Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 5/22

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-05-22 15:57:37 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 22, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday! We have a big 12-game slate that appears to be pretty wide open on both the pitching and hitting sides. Outside of Jacob deGrom, I’m not sure that anything on this slate will get to a point where ownership is extreme enough to factor that much into the decision process. My hunch at first glance is that it will be easier to narrow down the pool on the pitching side than the hitting side, but let’s dig in and see what happens.

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

I’m going to use $8,000 on DK as the cutoff between tiers. There are some pretty sizeable pricing differences between the sites, which we’ll talk about as we go along.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Jacob deGrom at Angels – 31% K, 4.1% BB, 3.02 ERA, 2.81 SIERA
• Logan Gilbert at Royals – 24.7% K, 5.2% BB, 4.45 ERA, 3.41 SIERA
• Davis Martin at Giants – 27.4% K, 4.7% BB, 1.61 ERA, 3.01 SIERA
• Kevin Gausman vs. Pirates – 22.9% K, 3.9% BB, 3.45 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
• Payton Tolle vs. Twins – 26.1% K, 6.1% BB, 2.05 ERA, 3.54 SIERA
• Logan Henderson vs. Dodgers – 32.4% K, 4.2% BB, 3.50 ERA, 2.79 SIERA
• Gerrit Cole vs. Rays – 1st start of season
• Bryce Elder vs. Nationals – 22.5% K, 8% BB, 2.01 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
• Michael Soroka vs. Rockies – 26.2% K, 6.7% BB, 3.49 ERA, 3.34 SIERA

The first thing I’ll say is that it’s great that Gerrit Cole is back, but this is a good enough slate that I don’t feel the need to use him in his first start of the season. He was stretched out enough in his rehab starts, getting up to 86 pitches, that he may not be all that limited. I just see him as an unnecessary risk in his first start since 2024.

I’m also not playing Logan Henderson against the Dodgers, certainly not on DK where he’s the second-most-expensive pitcher on the slate. He’s been great and slowly stretched up to 84 pitches, but he’s still only 18 innings into his season and 43 innings into his career. I will say that at a 33% K rate in those 43 career innings, he’s almost certainly for real, and while there is risk in the matchup, the FD salary of $7,600 seems too low. I still don’t think we’ll need it, but I might reconsider him when we look at the cheaper options.

I’m also going to pass on…

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