Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Monday, September 9th
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 enjoyed the first weekend of the NFL more than I did! Watching Deshaun Watson try to throw a football helped prepare me for looking at Nick Nastrini and Kyle Hendricks trying to throw baseballs.
We have a 6-game slate to open the week, and it’s a slate that lacks excitement on both sides of the ledger. We are going to end up with some mediocre pitching chalk based on the lack of depth. At first glance, I see a couple of top offenses and some high-end spend-ups, but for the most part, this could be a spread-it-out slate and play a bit of everyone kind of night.
At the time I’m writing this on Monday morning, it is not yet confirmed that Nick Nastrini and Chris Bassitt are starting for their respective teams tonight, but if something changes, we’ll update it later, and always have the final word on everything on Crunch Time.
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Monday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This is not a strong or deep pitching slate, but I do end up having a pretty easy time narrowing down to a primary pool. I’ll sort into two buckets using $8,000 on DK as the cutoff between tiers. It’s also possible that the reason I chose $8,000 as the cutoff is so that we get Five Guys (!!) in the top tier.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Carlos Rodon vs. Royals – 26.7% K, 7.6% BB, 4.19 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Chris Bassitt vs. Mets – 22.7% K, 8.6% BB, 4.30 ERA, 4.19 SIERA
David Festa vs. Angels – 29.1% K, 6.5% BB, 4.75 ERA, 3.26 SIERA
Brady Singer at Yankees – 22.6% K, 6.5% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.80 SIERA
Brayan Bello vs. Orioles – 22% K, 8.6% BB, 4.75 ERA, 4.04 SIERA
It seems weird to say, but David Festa might be the best pitcher on this slate. I say ‘might’ because he’s only 47 innings into his career, and his ERA is still elevated from a rough first 2 starts. But since those first two outings, we’ve seen 37 innings with a 32.9% K rate, 3.13 ERA, and 3.01 SIERA. This was a 35% K% pitcher at Triple-A, so the upside is real. The thing holding him back from DFS ace-dom has been innings, but we have seen 88 and 90 pitches in his last 2 starts, and as long as we’re getting 85+, I’m comfortable buying in on this skill set. The only pitcher who might be better than him in this top tier is Carlos Rodon, who we’ll look at next, but Rodon has the tougher matchup. The Angels are the weakest offense that any of these top pitchers face, and he should see 5-6 high-strikeout batters in the lineup. Festa is my SP1.
Carlos Rodon had his best start of the season last week with an 11-K gem against the Rangers. He also has a much longer track record than Festa and a higher pitch count. The difference here is the matchup, as Rodon faces a Royals team with a lot of low-strikeout bats and power. Rodon can dominate any team when he’s at his best, and he gets a little extra upside added in from his 100+ pitch count. I have him as my SP2, but I certainly wouldn’t argue with you if he was your SP1.
Chris Bassitt is also right there in this same mix with Festa and Rodon, and all three of them are basically the same salary on DK.
Like Rodon, Bassitt has a tougher matchup than Festa but also a longer track record and a higher pitch count. Bassitt remains very splitsy. He has closer to ace-level stuff against righties but downside against lefties. He is likely to see four lefties but also a few righties who are good enough to cause him some damage. It’s all very close, but Bassitt is in third place for me.
Because the salaries are all so close, I’m knocking…
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