Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 5/30

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-05-30 15:56:56 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! We have a big 12-game slate that has a whole bunch of everything. It was originally a 13-game slate, but the game in Baltimore was moved to an earlier start time to avoid the bad weather. What I’m seeing at first glance is that the vast majority of pitchers on this slate are just good enough that you can consider playing them but also not quite good enough that you can’t play against them. This leads to a slate where you could reasonably have a huge pool on both sides, but hopefully we can narrow things down a little.

I had just about finished writing the article when the CWS/BAL game got moved to the earlier time. That eliminates the one MLB weather concern on this slate, but it also completely changes the offensive side of things. I will try to get rid of all my references to how much I liked Baltimore tonight, but forgive me if something feels disjointed in the hitting section.

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Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

This is a very deep pitching slate, where you could have as wide a pool as you want in MME. I’m going to narrow things down to a few favorites in each tier, but it’s okay if you are more spread out than me. I’m going to use $8,000 on DK as the cut-off for the top tier, but for the most part, the salaries are bunched up enough that you could draw a line in several different places.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Nick Pivetta vs. Pirates – 28.3% K, 8.1% BB, 2.72 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
• David Peterson vs. Rockies – 21.9% K, 8.9% BB, 2.79 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
• Framber Valdez vs. Rays – 23% K, 8.3% BB, 3.39 ERA, 3.54 SIERA
• Max Fried at Dodgers – 24.2% K, 5.8% BB, 1.29 ERA, 3.25 SIERA
• Bryan Woo vs. Twins – 24.1% K, 3.2% BB, 2.40 ERA, 3.25 SIERA
• Chris Bassitt vs. A’s – 23.7% K, 4.9% BB, 3.38 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
• Casey Mize at Royals – 21.8% K, 5.3% BB, 2.45 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
• Matthew Liberatore at Rangers – 21.5% K, 3.4% BB, 2.73 ERA, 3.47 SIERA

Nick Pivetta is the highest-strikeout pitcher on this slate by a healthy margin, and he has a great matchup on top of the strong skills. The Pirates don’t strike out as much as the Rockies, but it’s a similarly good matchup overall, as the Pirates rank dead last in the league in ISO and HRs against RHP. Pivetta had been held around 90 pitches in most starts before shooting up to 102 in another quality start last week. My guess is they’d prefer to keep him around that 90-pitch mark, but that would still be 6, if not 7, innings if he pitches well. Adding everything together, he is my SP1.

I prefer not to go crazy with mediocre pitchers at high salaries because of good matchups. However, a deeper look at all of the numbers shows me that David Peterson is not actually all that different from guys like Max Fried and Framber Valdez. Fried’s control and consistency are certainly better, and Valdez has a longer track record of success, but these are all left-handed pitchers who can pile up easy innings with their ground balls. While the control is always a wild card, I am very encouraged to see Peterson regularly getting up to the 100-pitch range, which leaves him with plenty of upside even when he walks a few too many batters.

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