Million Dollar Musings: Friday, July 14
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 and welcome back! I hope you all enjoyed your All-Star Break, whether that means a break from the usual like it does for me, or just another normal week but without a full schedule of baseball games. I went to one of the most interesting places I have ever been; it was called “outside.” I can’t give it a full recommendation because they have bugs and stuff there, but it is worth checking out if you ever have the time. I plan to go back and visit sometime in October.
We jump right back into the deep end with a 14-game slate that gives us loads of strong pitching, plenty of high-end offense that includes the return of Coors Field, and even several weather concerns to monitor. We open the day with three games listed as Orange from Kevin Roth and a couple others in the Yellow/Orange bucket. So we’ll have to keep an eye on the afternoon update. For now, I’m listing everyone as if all these games play, but some of the top pitching options are in dicey spots.
Let’s go ahead and jump right in and start digging through the plethora of MLB DFS picks for this busy Friday night.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This is one of those slates with so many decent pitchers, that I’m going to immediately start removing a bunch of viable names from my primary player pool. I could make some sort of case for virtually every pitcher on this slate, but I am going to be as picky as I can and just cut these groups down as quickly as possible. I’m going to sort these buckets based on DK salaries, and I’ll note where the FD differences can be found. I’ll also note again that weather could end up being a big issue in some of these games, but we’ll start with the assumption that everyone is playable.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Shohei Ohtani vs. Astros – 32.4% K, 10.6% BB, 3.32 ERA, 3.54 SIERA
Tyler Glasnow at Royals – 36.4% K, 9.1% BB, 4.10 ERA, 2.98 SIERA
Luis Castillo vs. Tigers – 26.9% K, 6.4% BB, 2.85 ERA, 3.65 SIERA
Corbin Burnes at Reds – 23.1% K, 8.8% BB, 3.94 ERA, 4.32 SIERA
Eduardo Rodriguez at Mariners – 26.3% K, 5.7% BB, 2.64 ERA, 3.60 SIERA
Charlie Morton vs. White Sox – 26.1% K, 9.9% BB, 3.43 ERA, 4.06 SIERA
Julio Urias at Mets – 23.7% K, 5.3% BB, 4.76 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
Jose Berrios vs. Diamondbacks – 23% K, 6.6% BB, 3.50 ERA, 4.01 SIERA
JP France at Angels – 17.6% K, 7.7% BB, 3.26 ERA, 4.78 SIERA
Tyler Glasnow left his last start a little early with cramping in his hand and legs, but it sounds like he is fine and a full-go here. While he’s hit 100 pitches once in eight starts, I am still viewing Glasnow as a guy more likely to be held in the 90-pitch range, which equates to 5-6 innings. But with his elite strikeout ability, that’s more than enough for DFS purposes.
Because of the pitch count difference, I’m going to say that Shohei Ohtani has a higher ceiling than Glasnow, but really, they both have slate-winning upside, and I’m not going to overvalue maybe an extra 10 pitches. Glasnow has been slightly more consistent than Ohtani with slightly better control, and he also has the better matchup against a Royals team with the 2nd-highest strikeout rate in the league against righties. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to play either of these guys, but in lineups where I have $10k to spend on a starting pitcher, I’ll go with Glasnow first.
Ohtani is not available (for pitching) on the FD slate, and with Glasnow at just $10,000, he’s my SP1 there. Glasnow is in one of the questionable weather games, so be sure to keep that in mind and stay flexible as you build lineups early in the day that start with Glasnow.
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