Million Dollar Musings: Monday, August 14
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first-place prize in DFS, 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 open the new week with a strong pitching slate and a chalk offense, with Arizona in Coors Field. There are always plenty of pivots and no guarantees in baseball, but it’s going to be tough to make a strong case to fade that Diamondbacks offense against Chris Flexen. But we’ll start on the pitching side, where we find strong MLB DFS picks in various price ranges, making for some difficult decisions.
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
I’ll sort the tiers by pricing, with these Five Guys (mmm!) topping the charts:
Max Scherzer vs. Angels – 27.4% K, 6.9% BB, 3.88 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Tyler Glasnow at Giants – 34.5% K, 7.9% BB, 3.15 ERA, 2.99 SIERA
Max Fried vs. Yankees – 25.9% K, 4.9% BB, 2.50 ERA, 3.07 SIERA
Logan Gilbert at Royals – 25.1% K, 4.4% BB, 3.66 ERA, 3.66 SIERA
Yu Darvish vs. Orioles – 24.9% K, 8% BB, 4.19 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
Max Scherzer is basically back to something like Max Scherzer, pitching at least 6 innings in five straight starts, three of them with 7 innings. He also has between 6-9 strikeouts in 10 consecutive starts, so while we’re not seeing quite the elite level of the past, this is a consistent pitcher that I’m quite happy with in any DFS lineup at any time. But, at this level, he also doesn’t have much realistic upside for the salary. I’m perfectly content playing him anywhere the salary is just sitting around, but it’s not a priority.
However, with all that being said, he’s no Tyler Glasnow. But, let’s immediately throw another ‘however’ into the mix with Glasnow missing his last start due to back spasms. It doesn’t sound to me like a big deal, and I am not concerned about his effectiveness, but it does cast a little doubt on his pitch count. He had been getting a steady 95-ish pitches, which is plenty for him to pile up 6-7 innings with 8-9 strikeouts. That has been his normal level, which at full health, puts him a skosh ahead of Scherzer. My lean is here is that Glasnow is probably ‘close enough’ to full strength to still call him the SP1, but when I factor in a slightly better strikeout matchup for Scherzer based on the projected lineups, along with the question mark on Glasnow, I am still going with Scherzer as my SP1.
I know that was all a bit wishy-washy, because that’s how I feel about it. Scherzer and Glasnow are both great and playable in any lineup in any format, with neither being absolute necessities.
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