Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Monday 8/17

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Aug 17, 2026

Last Updated 2026-08-17 16:01:53 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 muse about the August 17, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Monday! The next 3 days are going to be tough to navigate with the Dodgers traveling to Coors Field. Fortunately, they are priced up accordingly, and there are quite a few other top-tier offenses with clear upside on this slate. Even with their recent struggles, it’s going to be a scary fade, but my initial thought is that I don’t love full Dodgers stacks at these salaries.

Also be sure to note that the FD slate is starting early at 6:40 PM ET. That early start adds just one more game, but it’s a very important game, as it adds the top pitcher on the slate to the FD side.

On the pitching side, particularly on DK, this is a very sketchy slate that leaves us with pitchers that I would generally define as bad chalk being at the top of the board on DK. Yippee! Let’s dive in and see what happens.

Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

The sites are completely different with the addition of Cristopher Sanchez on FD, but even there, the big decision point will come down to what to do with Snelly Chalk.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Cristopher Sanchez vs. Marlins (FD) – 28% K, 5.4% BB, 2.54 ERA, 2.81 SIERA
• Nolan McLean vs. Padres – 28% K, 8.8% BB, 3.42 ERA, 3.49 SIERA
• Blake Snell at Rockies – 2nd start off IL
• Shota Imanaga vs. White Sox – 23.5% K, 5.2% BB, 3.74 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
• Michael Wacha vs. A’s – 19.1% K, 6.7% BB, 3.46 ERA, 4.38 SIERA

On FD, the slate is very different thanks to the one early game that adds Cristopher Sanchez to the pool. Sanchez is the clear best pitcher on this slate by a huge margin, but that is reflected in salary, which is $1,600 more than the next highest-priced pitcher. Matchup doesn’t matter at all for Sanchez’s real-life effectiveness, but it can matter a little for his strikeouts. Those strikeouts are the thing that stops Sanchez from being an absolute must-play at this elevated salary. He does have the occasional ceiling game, but generally, he’s more about consistency and easy innings from his control and ground balls. In 5 of his last 6 starts, he’s been at 6-7 strikeouts, and I’d have to say that’s the most likely outcome here as well. If he has another one of those very good real-life quality starts, you won’t be buried for not having him at $11,100. He is still the very clear SP1, and at no point would I fade him if I had the salary, but he’s not an all-in type pitcher for me.

The big mystery and decision point on both sites is Blake Snell in Coors Field. There are multiple factors that make this one of the plays with the widest range of outcomes that you’ll ever see. First, it’s Blake Snell, and he’s always a mystery. Second, this is just his 3rd start of the season and 2nd start since a lengthy IL stay. Third, it’s Coors Field. Ideally, this would be a spot to simply apply the Robbie Ray Rule, but the problem there is that it’s such a small and weak pitching slate that I’m not sure we have enough reasonable pivots to fully fade him even if that is technically the best course of action.

It’s tempting to say he’s the clear SP1 on DK after he looked full strength and struck out 10 batters in his return from the IL. His velocity was at full strength, and he showed that his strikeout upside is as real as ever. The thing is, that has never meant anything with him. He always has huge games, sometimes several in a row, and then it all just randomly falls apart for no reason. The Rockies’ weak lineup against lefties offsets the Coors Field factor for me, so this is really just about whether or not we want a ‘who in the world knows what we get’ pitcher at high ownership. I desperately want to be able to fade this, but I’m just not sure there are two other pitchers I want to play, and there certainly aren’t two other pitchers with his upside.

Let’s move on and see what else we find, but I think the most realistic best answer is to play…

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