Yonathan Daza, Dominic Smith, Jeimer Candelario, Alejandro Kirk, Jake Lamb, Chris Taylor, Miguel Vargas, Trayce Thompson