Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Friday, September 6th
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 massive 12-game slate that looks extremely difficult to narrow down.
But before we dive into this tricky slate, let’s all pause for a moment to take in this glorious moment as we begin the NFL season. There are 32 NFL teams, and yet, there is only one NFL team who is unarguably worse than all the rest. The Baltimore Ravens are all alone in last place in the entire league. The Panthers, Patriots, Giants, Raiders, Commanders, and on and on are all ahead of lowly last place Ravens. They are truly the worst, and numbers, as we know, do not lie. Happy Friday indeed!
OK, now back to baseball!
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Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a loaded top tier tonight with 11 pitchers priced above $8,000 on DK, and at first glance, all 10 of them are viable. Even after we get past those 11, there is another solid group of cheaper options that make for a very tricky slate.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Tarik Skubal at A’s – 30.3% K, 5% BB, 2.51 ERA, 2.95 SIERA
Zack Wheeler at Marlins – 27.5% K, 6.8% BB, 2.63 ERA, 3.46 SIERA
Michael King vs. Giants – 28% K, 9% BB, 3.17 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Framber Valdez vs. Diamondbacks – 24.4% K, 7.9% BB, 3.11 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
Cole Ragans vs. Twins – 29.5% K, 8.4% BB, 3.46 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
Bryce Miller at Cardinals – 24% K, 5.9% BB, 3.30 ERA, 3.83 SIERA
Max Fried vs. Blue Jays – 22.4% K, 8.6% BB, 3.52 ERA, 3.86 SIERA
Nick Pivetta vs. White Sox – 29.3% K, 5.8% BB, 4.53 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Sean Manaea vs. Reds – 25% K, 8.8% BB, 3.35 ERA, 4.03 SIERA
Brandon Pfaadt at Astros – 23.3% K, 5.1% BB, 4.32 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
Kevin Gausman at Braves – 22% K, 7.1% BB, 4.07 ERA, 4.17 SIERA
Wow, this is a lot of good stuff. I’m about to quickly knock a bunch of these guys out of the primary pool, but please understand that it is completely viable to play any and all of these guys tonight.
Fortunately, while there are a lot of strong skill sets, there is some separation with the matchups that help clear things up a bit. The easiest cuts here look like Brandon Pfaadt, Max Fried, Kevin Gausman, and Bryce Miller. The one out of those four that could sneak back in the MME pool depending on lineups would be Bryce Miller. Miller is much more of an ace against righties, and the Cardinals lineup is most likely to be five righties and at least one higher strikeout lefty. If the lineup gets any more watered down, I might consider him.
If salary is no issue at all, it’s quite simple to narrow down the pool. Tarik Skubal is the best pitcher here, with the highest strikeout rate and lowest walk rate among all these aces. He has 10 quality starts in his last 12 games and always has upside with a high floor. On DK, he’s very reachable, but $12,000 on FD is asking a lot with so many other strong options below him.
The other clear top option is Zack Wheeler in Miami. He is as consistent as any ace in the league and gets a big ballpark upgrade here. Miami is not as bad against righties, but Wheeler is a lock down ace against right-handed bats, and Miami just doesn’t have enough lefty power to hurt him. Assuming I can only play one of these top two, I prefer Skubal, but it’s close.
Third in line would be Michael King in another good matchup at home against the Giants. King doesn’t have the consistent control of Skubal or Wheeler, which is what keeps him behind them. But he does have similar strikeout ability and an even better matchup for upside. The projected Giants lineup has 8 of their 9 batters above 24% strikeouts. Unfortunately, that includes five lefties, and King has a massive gap in strikeouts with just 24% to lefties vs. 33% to righties. On DK, I strongly prefer Skubal and Wheeler at basically the same salary, but on FD, King has a big discount from them, and he is arguably the SP1 with salary factored in there.
Now things get a little trickier with Cole Ragans and Framber Valdez in tougher matchups. Valdez has been incredible recently, up to a 31.8% K rate since the beginning of July and a 35.9% K rate over his last four starts. As the strikeouts soar, his ground balls remain elite, and with that sort of skill set, matchup hardly matters. The overall skill set and the low strikeout matchup should keep projections low on him, and with his high salary, I would expect very low ownership here. I can’t tell you that he’s a better play than Skubal, Wheeler, or King, but I can tell you that I love him tonight assuming the ownership stays at a tiny fraction of those three. He will be in my primary pool at the same level as King on DK.
Cole Ragans is also good enough to have matchup-proof upside, but this is also a lower strikeout matchup. The good news is that the Twins will probably end up mostly right-handed, and his strikeouts increase to 31.8% against righties. I slightly prefer Valdez based on current form, but I also love the idea of getting Ragans at an ownership discount, and he comes in as my SP5.
Another part of the reason we can get ownership discounts on Valdez and Ragans is the matchup for Nick Pivetta. Pivetta comes at a discount from all the other aces we’ve looked at so far, sitting at $8,600 on DK and $9,300 on FD. His overall strikeout rate for the season rivals the top options on the board tonight. He has been a little shaky recently, dropping to a 22% K rate in 4 starts since the beginning of August and seeing some additional rest.
There have been no reports of an injury, but he was skipped in the rotation for extra rest and saw three straight shorter outings before getting back up to 96 pitches in his last start. Because of that, you have to go back to July to find a great DFS outing, but from that point, we find four 10 K games over a 7 game span. My assumption here is that he back to full strength, and if that’s the case, then he has the same upside as anyone on this slate. There are added strikeouts in the matchup, and his main issue of power is muted against the White Sox as well. With salary factored in, you could make the argument that he’s the top pitcher on the slate, and I’m not sure he ends up as chalky as I first expected. I have just enough question on his current form that I am only calling him the SP6 when not accounting for salary. But with the salaries added in, I will have as much Pivetta as anyone on this slate.
Sean Manaea is yet another upside pitcher at a discount. He has only allowed more than 3 runs once in his last 15 starts, and he has 3 double-digit strikeout games in his last 7 outings. He also has a consistently high pitch count ceiling which gives him added innings upside. The Reds are a middle-of-the-road matchup, but getting them at home is a sizeable upgrade for Manaea. On FD, he is going to miss the cut with so many other aces, but on DK, he’s the cheapest of this bunch at just $8,200. I slightly prefer Pivetta, but they are close enough that I would swap them around if ownership gets out of hand for Pivetta, which is a possibility.
Overall, I am having a tough time narrowing the pool in this top tier. If you’ve been reading along with me all season, you know how much I love coming to a narrowed down pitcher pool. But if it’s not there, it’s not there, and I’m not going to pretend to know more than I do. I have 7 aces that are all in my primary pool, and I don’t think I can cut it down any more than that. What I’ll say is that I am not going to prioritize Skubal and Wheeler on FD with their salaries, while on DK, I am going to lean a little more to Pivetta and Manaea for the savings.
LOWER MID-TIER OPTIONS
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