Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, June 24th
CheeseIsGood, 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. 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 good-looking 9-game slate starting at 7:10 PM ET. We have clear tiers on the pitching side with some high-strikeout aces and then a big enough group of top offenses that we should see fairly spread-out ownership. Let’s dive right in and see what we find.
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We start with three of the highest strikeout pitchers in the league, in varying degrees of matchups, with a fourth real-life ace joining them in the top salary tier:
TOP-TIER QUARTET
Cole Ragans vs. Marlins – 28.9% K, 8% BB, 3.13 ERA, 3.30 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Rangers – 31% K, 8.5% BB, 4.06 ERA, 3.17 SIERA
Garrett Crochet vs. Dodgers – 35.2% K, 5.7% BB, 3.25 ERA, 2.43 SIERA
Tanner Houck vs. Blue Jays – 24.2% K, 4.4% BB, 2.14 ERA, 3.04 SIERA
We have four pitchers priced up above $9,500 on DK and ranging from $9,800-$11,000 on FD. It looks a little funny to see Tanner Houck up with these guys, but he’s earned it with his outstanding season. The matchups lines up well for him to have yet another great real-life outing, but there is a clear lack of a best-case scenario ceiling compared to these other three. Houck is absolutely in the MME pool, but for me, he’s 4th place here, which leaves him out of the primary builds.
Any of the three high-strikeout aces can spike a big game at any time in any matchup, but because Cole Ragans is facing the Marlins, he is going to be my first preference. The strikeouts in this matchup are just average, but this is far and away the lowest power team in the league against lefties and also dead last in wOBA and wRC+. Adding in the consistently high pitch count from Ragans, while they are all very close, he gets my SP1 distinction.
I’m going to guess that Ragans is also the most popular of these aces due to that matchup, with Freddy Peralta coming in next. Peralta has a lower strikeout matchup, with only one Texas batter above 22% K, but this is also a good matchup in the power department. Texas has fallen all the way to 29th in the league in ISO against righties, making this a plus matchup even without a lot of strikeouts. The issue for me is the lack of consistency and efficiency for Peralta. He has topped 6 innings just once in 15 starts this season, and even with that 31% K rate, he has only topped 8 strikeouts twice while the control comes and goes. I like him, and he has ceiling potential, but for me, he is a full step below Ragans.
The most interesting case is…
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
