Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Monday 7/27

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-07-27 15:58:57 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 July 27, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Monday! We are kicking off the week with what looks like a very interesting slate. FD and DK have different start times, with FD adding 4 additional games and starting a little earlier (6:40 PM ET), which makes the slate extremely different on both the pitching and hitting sides. Essentially, my SP1 and my top two offenses come from those 4 early games, so everything about lineups will be wildly different between the sites. Let’s dive in and see what we find.

Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We have an extremely interesting pitching slate. There is one clear ace on DK and two on FD, and then we start running into a slate where the salary savers look about as good as the other spend-up options. I’ll break the tiers up using $8,000 on DK as the dividing line, but as we’ll discuss, the real tiers are Burns/Wheeler and then everyone else.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Chase Burns vs. Guardians – 28.6% K, 9% BB, 2.42 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
• Zack Wheeler at Marlins (FD) – 30.8% K, 5.8% BB, 2.16 ERA, 2.92 SIERA
• Payton Tolle at A’s – 26.2% K, 7.1% BB, 3.31 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
• Max Fried at White Sox – 22.3% K, 7.8% BB, 2.97 ERA, 3.97 SIERA
• Zac Thornton vs. Braves – 19.5% K, 6.9% BB, 1.93 ERA, 4.40 SIERA
• Walbert Urena vs. Astros – 22% K, 12.4% BB, 2.78 ERA, 4.55 SIERA
• Kyle Bradish at Tigers (FD) – 23.1% K, 10.7% BB, 3.49 ERA, 4.29 SIERA

The first thing to note is the difference between FD and DK. We have just one spend-up ace on DK, with Chase Burns all the way up at $11,300 and no one else above $8,800. On FD, we add a second ace to the board, Zack Wheeler, while the secondary aces are not as cheap.

With Chase Burns on DK, my initial thought here is just like five days ago when we had a slate where Burns was the lone ace. He’s very clearly the SP1 for raw points and ceiling, without any question. But I would also say this is not really an $11,300 pitcher. He has not topped 25 DK points in any of his last 9 starts, and while his usual range of 18-25 is great, that is not something that you can’t possibly live without for $11,300. The matchup with Cleveland is also one where a ceiling game seems unlikely, given their low-strikeout lineup, with only 2 batters above a 23% K rate against RHP this season. My lean is that is a slate to just play cheaper pitchers, but that will depend on what we find with the bats. If I don’t need the salary for my hitters, then sure, I’ll play Burns, but this is not a “force him in at all costs” kind of play.

On FD, Zack Wheeler also has a lower-strikeout matchup, but he’s a more consistent, trustable ace, and he’s been in top form recently, with a silly 43 strikeouts in his last 4 starts. I’m not sure that we have to prioritize an $11,100 pitcher on FD either, but if spending up, it’s Wheeler over Burns for me.

Just two pitchers into the slate and we are already at the point where I’m ready to play the salary game. On DK…

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