Million Dollar Musings: Friday, September 22
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! We’ve got a big 11-game slate that features a good bit of everything. The MLB DFS picks on the offensive side are headlined by the Braves against Patrick Corbin, but with plenty of viable high-end pivots. The pitching side finds two expensive aces and then a bit of a jumble in the lower tiers. Let’s jump on in and see what we can find.
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have two pitchers priced way out ahead of the field, and then a couple other groups that I’ll sort based on DK pricing:
SPEND UP ACES
Pablo Lopez vs. Angels – 29.2% K, 6.1% BB, 3.58 ERA, 3.40 SIERA
Framber Valdez vs. Royals – 24.1% K, 6.5% BB, 3.20 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
Both of these guys are very good real-life and very good DFS pitchers. Lopez gets more of his upside from strikeouts, while Valdez gets more from his consistent innings. We continue to see just enough strikeout games from Valdez to know it’s possible, but this does not look like a likely strikeout spike here. I will always expect a 6-7 inning quality start, and I will not hesitate at all to put Valdez in any lineup where I just have the salary sitting around.
But if I’m prioritizing an ace, I side strongly with Pablo Lopez. He is the higher strikeout pitcher to begin with, and he gets the far better matchup for upside with 8 of the 9 projected Angels batters above 22% strikeouts. I don’t think it’s super likely to see a 100-pitch type outing this late in the season, but even at 5-6 innings, I’ll take Lopez as my ace.
On DK, I expect to be able to fit one of these two in most lineups, but on FD, the salary gap is significant, so they are luxuries more than necessities.
DECENT MID-TIER OPTIONS AND SOME ON SALE
Chris Sale vs. White Sox – 29.8% K, 6.9% BB, 4.66 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
Cole Ragans at Astros – 29.4% K, 9.7% BB, 3.33 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
Charlie Morton at Nationals – 25.6% K, 11.4% BB, 3.66 ERA, 4.42 SIERA
Taijuan Walker vs. Mets – 19.3% K, 9.7% BB, 4.40 ERA, 4.91 SIERA
Dane Dunning vs. Mariners – 19.3% K, 7.7% BB, 3.78 ERA, 4.55 SIERA
Brandon Pfaadt at Yankees – 20.7% K, 6.9% BB, 5.86 ERA, 4.58 SIERA
Ken Waldichuk vs. Tigers – 20.6% K, 11.5% BB, 5.40 ERA, 4.95 SIERA
Sawyer Gipson-Long at A’s – 3rd career start
Chris Sale is still a bit of a guessing game, but he’s looked more like the old Chris Sale than anything else recently. I don’t feel confident enough in him to put him in the Lopez/Valdez tier, but on FD, the salary gap is too big and I’ll be happy with Sale as my SP1. On DK, I don’t really love the idea of using him instead of Lopez, though it’s viable, but anywhere I have salary to spend up, it would be ideal to use Sale as the SP2.
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