Million Dollar Musings: Monday, August 7
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’ve got a pitching-heavy 8-game slate headlined by Spencer Strider, Gerrit Cole, and Freddy Peralta. This would be a very easy slate to build in a no-salary-cap world, but as we’ve learned from our friend Dean7849586747298585705404, we very much live in a world with a salary cap, so choices will have to be made.
I’ll walk you through all my favorite MLB DFS picks, but I’ll give you the synopsis first, which is that I am prioritizing pitching and going value-hunting with bats. That is going to make it tough to fit in an obvious top offense like Atlanta. Everyone should see the same general outline of this slate, but even with that, there are enough different ways to go about it to make this a very interesting start to the week.
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We’ve got a very clear top tier and what we could almost call three individual top options that each make up their own tier:
The Ace, The Next Ace, And The Next Ace
Spencer Strider at Pirates – 39.3% K, 7.2% BB, 3.61 ERA, 2.57 SIERA
Gerrit Cole at White Sox – 27.5% K, 6.7% BB, 2.64 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Rockies – 28.3% K, 9.% BB, 4.46 ERA, 3.85 SIERA
It’s Spencer Strider Day, which means play Spencer Strider. I just want to reiterate what I said the last couple times he’s been on a good pitching slate at this type of salary – as elite as Strider is, he is not actually likely to be the best points-per-dollar pitcher at this price. He may not even be the top raw points pitcher with this many other good options, although his elite strikeouts give him the highest realistic floor and ceiling. You’re paying for some level of ‘certainty’ and endless upside in a world where certainty and upside basically don’t exist. He has 9+ strikeouts in seven straight starts, which is completely nuts and makes him a ‘Don’t Overthink It’ if there is any way to fit him in.
However, this is a slate where we could build a case to fade Strider, given that there are more great options below him like Gerrit Cole and Freddy Peralta.
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