Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 3/28

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-03-28 16:18:17 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. 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 upcoming MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday! For the bulk of the season, Fridays will bring us full slates, but as always, on the day after Opening Day, we get a bit of lull with just an 8-game main slate. We also get a bit of a letdown on the pitching side after yesterday’s ace-filled slate. We still have several aces on this slate, but it drops off a lot quicker than we saw yesterday. After seeing some unexpected performances from guys like MacKenzie Gore, I will remind you what we started with yesterday: we will never know less than we know right now. The opening starts for all of these pitchers are unpredictable, as you never know who is starting slowly or who may unleash a new skill set that takes them to the next level. So, while we’ll talk about my favorite MLB DFS picks for this slate, I will again be spreading out all over the place and recommend you do the same.

It looks like we have clear sailing in the weather department, but I always suggest you start your day by checking out Kevin Roth’s MLB weather forecast before you get too deep into your lineup-building. With that, let’s dive into the season’s first Friday slate!

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

I’m going to split the top pitchers into two tiers, as I really only see four guys that I can comfortably call aces when I factor in skills and matchups. You know I wish it was Five Guys, but I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough. Both literally, and figuratively!

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TOP TIER ACES

• Luis Castillo vs. A’s – 24.3% K, 6.5% BB, 3.64 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
• Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Tigers – 28.5% K, 6% BB, 3.00 ERA, 3.14 SIERA
• Dylan Cease vs. Braves – 29.4% K, 8.5% BB, 3.47 ERA, 3.46 SIERA
• Jack Flaherty at Dodgers – 29.9% K, 5.9% BB, 3.17 ERA, 3.10 SIERA

The first thing I notice about this top tier quartet is that 2 of the 4 pitchers have very tough matchups, while the weakest pitcher of the group is the one with the best matchup, which makes this all a little tricky.

When I look at the 2024 numbers, Luis Castillo is a full step behind these other 3 aces. In fact, his skill set is more in line with the next tier. However, he also gets a boost when we use longer-term data, as he was over 27% strikeouts in both 2022 and 2023, giving us 3 straight seasons of consistent performance. He also pitches in a great home ballpark, where he did have his usual 27.4% K rate last season. All of his downturn last season came against lefties, as he was the same ace as ever against righties. The Athletics likely have 3 lefties and 6 righties, which is enough for me to call Castillo my SP1 on DK where he’s priced down at $8,300. I’m much less enthused on FD where he’s far and away the highest-priced option at $10,400.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw 5 solid innings in the Tokyo series and should be able to ramp up over 80 pitches with no issue today. If he pitches well, I would expect the same 6 innings that I expect from everyone. The Tigers are a decent lineup but are still one of the better matchups available for the aces today. In a vacuum, I prefer both Cease and Flaherty over him, but unless things have changed dramatically since last season, baseball is not played in a vacuum. It’s played in the same simulation that we all live in! So, we’ll get to Cease and Flaherty in a moment, but at first glance, I’m going to say Yamamoto is my SP1 on FD.

Sure, the Braves are a better offense than the Tigers or Athletics, but it’s really not a dramatic difference for an opposing pitcher. The main reason I am leaving Cease below Castillo is that the Braves likely have 5 lefties in their lineup and only 2 higher-strikeout righties, which is where the extreme upside comes from with Cease. There is no matchup where Dylan ceases to have slate-winning upside, but it looks less likely in this matchup, leaving him in 3rd place among this top tier.

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