Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Monday 5/12

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-05-12 15:37:16 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! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend filled with whatever makes a weekend wonderful for you. I’m still all kinds of emotional, so you’ll have to bear with me as I ease back into life. I’m sure I’m not the only one around here who is watching kids grow up and graduate over the coming weeks, so whoever you are, I hope you’re able to soak in every moment!

Back on the diamond, we have slightly different slates between the two sites. On DK, we start at the usual 7:10 PM ET, while FD is adding 2 additional games to start at 6:40 PM ET. The MLB weather looks likely to cooperate, so we can mostly just look at the slate as is and then wait for those MLB starting lineups to start rolling in.

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Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

We’ve got a mediocre pitching slate, with just three pitchers priced above $8,500 on DK. We add a couple more options to the top group on FD, but overall, things taper off pretty quickly.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Paul Skenes at Mets – 24.7% K, 6.3% BB, 2.77 ERA, 3.35 SIERA
• Michael King vs. Angels – 27% K, 7.9% BB, 2.22 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
• Tyler Mahle vs. Rockies – 19.3% K, 9% BB, 1.48 ERA, 4.40 SIERA
• Cristopher Sanchez vs. Cardinals (FD) – 28% K, 8.9% BB, 2.89 ERA, 3.12 SIERA
• Matthew Liberatore vs. Phillies (FD) – 23.8% K, 3.8% BB, 3.07 ERA, 3.24 SIERA

8 starts into the season, and I think we just need to say that Paul Skenes is simply not going to be the same ace he was last season. He is still an absolute superstar in real life and a very good DFS pitcher — he’s just not the can’t-miss, upside pitcher from his rookie season. His salary is also not quite as extreme, but he’s still the most expensive pitcher on both sites. He still has slate-winning upside, and he’s as matchup-proof as they come, so I’m perfectly happy playing him in any lineup on any site in any format, but he’s not a necessity for me tonight.

Michael King has a higher strikeout rate than Skenes, and he has a higher-strikeout matchup. He’s not immune to some ups and downs either, but I simply just think King is the better play tonight. It’s close, and if the projected ownership were to flip heavily towards King, then maybe Skenes becomes the better tournament option, but for a starting point, King is my SP1 on both sites. I really don’t think we’re going to see a big ownership gap between the top three pitchers on DK or the top four on FD, so King it is.

Tyler Mahle is today’s winner of the ‘who gets to face the Rockies’ sweepstakes. This is just going to be an everyday thing, especially when the Rockies are on the road. Any pitcher can dominate this nonsense lineup, but I will tell you that there is no matchup where I can get on board with playing Mahle ahead of King or Skenes at a similar salary. Mahle’s 1.48 ERA is obviously a lucky fluke, but he also deserves plenty of credit for limiting hard contact, and he can probably beat his 4.40 SIERA. But still, this is a guy who has been mostly a below-average strikeout pitcher, and he is falling off recently, with a goofy 3 strikeouts in his last 16 innings. I get it if you want to play him — he’s facing the Rockies and he’s been good in real life. I can only tell you what I’m doing, and I am not going to have him in at least my first 20 or so lineups. If I MME, sure, he’s in the pool, but he’s a huge tier below King and Skenes for me.

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