Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, July 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 ourselves a barn burner of a 12-game slate that features a ton of everything. At first glance, I see at least 7 high-end pitchers and 10 stacks that I want to include in the primary pool. This should make for plenty of different paths to lineup building, so let’s dive in and see if we can separate anything out of these big tangles of top options.
This will be the last Musings before the All-Star Break, so I just wanted to say thanks for a great first half, and I’ll see you next Friday after I return from an unplugged week in the woods! Cards will still be here the next two days with his Covering The Bases to take you right up to the break.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a loaded top tier, with 9 pitchers above $8,000 on DK who all look viable at first glance.
Garrett Crochet vs. Pirates – 34.8% K, 5.5% BB, 3.08 ERA, 2.51 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Nationals – 30.3 % K, 8.8% BB, 3.95 ERA, 3.34 SIERA
Joe Ryan at Giants – 27.2% K, 3.7% BB, 3.29 ERA, 3.20 SIERA
Sonny Gray vs. Cubs – 31.1% K, 6.5% BB, 3.30 ERA, 2.94 SIERA
Gerrit Cole at Orioles – 24.1% K, 10.1% BB, 6.75 ERA, 4.44 SIERA
Cole Ragans at Red Sox – 29.7% K, 8.2% BB, 3.28 ERA, 3.32 SIERA
Bryan Woo at Angels – 18.7% K, 2% BB, 1.77 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
Hunter Brown vs. Rangers – 25.1% K, 9% BB, 4.48 ERA, 3.80 SIERA
Sean Manaea vs. Rockies – 23.3% K, 10.5% BB, 3.43 ERA, 4.34 SIERA
OK, this is a very good group of pitchers, and you could definitely make a case to just spread out and play all of them. However, because we have so many of them, we can also decide to be very picky, which is the way I’m leaning. With that, I’m going to start by eliminating a few guys from the primary pool.
Sonny Gray, Gerrit Cole, and Bryan Woo are all getting the early X from me. Woo is the easiest one, as he’s coming off the IL and only threw 45 pitches in his rehab start. I have no interest in that lack of pitch count ceiling. Cole is a tougher cut, as we know his history is that of an elite ace. On top of that, while the ERA is scary-bad, he does have 14 strikeouts in his last 9 innings, so he might just be back. But factoring in the weak overall numbers through 4 starts and the very tough matchup against the top power team in the league, I’m out on Cole tonight. Gray’s full-season numbers make him look as good as the other spend-up aces, but things have dropped off a bit, and those things include his pitch count. This is one where I would tell you that if you like Gray and have him in your top 3-4 pitchers, I won’t tell you that you’re crazy. I’ll just tell you that he is priced too high for me on this slate when I like the other spend-ups better.
Garrett Crochet had one of his worst starts last week, and I’ll tell you how much I care about that: zero. Everybody has bad starts. Well, except Paul Skenes. I’ll rephrase: every human has bad starts. Crochet’s strikeout rate is not just the highest on this slate, but it’s the highest of any non-Skenes pitcher in the league, and his K-BB% is also the best of any non-Skenes pitcher in the league. The matchup with Pittsburgh comes with a slew of strikeouts in the lower half of the lineup, and for me, Crochet is the clear SP1. One note of very moderate caution is that I expect the White Sox to be a little more cautious with his workload the rest of the way, but for now, that only means he’s likely to be around 90 pitches. I am assuming he doesn’t get the 100-pitch ceiling that would make him something like a must-play, but even if we knew 90 was the ceiling (we don’t know that), he’s still my SP1.
Freddy Peralta has been down at a 27% K rate with 8.5% walks over the past month, and while he’s still very good, it’s been quite awhile since we’ve seen consistent dominance from him. The matchup is pretty neutral, and on DK ($9,700), he’s extremely far below Crochet on my list. However, on FD ($9,500), he gets a $1,500 discount from Crochet, and when adding in the regular 100+ pitches for Peralta, I am a little more torn. His upside is still there, and even while he’s been a little disappointing and inconsistent, he still has at least 30 DK points and 50 FD points in 2 of his last 4 starts. I’m calling him my SP2 at this moment, but I need to see about these next few guys before determining exactly what that means.
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