Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 9/25

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Sep 25, 2026

Last Updated 2026-09-25 15:50:06 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 muse about the September 25, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Friday and Happy Final Musings of 2026! Cards will be with you for one last MLB slate tomorrow, but this wraps things up for me on another season of MLB Musing. Many thanks to all of you for reading along this year, as well as for so many years before. I wish we had an official count of who has read the most of my nonsense over the last decade or so. I would love to give out some prizes to the most loyal Musings readers. Maybe we could arrange an ice cream social for the top 10?

For this final Friday slate, we have a 10-game slate that is packed full of ace pitchers. I’m hopeful that most of them have pretty close to normal workloads, which makes spending up at pitcher a priority on this slate. The offense is pretty narrowed down with the Astros way out in front, and then just a small handful of stacks that I’m interested in after that.

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We’ve got 10 pitchers priced above $8,000 on DK tonight, with 7 of them making it into my primary pool. I’ll attempt to narrow it down, but I’m not sure we’re going to find a clear best answer here.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Tarik Skubal at Giants – 29.5% K, 4.5% BB, 2.85 ERA, 2.90 SIERA
• Gavin Williams at Royals – 33.5% K, 7.8% BB, 3.63 ERA, 2.87 SIERA
• Jacob deGrom at Twins – 30.4% K, 6.7% BB, 3.86 ERA, 3.09 SIERA
• Joe Ryan vs. Rangers – 25.7% K, 5.1% BB, 3.83 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
• Reid Detmers at Mariners – 28.4% K, 6.4% BB, 3.47 ERA, 3.28 SIERA
• Hunter Brown at A’s – 28.1% K, 11.9% BB, 3.26 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
• Sean Burke vs. Rockies – 25.6% K, 8.8% BB, 3.40 ERA, 3.81 SIERA
• Eury Perez vs. Braves – 25.7% K, 10.6% BB, 4.14 ERA, 4.07 SIERA
• Jose Soriano vs. Reds – 22.9% K, 10% BB, 3.72 ERA, 4.04 SIERA

Over the last two nights, both Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow have thrown 6 innings and landed around 90 pitches. I’m going to assume we get that same sort of range out of Tarik Skubal tonight, which is certainly enough to leave him as the SP1 on this slate in his ideal matchup in San Francisco. He really hasn’t been a dominant DFS pitcher in Los Angeles, but he still has an elite skill set and the ability to pile up easy innings. The strikeout upside is absolutely still there, but I can’t say it’s likely enough that he posts a ceiling game to call him some sort of must-play at $11,000 on DK, when no one else on the slate is even at $10,0000. What I can say is that in any lineup where I have the salary, I’ll just play him, but I want to see what else we find here before determining how much a priority he is.

Gavin Williams has a much higher strikeout rate than Skubal this season and far more big-strikeout games recently. Over his last 13 starts, we’re looking at a silly 8 games of double-digit strikeouts, and all but 2 of those 13 starts have come with 7+ strikeouts. This game is also crucial for Cleveland as they look to hold off the White Sox for the division crown and a 1st-round bye. The matchup isn’t perfect with a low-strikeout Royals lineup, but Williams has had no issue piling up those strikeouts against anyone and everyone. On FD, where Skubal and Williams are $200 apart, I’ll still lean Skubal with his far better matchup, but on DK, with a $1,300 salary gap, I’m playing Williams as my SP1.

We have another ace in a must-win game with Jacob deGrom against the Twins. deGrom continues to have random bad starts, with 3 games in his last 10 where he’s had more walks than strikeouts. But in between those are still far more games where he looks like the elite ace that his skill set says he is. That inconsistency is going to drop him just a skosh behind Williams for me tonight, but I’m also on the side of thinking all the good starts are the real deGrom, more than those occasional bad starts. This makes his $9,500 salary on FD very appealing, and I’m considering him my salary-adjusted SP1 there.

We aren’t done with aces in must-win games…

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