Million Dollar Musings: Friday, May 5
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first-place prize in DFS, 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 everyone! We have a tricky 11-game slate tonight with a ton of quality pitchers, but none of them in quite the ideal mix of matchup or current form to match the salaries. I’ll dig in and sort them out as best I can, but I will tell you right from the start that I have a bigger than usual pitching pool tonight. This leads to a smaller top tier of offenses that I’m focusing on, and I’m likely to land on the chalkier side of things.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
At first glance, this looks like a tough pitching slate to decipher. Not at all a bad pitching slate, just quite jumbled. The most talented pitchers have the toughest matchups and highest price tags, while the best matchups go to the lower strikeout options.
We are also getting deep enough into the season where we have 5-6 starts for most pitchers, so we can start to lean a little heavier on 2023 data. But it’s also not nearly enough yet to just throw out what we’ve seen in the past, as one great or terrible start can easily skew the overall numbers. The numbers listed below are 2022-2023 combined, and then I’ll sort out current form as we dig into them.
The big top tier looks something like this:
Clayton Kershaw at Padres – 27.9% K, 4.4% BB, 2.19 ERA, 3.02 SIERA
Zack Wheeler vs. Red Sox – 27.3% K, 6% BB, 3.01 ERA, 3.27 SIERA
Corbin Burnes at Giants – 28.9% K, 6.6% BB, 3.09 ERA, 3.13 SIERA
Kodai Senga vs. Rockies – 27.4% K, 15.4% BB, 4.15 ERA, 4.67 SIERA
Luis Castillo vs. Astros – 27.3% K, 7.1% BB, 2.77 ERA, 3.37 SIERA
Cristian Javier at Mariners – 31.6% K, 8.1% BB, 2.71 ERA, 3.27 SIERA
Max Fried vs. Orioles – 23.3% K, 4.5% BB, 2.28 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Jordan Montgomery vs. Tigers – 21.7% K, 5% BB, 3.36 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
Chris Sale at Phillies – 25.2% K, 6.9% BB, 6.17 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
Yu Darvish vs. Dodgers – 25.8% K, 5.5% BB, 3.16 ERA, 3.46 SIERA
What I’ll call tier two is more based on salary, using DK as a guideline. These guys are all below the $7k mark on DK tonight:
Tyler Anderson vs. Rangers – 18.9% K, 5.4% BB, 2.98 ERA, 4.25 SIERA
Josiah Gray at Diamondbacks – 23.4% K, 10% BB, 4.59 ERA, 4.32 SIERA
Merrill Kelly vs. Nationals – 22.1% K, 8.4% BB, 3.33 ERA, 4.14 SIERA
Sean Manaea vs. Brewers – 23.4% K, 8.1% BB, 5.26 ERA, 4.00 SIERA
Brad Keller at A’s – 16.8% K, 10.8% BB, 4.82 ERA, 4.79 SIERA
IS THERE AN ACE?
Man, this slate is wildly difficult. The most consistent long-term aces are Clayton Kershaw and Zack Wheeler. They have both been real-life great again this season, and while I trust them to be good in any matchup, spending top dollar in these matchups is not ideal. Wheeler is facing the lowest strikeout team in the league, and Kershaw faces a Padres lineup with a mix of right-handed power, patience, and contact. I would be happy to play either of these two in a world where salary doesn’t matter, with my preference being the higher pitch count of Wheeler.
Among the pitchers priced like aces, Kodai Senga has the best matchup, at home against the Rockies. But goodness gracious this guy is not inspiring confidence so far. The strikeouts are OK, but he has walked 18 batters in 26 innings with four walks in each of his last three starts. That is leading to short outings, and it appears that he is going to continue to be held under 100 pitches as well. I just need to see something better from him before I am going to spend $10k on him with this type of slate.
