Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 3/27

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-03-27 15:45:48 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 give you his musings on the March 27, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday! The first Friday slate of the year is always a little smaller than the typical busy Fridays that we’ll have for most of the season. There are 7 games on tap, and like Opening Day, we have plenty of aces to choose from and just a few offenses that are standing out. I am finding it much easier to narrow things down tonight, although I’m going to go out of my way to make sure I spread out a little bit more than usual as we ease into the new season. As Paul Skenes showed us, you never know who may come out of the gate a little wonky. There don’t appear to be any weather concerns tonight, with all the games either being indoors or in relatively nice early-season conditions, so let’s dive in and see what we find.

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

I could separate this top tier into a few different groups, but I think I’m just going to lump the top 9 pitchers all together and narrow things down as we go. It’s not quite as deep a pool as Opening Day, but it’s again a lot of good pitchers, and you can make a case to spread out to almost anyone.

TOP-TIER PITCHING

• Chris Sale vs. Royals – 32.4% K, 6.3% BB, 2.58 ERA, 2.88 SIERA
• Cole Ragans at Braves – 38.1% K, 7.8% BB, 4.67 ERA, 2.52 SIERA
• Framber Valdez at Padres – 23.3% K, 8.5% BB, 3.66 ERA, 3.66 SIERA
• Michael King vs. Tigers – 24.7% K, 8.4% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.99 SIERA
• Kevin Gausman vs. A’s – 24.4% K, 6.5% BB, 3.59 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
• George Kirby vs. Guardians – 26.1% K, 5.5% BB, 4.21 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
• Gavin Williams at Mariners – 24.6% K, 11.8% BB, 3.06 ERA, 4.35 SIERA
• Emmet Sheehan vs. Diamondbacks – 30.6% K, 7.6% BB, 2.82 ERA, 3.20 SIERA
• Sandy Alcantara vs. Rockies – 19.1% K, 7.7% BB, 5.36 ERA, 4.38 SIERA

So far, Chris Sale has not cared one teeny tiny iota about the age on his driver’s license. The dude is 36 years old and coming off two of the best seasons of his career, going over a 32% K rate with great control in back-to-back seasons. I question how long he can stay healthy, but as long as he’s on the mound, he’s given us no reason to doubt him. He is stretched out after throwing 86 pitches in his last spring start, so I would expect him to have no major pitch count issues here. The Royals are not a great lineup for strikeouts, but it’s not a matchup that scares me off either. While Kansas City should have a fully right-handed lineup, Sale is every bit as dominant against righties. Overall, Sale lands as my SP1 if salary doesn’t matter. I don’t see him as anything like a must-play, but he’s at the top of the board.

Cole Ragans was injured for most of 2025, so those numbers are only a 61-inning sample size. With that, and looking at his 2024 numbers, I would say both his extremely high 38.1% K rate and his high 4.67 ERA are fluky, one to the good side, one to the bad side. I would expect him to land right back around the 29-30% K rate range with average control, which makes him an ace who always has strikeout upside. There should be no workload concerns here after an 86-pitch outing in spring, so it’s really just about the matchup and salary. The Braves have a pretty sketchy-looking bottom half of the lineup against lefties, making this matchup look pretty close to Sale’s on the other side. This makes Ragans my SP2, and with his fair salary on both sites, I’ll probably have even amounts of him and Sale.

I would normally keep going down the line based on salary, but that would be burying the lead a bit, as my stance on Sandy Alcantara directly affects everyone else between him and Ragans.

Sandy Alcantara had a terrible start to his 2025 season, which dragged down his overall numbers, but by the end, he was back to looking like his old self. In the first half of the season, he was sitting with an ERA above 7.00, but in the 2nd half, the numbers show a 21.3% K rate, 6% walks, and a 3.33 ERA. He also reached 6+ innings in 11 of his last 13 starts, and that ability to pitch deep into games has always been his biggest asset. While I don’t expect anyone to go 7 innings in their first start of the season, if someone were going to do it, Alcantara at home against the Rockies is the one I’d pick. He reached 86 pitches in his last spring start, and not that it matters, but a 30.8% K rate in spring can’t be a bad thing. While he’s not Sale or Ragans on a per-inning basis, I think he’s kind of close when factoring in the matchup difference, and $7,500 on DK just looks way too cheap here. He’ll be my highest-owned pitcher on DK. FD is a little different, where there is just $200 separating him from Ragans, and we also get George Kirby a little cheaper, whom we’ll talk about next. I’m still playing Alcantara on FD, but he’s more in a 4-way tie up top rather than the priority that he is on DK.

George Kirby ran into some bad luck in 2025 that saddled him with a 4.21 ERA, but to me, there is a lot more to be optimistic about. He had the highest strikeout rate of his career by a sizable margin while maintaining his excellent control, and almost all his issues came on the road. At home, he posted a 3.38 ERA last season, which matches his overall SIERA for the year. That’s my baseline for him, and I can envision him being even better than that if he continues to improve. The matchup with Cleveland is in the same realm as what Sale and Ragans have tonight. It’s not great, but not a deal breaker, and adding in the home ballpark helps a lot. He is officially my SP4, but things are essentially a tie between Ragans, Kirby, and Alcantara.

That top four is going to make up the bulk of my player pool, and if someone else were to sneak in, it would probably be…

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