Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, September 13th
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 a tricky 11-game slate on tap, which features a ton of good pitching, as well as the return of Coors Field. I’m going to look to narrow down my pitching pool and then see if we can find a reasonable way to get away from Cubs chalk on the offensive side.
There is one weather concern to keep an eye on with the LAD/ATL game, though at this point, since I’m not using pitchers in that game, I am not overly concerned.
Editor’s Note: Looking for more places to play? Check out our PrizePicks promo code and Underdog Fantasy promo code, two of the best DFS apps available today.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
There are a lot of good pitchers on this slate, but it’s also one of those times when matchups will be able to help us clear things up fairly quickly.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Dylan Cease at Giants – 29.8% K, 8.7% BB, 3.71 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
Freddy Peralta at Diamondbacks – 27% K, 9% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.82 SIERA
Yusei Kikuchi at Angels – 27.6% K, 6% BB, 4.31 ERA, 3.35 SIERA
Jacob deGrom at Mariners – 1st start of deSeason
Tanner Bibee vs. Rays – 26.3% K, 6.5% BB, 3.56 ERA, 3.63 SIERA
Logan Webb vs. Padres – 20.2% K, 5.9% BB, 3.46 ERA, 3.62 SIERA
Spencer Schwellenbach vs. Dodgers – 26.7% K, 4.7% BB, 3.78 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Bailey Ober vs. Reds – 26.5% K, 6.4% BB, 3.77 ERA, 3.66 SIERA
Kevin Gausman vs. Cardinals – 21.9% K, 7.3% BB, 4.09 ERA, 4.18 SIERA
Clarke Schmidt vs. Red Sox – 26.1% K, 8% BB, 2.34 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
At first glance, Dylan Cease looks like the pretty easy SP1 on this slate. He’s got the highest non-Crochet strikeout rate on this slate with a long history of upside, in addition to a great matchup in a good pitching ballpark. However, as we take a look back at his recent performance, it becomes a little murkier. His control has completely left him, and the strikeouts have dropped off dramatically in the 2nd half. Since the All-Star Break, he’s dropped to a 25.3% K rate, with the walks going up to 10.9%. It’s dropped even further over the past month with an ugly 19.8% K rate and 12.4% walks. He has topped 5 strikeouts just one time in his last 7 starts, and I’m not sure I’m willing to call this guy the SP1 just yet. I don’t doubt that the upside is still here, but I want to see what else we find on this slate to get away from a struggling pitcher as potential chalk.
Freddy Peralta is in the same boat as Cease, but without the good matchup to help him. His strikeouts have fallen to just an average of 21.2% in the second half, while his old control problems have resurfaced with a 10.4% walk rate. Like with Cease, the upside always exists, but I can’t expect to see it in this very tough matchup. He’s out of my primary pool and nothing more than a deep MME flier.
Yusei Kikuchi has basically swapped places with Cease in the 2nd half, shooting up to a 31.1% K rate and maintaining his solid control numbers. His walks are far enough below Cease for the season that Kikuchi has a lower SIERA for the year than Cease. When adding in the recent strikeouts and better control, I’m on the side of Kikuchi ahead of Cease. The Angels lineup is down to Taylor Ward, Zach Neto, Logan O’Hoppe, and then 6 ‘who are these people’. To be fair, several of these new faces in the Angels lineup have some potential, but at this point, I would call this a strong matchup for Kikuchi. He is my SP1.
Jacob deGrom will be making his long-awaited return from the IL. He made four rehab starts but topped out at 4 innings and just 49 pitches. Even if we bump him up to something like 60 pitches in this great matchup, it’s a really tough sell at $8,500 on DK and $9,000 on FD. I’m thrilled that he’s back, but he’s not going to make my DFS pool until we see the pitch count worked up. We could see something like what we got from Kumar Rocker last night with 7 strikeouts in 4 innings, but this is not a slate where I want to chase that at $8,500.
Logan Webb and Spencer Schwellenbach get cut by the matchups, though Webb is certainly MME viable if you want to spread out. But for primary lineups, I don’t want to spend for a low-strikeout pitcher against a low-strikeout lineup. With Schwellenbach, there’s just no reason to attack the Dodgers in the one game with weather concerns on this slate.
I also don’t see much need to mess around with…
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
