Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Monday 7/21

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-07-21 16:11:06 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. 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 upcoming MLB DFS slate.

Happy Monday! We kick off the new week with a 10-game slate that looks pretty tricky at first glance. The pricing and matchups are going to lead to some chalk on the pitching side, and then we have a strange Coors Field game that may or may not end up with enough ownership to matter. My initial reaction to this slate is to go with a very spread-out approach with offense while being under the field on Coors, and to find ways to get away from sketchy chalk on the pitching side. But it’s also possible that everything ends up getting spread around enough that ownership doesn’t need to influence our decisions all that much. I’ll be keeping a closer eye than usual on the projected ownership in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ, to see what happens throughout the day.

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Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

There are some very clear pricing tiers, with 5 pitchers priced between $9,000-$10,000 on DK, and then just another two pitchers above $8,000 before we get into the salary savers. That leaves me with just two tiers to look at tonight:

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Carlos Rodon at Blue Jays – 28.2% K, 8.6% BB, 3.08 ERA, 3.47 SIERA
• Brandon Woodruff at Mariners – 3rd start of season
• Kodai Senga vs. Angels – 23.8% K, 10.6% BB, 1.39 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
• George Kirby vs. Brewers – 25.2% K, 5.4% BB, 4.50 ERA, 3.38 SIERA
• Shane Baz vs. White Sox – 23.4% K, 8.7% BB, 4.17 ERA, 3.93 SIERA
• Kevin Gausman vs. Yankees – 23.1% K, 7.5% BB, 4.19 ERA, 4.01 SIERA
• Noah Cameron at Cubs – 21.1% K, 8% BB, 2.31 ERA, 4.15 SIERA

The first thing I’m going to do is cross Kodai Senga off my list. You’re certainly allowed to play him against a high-strikeout opponent; I just don’t trust his workload at all. He threw 67 pitches and 4 innings in his return from the IL, and I’m not sure that having 10 days between starts helps him any more than it hurts him.

I will next say that Carlos Rodon looks like an easy pass for primary lineups, unless you’re just playing the ownership game. It is certainly interesting to have potentially the best pitcher on this slate at perhaps single-digit ownership, but that’s the case for a reason. Toronto is the lowest strikeout team in the league and then will likely get fully right-handed against Rodon. I’m still leaving Rodon in my MME pool, as he still has a high ceiling in any matchup, but I’m not going out of my way to pay $10,000 against Toronto.

In glancing at the salaries at matchups, I would guess that the chalk is some combination of Brandon Woodruff, Shane Baz, and George Kirby. This makes sense, and I like all three, but I’m also not completely sold that these three pitchers are good enough to be heavy chalk, so I do want to keep an eye on projected ownership throughout the day. My hunch is that Woodruff and Baz pick up even more steam as the day moves along. This is for DK, as the pricing will switch the chalk to Baz and maybe Kirby on FD.

Brandon Woodruff has been incredible in his first 2 starts coming off the IL. He has a remarkable 18 strikeouts in 10 innings without a single walk. His pitch count went from 70 to 81, so while I think he will still have a cap on his pitch count, it’s not at a concerning level. My best guess is he’ll get something like 85 pitches, which is plenty if he keeps pitching like this. I just want to throw a little note of caution here that there is nothing in the underlying metrics to suggest he’ll continue at this level. His velocity is way down from pre-injury levels, his Stuff+ is way down, and his swinging strikes are at the same level that they were when we last saw him in 2023. He has been very steady between 29-31% K rate his entire career, so for now, I’ll just assume that’s the most likely landing point here. But I am also concerned enough about the velocity to say that those first 2 starts could end up being complete fluke. On top of that, his minor league rehab starts show just a 21.7% K rate in 7 starts at Triple-A. It’s a decent matchup in a good ballpark, so if we get the old Woodruff, he’d be my top pitcher on this slate. But I will tell you that I am currently thinking this might be the place to exercise some caution and let the field overplay those first two big starts. On FD, I’m completely out on Woodruff at $10,800.

Woodruff’s opponent, George Kirby has never had the same strikeout upside as Woodruff, and he’s not been as sharp this season. But unlike Woodruff, Kirby is at the exact same velocity as ever, right at his career swinging-strike rate, and with a higher pitch count ceiling. While he’s a low-strikeout pitcher in general, he has ramped up his strikeouts to 28.3% against righties this season, while hanging around average against lefties. The Brewers are a low-strikeout lineup but should also have 5 righties and only a couple lefties of any real consequence. For me, the lack of power in the Brewers lineup combined with Kirby’s strong control is enough for me to call Kirby my top pitcher on the board, if we assume that Woodruff and Baz are the chalk.

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