Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, April 8th
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 Monday! We’ve got ourselves an interesting 9-game slate tonight that features Arizona in Coors Field on the hitting side, and the return of Blake Snell on the pitching side. There are also several other strong matchups on both sides of the ledger, so let’s jump on in and see how this all shakes out.
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
TOP TIER PITCHING
Blake Snell vs. Nationals – 31.5% K, 13.3% BB, 2.25 ERA, 4.06 SIERA
Luis Castillo at Blue Jays – 27.3% K, 7% BB, 3.34 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
Yu Darvish vs. Cubs – 24.6% K, 7.5% BB, 4.56 ERA, 4.04 SIERA
Charlie Morton vs. Mets – 25.6% K, 11.6% BB, 3.64 ERA, 4.44 SIERA
Zach Eflin at Angels – 26.5% K, 3.4% BB, 3.50 ERA, 3.30 SIERA
James Paxton at Twins – 24.6% K, 8% BB, 4.50 ERA, 4.11 SIERA
Zac Gallen at Rockies – 26% K, 5.6% BB, 3.47 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Framber Valdez at Rangers – 24.8% K, 7% BB, 3.45 ERA, 3.70 SIERA
Blake Snell always makes things interesting, and even more so when we have to play the guessing game with his first start of the season. We also have to play the guessing game of how the Giants are going to handle his workload and wildness in general. I’m going to assume that he’s ready to throw 80-90 pitches, and with that, he certainly has the highest upside on this slate. He also has the always present risk of walking too many batters and getting into early trouble. In theory, this matchup looks great, as the Nationals are not a patient offense, but as always, it’s more of Blake Snell against himself. He gets no extra credit in my grade book for having had good luck with a fluky low BABIP and high left-on-base percentage.
To me, the 4.06 SIERA is who he is. A guy who will sometimes strike out everyone and be the DFS slate winner and will sometimes walk everyone and be the DFS chalk loser. Until he shows me that he is someone else, that’s how I’m personally looking at him. That means he falls into the old Robbie Ray rule – fade when he’s chalk, play when he’s not. My early morning hunch is that he’s the chalk, so there you have it. He’s absolutely in the pool, but I’m not going out of my way to get over the field on expensive chalk in his first start of the season. What I’ll say here is that I’m more likely to use him in lineups where I have an off the board stack, but I’m going to try and avoid him in chalkier lineups, such as Arizona stacks.
Luis Castillo has struggled out of the gate with 8 runs allowed in 11 innings. Under the hood, I see a flukish .242 BABIP and 18.2% HR/FB rate, but also a low swinging strike rate and still not quite his usual velocity. The velocity is close enough to last season, along with the same pitch mix, that I’m not concerned there. The control is fine, and the pitch count is good. Basically, I think he’s the same pitcher as ever who just had a couple of starts where things didn’t go his way. Toronto doesn’t strike out a lot, but everything else makes this a plus matchup, most notably his ground ball ability to righties against a team that doesn’t hit the ball in the air. If early morning projections hold, he should come in way under the radar, which sounds fantastic to me. In a vacuum, I would say Snell is the better play, but if Castillo is going to be the sneaky play, that’s where I’m going.
It’s incredible that Charlie Morton is still plugging along at this level. The dude is 40 years old and still striking out MLB batters at an above-average clip. His control slipped considerably last season, and he’s now basically just average in batted balls, but come on, he’s 40! The way I see this is that Morton is very likely to be good, very unlikely to be amazing in this matchup, and he costs $10,000 on both sites. I just can’t quite get there at this salary to make him a primary play.
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