Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, June 14th
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 have a big ol’ barn-burner of a 12-game slate, featuring a bunch of everything. There are a slew of high-upside aces along with some good values, and on the hitting side, the Pirates are sailing into Coors Field to lead a spread-out group of closely-projected offenses.
We’ve also got some shaky weather, but at this point, I’m just leaving every game in the analysis as if everything plays cleanly. Be sure to check back in on our MLB Weather page this afternoon to make sure nothing has worsened.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This is a very tough slate to decipher, with a ton of super-talented pitchers but who are mostly in tougher matchups.
Too Many Aces
Chris Sale vs. Rays – 31.1% K, 3.7% BB, 3.01 ERA, 2.51 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Reds – 31.6% K, 8.9% BB, 3.95 ERA, 3.11 SIERA
Luis Castillo vs. Rangers – 24.9% K, 6.7% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Tarik Skubal at Astros – 31.1% K, 4.9% BB, 1.92 ERA, 2.66 SIERA
Cole Ragans at Dodgers – 30.2% K, 7.7% BB, 3.08 ERA, 3.10 SIERA
Hunter Greene at Brewers – 26.2% K, 10% BB, 3.61 ERA, 3.88 SIERA
Kevin Gausman vs. Guardians – 23.6% K, 5.5% BB. 4.00 ERA, 3.54 SIERA
Kyle Bradish vs. Phillies – 34% K, 9.7% BB, 2.62 ERA, 2.88 SIERA
Ranger Suarez at Orioles – 28% K, 5.6% BB, 1.81 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
Almost half of the pitchers in the entire league who are over 30% strikeouts are on this slate, and in addition to them, we have more real-life aces and upside pitchers in varying degrees of matchups. It’s really kind of a mess to sort through all this, and I’m going to try to be as succinct as possible. But before we go any further, I just want to make it very clear that you can play any of these pitchers on any site in any format, and it’s very defensible.
The two biggest questions that jump out immediately are with Tarik Skubal and Cole Ragans. These are two of the best pitchers in the league, but they are facing the Astros and the Dodgers, respectively. The Astros are the lowest-strikeout team in the league against LHP, while the Dodgers are a low-strikeout team who rank 2nd in wOBA, 3rd in wRC+, and 7th in ISO and runs scored against LHP. Either one of these guys can put up a gem against anyone, and it’s certainly intriguing to know they’ll have low ownership, but I cannot get them into my primary pool in these matchups on this loaded slate.
It looks to me like the obvious and probably popular spend-ups are Chris Sale and Freddy Peralta. Sale’s numbers this season are very similar to Skubal’s, and he has a far better matchup against a Tampa team with considerably higher strikeouts and lower power than teams like the Astros and Dodgers. Sale had a bizarre disaster start two weeks ago against Oakland of all teams, but he bounced back looking as good as ever with another 10-strikeout performance against Washington last week. I look at the 31.1% K rate and 3.7% BB rate with this matchup and call him my clear SP1 if salary and ownership are not being considered. We’ll move on before deciding if it’s a priority to spend this salary.
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