Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, May 17th
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 an absolutely bonkers Friday night slate, with 13 games that are filled with a plethora of strong options in all different pricing tiers on both the pitching and hitting sides. I’ll give you my breakdown with some rankings of my personal favorites, but this is definitely a slate where you can go all over the place and love your lineups.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a loaded pitching slate with a ton of viable options in all different pricing tiers. I’m going to separate this into three tiers, with a high-end 6-pack followed by an upper mid-tier that comes at almost no extra discount on DK. And then we’ll look at a couple sub-$7,500 options and a cheap, nonsense dart or two.
ACES GALORE
Freddy Peralta at Astros – 31.9% K, 8.8% BB, 3.63 ERA, 3.01 SIERA
Tarik Skubal at Diamondbacks – 31.6% K, 4.2% BB, 2.02 ERA, 2.52 SIERA
Nestor Cortes vs. White Sox – 23.4% K, 5% BB, 4.02 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
Cole Ragans vs. A’s – 27.3% K, 7.7% BB, 4.22 ERA, 3.30 SIERA
Max Fried vs. Padres – 20.4% K, 9.4% BB, 3.57 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
Bryce Miller at Orioles – 27.9% K, 8.2% BB, 2.66 ERA, 3.41 SIERA
Well, this is quite interesting up top. The two high-strikeout aces are in tough matchups, while we have some good lefties in better matchups priced slightly cheaper.
I love Freddy Peralta, and he has upside in any matchup, but this is a really tough spot to be paying the highest price tag on DK and 2nd highest on FD. Between the very low strikeouts for Houston and the power risk from Peralta’s fly balls, all I can really say he is that he is in the MME mix. I am always going to play a guy like this when he’s at low projected ownership, but he’s just not making my primary pool, and I wouldn’t be considering him in cash games.
The matchup is not fantastic for Tarik Skubal either, but it’s a little better, to go along with the more trustable control. It’s not exactly like he’ll be ‘sneaky,’ but at the $10,000 price tag on DK, I’m not concerned about high ownership either. He’s my choice ahead of Peralta as the spend-up to be slightly different.
I am guessing that Cole Ragans and Nestor Cortes will be the chalkier options and likely paired together at a healthy clip on DK. This is where I’m just super torn on what to say. Matchup matters, and it’s a huge gap between the Astros/Diamondbacks and White Sox/A’s. But look at the skills.
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
