Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, May 20th
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! The new week kicks off with an 8-game slate featuring a lot of strong pitching. Be sure to note the earlier-than-usual start time of 6:40 PM ET. That will also move Crunch Time up a bit earlier than usual, so tune in at 5:50 PM ET to catch any of my final thoughts on this slate and as we talk through what we’re having for dinner tonight! But first, baseball…and lunch!
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
It is a crowded top tier, with 8 pitchers priced above $8,000 on DK. There are a few notable pricing differences between the sites, but starting with that DK pricing, this is what the top end looks like:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Diamondbacks – 27.5% K, 5.2% BB, 3.21 ERA, 3.03 SIERA
Sonny Gray vs. Orioles – 31.9% K, 4.8% BB, 3.05 ERA, 2.58 SIERA
Pablo Lopez at Nationals – 28.7% K, 4% BB, 3.93 ERA, 2.85 SIERA
Logan Gilbert at Yankees – 27.4% K, 8.1% BB, 3.07 ERA, 3.42 SIERA
Tanner Houck at Rays – 24.3% K, 4.7% BB, 2.17 ERA, 2.94 SIERA
Framber Valdez vs. Angels – 21.2% K, 7.5% BB, 2.95 ERA, 3.06 SIERA
Marcus Stroman vs. Mariners – 19.9% K, 11.8% BB, 3.33 ERA, 4.47 SIERA
Taj Bradley vs. Red Sox – 29.5% K, 6.8% BB, 2.45 ERA, 3.10 SIERA
This is a solid group of pitchers, in varying levels of matchups.
The first thing I’m going to say is that Marcus Stroman really doesn’t belong here. He’s still a pretty good real-life pitcher, and sure, there’s upside in the matchup, but he’s just too far behind these other pitchers in skill set for me to be willing to include him in the primary pool. I will say that the FD salary ($7,900) is eye-opening, so we’ll need to compare him to the cheaper tier before fully writing him off there, but on DK, he’s an X button for me.
I love Logan Gilbert, and he’s the kind of guy who can succeed in any matchup, but at this point, I don’t want to pick on the Yankees unless I really have to. Because Gilbert does not have a standout skill set on this slate, it’s just not necessary outside of MME.
With those two out of the way, let’s jump back up to the top and look at the spend-up aces.
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