Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, September 27th

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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.

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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!

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Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

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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.

In the game that means something for both teams, I will have interest in Max Fried but not Brady Singer. Fried is the better pitcher and will have no pitch count limit here. The matchup is basically neutral, and his elite ground balls leave him with very little realistic downside, outside of Bobby Witt and Salvador Perez. I want to see what else we find before deciding where to rank Fried.

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About the Author

CheeseIsGood
Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

One of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has won contests at the highest levels of both season-long and DFS. He is a 2x winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize in DFS, having won the 2014 FanDuel baseball Live Final and following that up by taking down a DraftKings Milly Maker Tournament in 2015. In addition, he’s won the Main Event championship in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the NFBC Platinum League, which is the highest buy-in entry league. His consistent success in the NFBC tournaments earned him a prestigious spot in their Hall of Fame. Dave can also strum a mean guitar while carrying a tune, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see him do so on one of his MLB Crunch Time appearances. Follow Dave on Twitter – @DavePotts2