Million Dollar Musings: Friday, July 21
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 Oppenheimer Friday! We’ve got a solid-looking 11-game slate to lead us into this weekend. The edge appears to lean to the pitching side, with some quality options in all pricing tiers. But there is also no shortage of explosive offenses with slate-breaking upside. There’s a lot to dig into, so I’ll skip the shenanigans and jump right into sorting through all the MLB DFS picks for this Friday night slate.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The salaries on this slate lead me to a fairly small pitching pool on FD but with a much wider range of options in different pricing tiers on the DK side of things.
THREE ACES AND TWO OTHER GUYS
Framber Valdez at A’s – 27.4% K, 5.9% BB, 2.76 ERA, 3.24 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani vs. Pirates – 32.2% K, 10.6% BB, 3.50 ERA, 3.59 SIERA
Joe Ryan vs. White Sox – 28.9% K, 4.6% BB, 3.77 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Braves – 27.1% K, 9.6% BB, 4.41 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
Kodai Senga at Red Sox – 30% K, 12% BB, 3.20 ERA, 3.99 SIERA
Shohei Ohtani is the greatest of all humans, and I love him every time he takes the mound. However, if I can only choose one top pitcher on this slate, I’m siding with the more consistent Framber Valdez. We’ve even seen occasional strikeout upside from Valdez that matches the likes of Ohtani and Kodai Senga, and while I don’t ever expect that, between that potential and his innings, his upside is really as high as anyone else.
I will mention that both Ohtani and Valdez have a very small health concern, though officially, neither is changing my plans tonight. Ohtani had a blister and cracked nail in his last start, while Valdez had a calf cramp in his last start. Again, I’m not factoring these little things in tonight but just wanted to make you are aware that there is at least some very small risk of re-occurrence with either.
Back to Ohtani, the control is just too far below Valdez to call him the SP1, but when we flip over to FD, we find a $1,000 discount to Ohtani. That’s too much, and he’s the SP1 there.
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