Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 7/17

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-07-17 16:18:39 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 today. 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 muse about the July 17, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday and welcome back! We jump right back into the deep end after the All-Star Break, with a big ol’ 14-game slate on DK and a 13-gamer on FD. Game 2 of the TB/BOS doubleheader is on the DK slate, but it is not on FD.

What I notice first about this slate is that we have a lot of high-total offense – headlined by Coors Field but joined by another 14 teams who open the day with implied team totals of 4.5 runs or higher. With that, I’m going to keep a pretty narrowed-down pitching pool and do my best to pick out a handful of favorites on the hitting side. Let’s dive in and see what we find.

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We have a decent pitching pool, and at least on DK, the salaries all look quite reasonable, with no one above $10,000. On FD, the top couple of aces creep up closer to $11,000, but the cheaper options are also not as cheap there, so things end up basically the same for me on both sites. I’m going to use $8,500 on DK as the cutoff between tiers.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Chris Sale vs. Rangers – 29% K, 6.2% BB, 2.20 ERA, 3.12 SIERA
• Bryce Miller vs. Giants – 30.2% K, 4.2% BB, 2.18 ERA, 2.85 SIERA
• Gavin Williams vs. Pirates – 29.1% K, 8% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.32 SIERA
• Logan Henderson vs. Marlins – 30.6% K, 6.3% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.17 SIERA
• Troy Melton at Angels – 21.7% K, 5.8% BB, 1.82 ERA, 3.93 SIERA

Chris Sale is very fairly priced at just $10,000 on DK and $10,700 on FD. We haven’t seen many ceiling games from him in a while, so I don’t think he’s some sort of must-play at this point, but I do think he’s the most trustable ace with the most consistent skill set. He’s allowed more than 3 runs in only 1 start all season, and that was back in early April. He has a consistently high pitch count with great control and well over a strikeout per inning, and there are just no holes in his skill set. It’s not a great matchup, but there is no matchup where Sale is anything but an ace. I want to say he’s the SP1, but let’s take a look at the other SP1 option first.

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