Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, May 13th
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 an unusually large Monday night slate of 12 games that give us a jumbled mess of everything. There are a few high-end pitchers, but it quickly becomes a tangle of pitchers who are just good enough to not love bats against them but not good enough to want to roster them. This is leaving me with an extremely spread-out pool on the hitting side, while I will try to get to a narrower pitching pool so that I’m not just throwing darts at everything.
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
There are 10 pitchers priced above $8,000 on DK, though a couple of them are not going to make my pool, even for MME.
One important note is that it originally looked like Yoshinobu Yamamoto was pitching for the Dodgers, but now Gavin Stone is listed as the starter. If we end up going back to Yamamoto, he moves into the top spot on the board. But for now, I’m starting with the assumption that it will be Stone.
TOP-TIER PITCHERS
Shota Imanaga at Braves – 26.9% K, 3.1% BB, 1.08 ERA, 3.08 SIERA
Reynaldo Lopez vs. Cubs – 25.5% K, 9.9% BB, 1.53 ERA, 3.86 SIERA
George Kirby vs. Royals – 25.6% K, 2.8% BB, 4.15 ERA, 3.19 SIERA
Brady Singer at Mariners – 25.1% K, 8.2% BB, 2.36 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
Mitch Keller vs. Brewers – 21% K, 7.6% BB, 4.41 ERA, 4.03 SIERA
Kutter Crawford vs. Rays – 24.3% K, 7.9% BB, 1.75 ERA, 3.86 SIERA
Zach Eflin vs. Red Sox – 19.5% K, 2% BB, 3.75 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Tanner Bibee at Rangers – 25.3% K, 7.5% BB, 4.91 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
Shota Imanaga is ‘probably’ not the best pitcher of all time, but through 7 MLB starts, I wouldn’t argue with him if he told me that he was. The dude has allowed 5 runs in 42 innings, with a 43:5 K:BB ratio. There is no way that he maintains a .239 BABIP or 5.6% HR/FB rate, but it looks entirely possible that there is a real skill in limiting hard contact. It will be interesting to see what happens when teams start getting a second look at him, but for tonight, this is another first look against the Braves. I want to say I’m scared of the matchup, but there is nothing in this skill set to suggest that matchup matters. The fear is with his 49% fly-ball rate against a team with a lot of power, but maybe the fear should be more on the Braves side facing, you know, the best pitcher of all time. My hunch in looking at this is that, yet again, Imanaga is not going to be chalk, and it’s possible he’s not even one of the more popular pitchers. If this was a pitcher looking 50% projected ownership, I’d say let’s fade a guy who is due some batted-ball regression against the Braves. But at this point, I’m not expecting him to be popular, and I’m calling him my SP1 on both sites.
Reynaldo Lopez has been very good in real life, but the walks and SIERA show that this is not the same situation as Imanaga. Lopez is the most expensive pitcher on DK and the 2nd-most expensive on FD, and I just can’t get behind that. I will never yell at you for playing a guy with a 25.5% K rate and a 1.53 ERA, but for me, he’s just getting the X button. There are better pitchers and better matchups at lower salaries.
Want to read more? Sign up for Premium!
