Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Monday 4/20

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-04-20 17:57:38 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 give you his musings on the April 20, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Monday! We kick off the week with an 8-game slate that is starting a little earlier than normal at 6:40 PM ET. Magically, the sites line up with the same slate tonight, making things a bit easier to sort through. We have one last ‘Dodgers in Coors Field’ slate to get through, and while they’ve been held relatively in check so far, they jump out even further ahead of the pack tonight with the lack of thrilling offense on the rest of the slate. Pitching looks to have one clear SP1 and then a whole bunch of OK options at reasonable salaries. Let’s dig in and see what we find.

Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We have a strange pitching slate, where some early-season numbers have skewed the salaries and leave us to decipher what is real vs. what is small sample size noise.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Dylan Cease at Angels – 30.5% K, 10.2% BB, 4.25 ERA, 3.52 SIERA
• Emerson Hancock vs. A’s – 18.9% K, 7.4% BB, 4.35 ERA, 4.38 SIERA
• Seth Lugo vs. Orioles – 20.8% K, 8.7% BB, 3.77 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
• Kyle Bradish at Royals – 31.8% K, 9.3% BB, 3.66 ERA, 3.20 SIERA
• Bryce Elder at Nationals – 20% K, 7.5% BB, 4.71 ERA, 4.19 SIERA
• Aaron Nola at Cubs – 24.3% K, 6.8% BB, 5.63 ERA, 3.70 SIERA

Dylan Cease is the only pitcher on this slate who has the track record and name recognition of being a DFS ace worth something in the $10,000 range. With that name value – and the projections putting him at the top of the board – it seems likely that he is going to be very popular. He also gets a matchup that is a mix of risk and upside, facing an Angels team that currently ranks 2nd in the league in HRs but also 1st in strikeouts against RHP. That alone makes it a risk/reward matchup, but we add in more question marks with a patient lineup that has 6 batters above a 10% walk rate against RHP this season, which is Cease’s biggest issue. There is no questioning the strikeout ceiling for Cease, but it’s not that hard to make a case for how he ends up stuck in the range of 4-5 innings, even with his high pitch-count leash. Officially, I have to call Cease the SP1 for raw points and ceiling based on the strikeout potential, but I am also looking for a reason to fade him at high ownership. I just don’t trust how many pitches it takes him to get through an inning against a team with this much patience and power. The problem with the fade is we still have to find someone to play instead of him…and two other pitchers to play instead of him on DK. Let’s move on and see what happens.

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