Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, August 2nd
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 11-game slate that appears to be very spread out on the offensive side with no clear chalk. The pitcher side of things is a little easier to narrow down, but when you narrow it down to the ideal pool, it doesn’t leave enough salary to get all the high-end offense that is jumping out. This makes for a fun little puzzle to dig into.
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Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
There are sort of a bunch of good pitchers, but really, as I dig into it when factoring in matchups, I quickly come to a narrowed-down pool of three primary aces. I’ll start by listing everyone who looks somewhat viable at $7,500 and above on DK, but most of them will get the early X button.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Joe Ryan vs. White Sox – 27.2% K, 3.9% BB, 3.69 ERA, 3.23 SIERA
Spencer Schwellenbach vs. Marlins – 25.5% K, 4.3% BB, 4.06 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Rays – 26.2% K, 6% BB, 4.75 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
Bryan Woo vs. Phillies – 17.8% K, 2.9% BB, 2.35 ERA, 4.15 SIERA
Andrew Abbott vs. Giants – 18.1% K, 9.1% BB, 3.38 ERA, 4.98 SIERA
Kevin Gausman at Yankees – 23% K, 6.5% BB, 4.44 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
Marcus Stroman vs. Blue Jays – 17.1% K, 9.9% BB, 3.64 ERA, 4.87 SIERA
Kutter Crawford at Rangers – 23.5% K, 6.1% BB, 3.57 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
Gavin Stone at A’s – 18.3% K, 6.7% BB, 3.34 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
Tyler Phillips at Mariners – 21.3% K, 2.2% BB, 1.80 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
Kyle Harrison at Reds – 21.8% K, 8% BB, 3.69 ERA, 4.19 SIERA
Tyler Anderson vs. Mets – 18.6% K, 9.2% BB, 2.96 ERA, 4.79 SIERA
Among this group of 11 good pitchers, there are only three with strikeout rates above 25%. Those three also have the lowest SIERAs on this slate. Those three also have the best matchups on this slate. This makes things very simple for me – Joe Ryan, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Yusei Kikuchi are the primary pool, and that’s it.
Joe Ryan is not quite an elite ace, but on this particular slate, he does check in as the top pitcher, even without factoring in the great matchup. The recent results have been just OK, but there are no red flags anywhere in this skill set, and it just looks like plain old back luck in recent starts. The White Sox have only one batter in the entire lineup with any sort of real power upside and are loaded with strikeouts. He’s the SP1.
Spencer Schwellenbach has been a much-needed surprise for Atlanta, and he also gets close to an ideal matchup that boosts him up the board. His control has been elite all season, and the strikeouts have started perking up recently as well. It all looks mostly believable based on the strong minor league numbers, and at this point, I’m just judging him on this 25.5% K rate with 4.3% walks. The lineup that Miami is left with after the trade deadline looks slightly better than the White Sox but still below average across the board. He’s the SP2.
Yusei Kikuchi has been much more up and down than Ryan and Schwellenbach, but he still has a stand-out skill set compared the rest of this tier, and a high strikeout matchup against a Tampa team that was also decimated at the trade deadline. Even adding in last season’s numbers to get a bigger sample size, Tampa has four batters above 29% strikeout rate to lefties, and their active roster has the 3rd-highest K% in the league this season against lefties. His lack of consistency leaves him as my SP3 behind Ryan and Schwellenbach.
Folks, that’s it, that’s my pool for spend-up pitching.
If you want to spread out more, it’s completely viable, but for me, if the slate is going to give me the answer sheet, I’m going to use it.
If you are going to spread out, I think my next dart throw would be…
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