Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, May 6th
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! I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. I am now the parent of a kid who has graduated from college, so that’s a bit weird. But, even better, I’m the parent of a kid who graduated from college but thinks a graduation ceremony is a silly idea. So instead of sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 7 hours, I went to a music festival and saw one of my favorite bands while enjoying some fine fried food options! Glorious.
As we move into the new week, we have the return of a couple good pitchers, adding some intrigue to this 6-game slate. I end up finding some very obvious favorite plays on both sides of the ledger, with a fairly small primary pool on both sides as well. This means I’ll be keeping a closer eye on projected ownership throughout the day, but I’m hopeful we get things spread around enough that I can just play my favorites.
Hey, this is me coming to you from the future – I just wanted to say that I just finished the article, and for maybe the first time ever, spell check returned zero suggestions. It didn’t say I was perfect, but it was implied. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be spelling and grammar errors in here, but it does mean they will be 100% the fault of my editor, who clearly must have gone in behind me and added some errors, just to make me look human. Again, Happy Monday!
Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a very interesting pitching slate with the returns of Walker Buehler and Justin Steele, who join a few other pitchers in the top tier. I’ll break this down into these two groups based on DK pricing:
TOP-TIER PITCHING
Luis Castillo at Twins – 28.7% K, 4.7% BB, 3.46 ERA, 2.97 SIERA
Cole Ragans vs. Brewers – 28.9% K, 8.2% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.25 SIERA
Yu Darvish at Cubs – 21% K, 8.4% BB, 3.45 ERA, 4.18 SIERA
Walker Buehler vs. Marlins – season debut
Justin Steele vs. Padres – 1st start back off IL
TIER-TWO SAVINGS
Sean Manaea at Cardinals – 23.4% K, 14.1% BB, 3.07 ERA, 4.71 SIERA
Kyle Gibson vs. Mets – 19.1% K, 9.2% BB, 3.79 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
Andrew Heaney at A’s – 20.8% K, 7.2% BB, 5.10 ERA, 4.20 SIERA
Simeon Woods Richardson vs. Mariners – 20.6% K, 6.3% BB, 2.45 ERA, 4.09 SIERA
WHO IS THE ACE?
Both Luis Castillo and Cole Ragans are up near 29% strikeouts this season, and both have decent, but not quite perfect, matchups. Behind them we have a lesser-skilled ace in Yu Darvish facing the return of Justin Steele on a good pitching day at Wrigley Field, followed by the return of Walker Buehler in an ideal matchup.
Let me start by looking into the returns for Buehler and Steele.
If Walker Buehler were facing anyone other the Marlins, I’d be completely out for this first start. It’s not that I don’t think he can be good right away; I just have all kinds of questions about how the Dodgers will handle his innings. He threw 86 pitches in a rehab start on April 24th, followed by 75 pitches last Tuesday, so he’s fairly well stretched out, but he also topped out at 5 innings in his minor league appearances. Even if he had no restrictions, we also have to have some question about a guy who hasn’t made a start in the majors since 2022.
On top of that, he was a bit more of a ‘good-in-real-life pitcher’ rather than a DFS ace to begin with. Now we add in a fine, but not great, 24% K rate in 19 Triple-A innings and a price tag that is in the same realm as aces like Castillo and Ragans. Unless we get any kind of official word throughout the day about a pitch count, I’m going to expect that we see something in the 80-pitch range, likely with a 5-inning type of cap, barring incredible efficiency. Personally, that just doesn’t get him into my pool on this slate. I don’t think it’s wrong to play him, and I do expect him to pitch well, but there is too much ceiling with other aces that he is just a random MME leftover for me.
Justin Steele threw just 63 pitches in his rehab start, and he has a much lower-strikeout matchup than Buehler. This is an easy X button for me, and officially, I would have zero shares of Steele in a build of 150 lineups.
So, that brings me to the true aces on this slate, Luis Castillo and Cole Ragans.
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