Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, September 16th
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! After a glorious weekend of football, we join the winless, last-place Ravens in looking at a 9-game MLB slate to kick off the week.
The first few days this week are going to be mostly about deciding what to do with the league’s top offense in Coors Field. The Arizona Diamondbacks continue piling up runs at a mind-boggling rate and now get to travel to the best hitting ballpark to face the league’s worst pitching staff. Thankfully, their salaries have been raised to a point where it’s not an automatic plug-and-play and will leave us with some decisions to make on the offensive side. We also have a big group of top-tier pitchers, with a few standouts based on matchups.
It’s always nice when the MLB weather forecast cooperates, so let’s dive into the slate and see what we find.
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Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a large group of good pitchers, but the matchup and salaries will help be able to sort through them fairly easily.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Paul Skenes at Cardinals – 32.3% K, 6.6% BB, 2.10 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
Yoshinobu Yamamoto at Braves – 29.1% K, 5.4% BB, 2.77 ERA, 3.02 SIERA
Shota Imanaga vs. A’s – 24.8% K, 3.9% BB, 3.03 ERA, 3.56 SIERA
Seth Lugo vs. Tigers – 21.7% K, 5.8% BB, 2.94 ERA, 3.93 SIERA
Ranger Suarez at Brewers – 23.7% K, 5.8% BB, 3.05 ERA, 3.49 SIERA
Sean Manaea vs. Nationals – 25.6% K, 9% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.96 SIERA
Reid Detmers vs. White Sox – 27.2% K, 9.6% BB, 5.64 ERA, 3.82 SIERA
Max Fried vs. Dodgers – 22.6% K, 8% BB, 3.46 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Spencer Arrighetti at Padres – 27.4% K, 10.6% BB, 4.72 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
Yu Darvish vs. Astros – 23.6% K, 6.5% BB, 3.52 ERA, 3.88 SIERA
You can always play the spread-it-out game and play all these guys, but I’m going to quickly remove several of them from the primary pool.
Yu Darvish, Spencer Arrighetti, Max Fried, and Ranger Suarez do not have skill sets or salaries that stand out enough to overcome their tougher matchups. If I was going to play one of those four, it would be Suarez, but there are just better options in the same salary range, so I’m gladly cutting these four from the pool.
The first trick of this slate is that the two best pitchers are the two who may have pitch count concerns. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is making his second start off the IL and threw just 59 pitches and 4 innings in his first start back. He was electric, striking out 8 batters in those 4 innings, but that kind of upside is never the likely case. I would assume the Dodgers bring him along slowly, maybe getting up to 70-75 pitches, but for me, that’s just not enough to get him into the primary pool on this strong pitcher slate.
Paul Skenes is even tougher to figure with the pitch count. After the Pirates said they were going to start limiting him, they sort of did for a couple of weeks but then went right back to giving him 98-100 pitches in his last 2 starts. When I look at his last month, it looks to me like he is on more of an innings limit than a pitch count limit. They have let him finish every inning he’s started, going either 5 or 6 innings in his last 6 starts. Assuming he continues to pitch well, I think we will continue to see either 5 or 6 innings, depending on where his pitch count lands after the 5th inning. On FD, he’s priced out of the pool for me, while on DK, he’s in the primary pool, but not someone I will go out of my way to get if the salary is not there.
I think this is going to be a common thought, but I’m going to have more…
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