Million Dollar Musings, Part I - Pitchers: Friday, April 14
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first place prize in DFS, 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.
Sometimes life gives you ice cream, and sometimes life gives you the Twins scoring more runs in the first inning than the Cardinals, Blue Jays, Brewers and Padres combined score in their entire games. Baseball really is a glorious sport in its own bizarre little way.
We are back to it with a busy, pitcher-less 12-game slate. There are exactly zero good pitching options tonight, and yet somehow, there are really not any great hitting spots either. I don’t know how the world managed to make this happen, but here we are.
I’ll start on the pitching side, and then will be back with another article shortly to look through the bats. MLB DFS picks are going to be tough to come by tonight, so buckle up!
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
Well, I guess we’ll call this the pitching pool for tonight. Yippee!
Call It A Top Tier If You Must
Kodai Senga at A’s
Nestor Cortes vs. Twins
Drew Rasmussen at Blue Jays
Luis Garcia vs. Rangers
Michael Wacha vs. Brewers
Charlie Morton at Royals
A Reasonable Day For Random Nonsense
Marco Gonzales vs. Rockies
Eric Lauer at Padres
Cal Quantrill at Nationals
Austin Gomber at Mariners
Tyler Wells at White Sox
Brady Singer vs. Braves
Jose Berrios vs. Rays
The Non-Top Top Tier
Kodai Senga has to be considered the ace of this slate after a solid start to the season and a trip to Oakland. However, this not a thrilling SP1 or a thrilling way to spend over $10k on both sites. It’s great that he’s only allowed one run in each of his first two starts, but I can’t stop seeing three walks in each start with a max of 90 pitches or a .208 BABIP. We still have no idea at all where this guy is going to land as an MLB pitcher, so I don’t love him as expensive chalk even in a good matchup. If we can trust the small sample numbers, his ground balls look to strong against righties, which combined with the high strikeouts and low walks in the Oakland lineup are enough to put him at the top of my list. But I really hope I can find some other things to like so I don’t have to go overboard with an unknown like this. Let’s see what we find next.
The Twins scored 1,000 runs in two innings yesterday, but that does not stop Nestor Cortes from checking in as my SP2 at first glance. Like Senga, Cortes has been held to around 90 pitches in his first two starts and I don’t see any huge ceiling potential here from innings or from his 23.7% K rate to righties. But on this nonsense slate, his skill set does stand out when adding in his strong control. The Twins are a scarier lineup against lefties, with four straight batters over a .220 ISO and plenty of low strikeout bats. All that keeps Cortes behind Senga for me tonight, although it’s pretty close to a toss-up.
