Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 5/1

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-05-01 18:50:36 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 May 1, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday, and Happy May! We open the new month with an 11-game slate that has a whole bunch of everything. We have plenty of ace pitchers, and we have the top-scoring offense in the league heading to Coors Field for a weekend series. But we also have value pitchers and plenty of other high-end offense to consider. I’ll do my best to narrow things down to a manageable pool, but this has the look of a Play Whoever You Want kind of slate.

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

This is a great-looking pitching slate with quite a few aces. I’m going to draw the line between tiers at the $8,000 mark on DK, which gives us nine solid options before we start digging around for dart throws.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Zack Wheeler at Marlins – 33.2% K, 6% BB, 2.73 ERA, 2.77 SIERA
• Robbie Ray at Rays – 24.8% K, 9.8% BB, 3.51 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
• Bryan Woo vs. Royals – 25.8% K, 4.8% BB, 3.09 ERA, 3.43 SIERA
• Will Warren vs. Orioles – 24.8% K, 8.6% BB, 4.14 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
• Emmet Sheehan at Cardinals – 29.2% K, 7.7% BB, 3.34 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
• Noah Schultz at Padres – 3 career starts (28.6% K, 14.3% BB)
• Cole Ragans at Mariners – 35.2% K, 10.2% BB, 4.77 ERA, 3.03 SIERA
• Shane McClanahan vs. Giants – 24.8% K, 12.9% BB, 3.91 ERA, 4.37 SIERA
• Eury Perez vs. Phillies – 26.5% K, 8.8% BB, 4.33 ERA, 3.88 SIERA

My first thought with this group is that, while there is some room for disagreement with the SP1, it also looks wonky that Cole Ragans is priced so far below the top of the board. He has just the 7th-highest salary on DK and 9th-highest salary on FD. He has had a very shaky start to his season, which is why the salary is down, but everything came back together in his last start where he looked like vintage Ragans. It’s possible that was the outlier, but he has a long enough history that I’d say it’s more likely everything before it was the outlier. He started the season a little low on velocity and then had the funny game where he got hit in the hand by a comebacker, which makes it all tougher to decipher. But in his last start, he was back up over 96 mph with his fastball, striking out 11 Angels in 6 strong innings. I have to say there’s risk here based on how shaky he had looked before that (including 8 walks in the previous start), but for me, that risk is priced in, while the upside is not. It’s a mediocre matchup but is boosted by the ballpark, and he’s my SP1 tonight on both sites with salary considered.

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