Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Friday 9/27

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-03-18 20:15:13 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

CheeseIsGood, 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. 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! As they say, time flies! If you ask AI to give you some other expressions in that vein, you might find that time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. Anyhow, this is the final Musings of the 2024 season, and I appreciate everyone who has been here with me this season for the long grind that is MLB DFS. The rest of the team here at RotoGrinders will be full speed ahead with football, golf, and soon to follow with NBA and NHL as well. As for me, I’ll be hiding away, quietly playing all the other sports, and perhaps popping into Discord to say hi every now and then.

The MLB playoff races are almost settled, with just a few teams left playing for something this weekend: Braves, Mets, Diamondbacks, Royals, Tigers, and Twins. I’ll start to get cautious now with the pitchers on teams who have clinched playoff spots, but everything else is still just business as usual.

Let’s dig into this big 12-game Friday slate, and then I’ll see you again in 6 short months!

Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

We have a very big top tier of pitchers, but it’s not super exciting either. We have quite a few limited pitch counts and unknown situations, in addition to very up-and-down skill sets. I’ll try to narrow this down, but it looks like a spread-it-out kind of slate.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Pablo Lopez vs. Orioles – 25.5% K, 5.1% BB, 4.11 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
• Ronel Blanco at Guardians – 24.7% K, 10% BB, 2.88 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
• Luis Castillo vs. A’s – 24.3% K, 6.5% BB, 3.64 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
• Max Fried vs. Royals – 23% K, 8% BB, 3.42 ERA, 3.63 SIERA
• Carlos Rodon vs. Pirates – 26.6% K, 7.4% BB, 3.98 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
• Jose Berrios vs. Marlins – 19.4% K, 6.6% BB, 3.38 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
• Sean Manaea at Brewers – 25.5% K, 8.5% BB, 3.29 ERA, 3.90 SIERA
• Jared Jones at Yankees – 25.8% K, 7.6% BB, 4.14 ERA, 3.75 SIERA
• Jacob deGrom at Angels – 6 IP this season
• Yu Darvish at Diamondbacks – 24% K, 6.2% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
• Taj Bradley at Red Sox – 26.4% K, 8.3% BB, 4.30 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
• Brady Singer at Braves – 22.4% K, 6.9% BB, 3.73 ERA, 3.87 SIERA
• Nick Pivetta vs. Rays – 29.1% K, 6.1% BB, 4.21 ERA, 3.31 SIERA

I will start by saying that everything is viable here, and even the pitchers who may have limited pitch counts probably have enough to be DFS relevant if they are at the top of their game. But I also want to get rid of as much of this tier as I possibly can for primary lineups and see if I can find a couple things to hone in on.

I’m going to start by cutting Ronel Blanco, Luis Castillo, Jacob deGrom, Jared Jones, and Yu Darvish. Blanco and Darvish will be needed next week and have tough matchups in unimportant games for their teams. The Mariners just missed the playoffs and Castillo is coming back from a hamstring injury, and I don’t even expect him to pitch tonight (Seattle hasn’t announced a starter yet at the time I am writing this). deGrom is awesome, and you can play him if you want, but I think they still hold him at 3, maybe 4, innings, and at no discount, I don’t need that. Jones just simply hasn’t been very good, and even if the Yankees rest a couple bats, this is a bad matchup.

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