Million Dollar Musings, Part I - Pitchers: Friday, April 21
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.
Happy Friday! We’ve got a big 12-game slate on tap tonight with a whole bunch of everything. We have high-end pitching, high-end offense, and even some weather tossed into the mix. Be sure to keep an eye on The Roth Report and join us for Crunch Time before making any final decisions with the games in Cleveland and Minnesota.
I’ll get the pitching side of things posted early, and then I’ll be back around lunchtime with a look at some MLB DFS picks on the hitting side. Mmmm, lunch!
Friday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a strong pitching pool tonight, although the matchups are lopsided enough to draw some lines. I’ll start with an 8-pitcher top tier and then a bunch of maybes beyond that. This is how it looks:
TOP TIER PITCHERS
Shohei Ohtani vs. Royals – 33.2% K, 7.7% BB, 2.17 ERA, 2.88 SIERA
Aaron Nola vs. Rockies – 28.2% K, 3.9% BB, 3.50 ERA, 2.96 SIERA
Jon Gray vs. A’s – 25.5% K, 7.8% BB, 3.88 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Freddy Peralta vs. Red Sox – 26.9% K, 8.7% BB, 3.51 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Zac Gallen vs. Padres – 27.2% K, 6.4% BB, 2.64 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
George Kirby vs. Cardinals – 23.7% K, 3.8% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.42 SIERA
Tyler Mahle vs. Nationals – 25.4% K, 8.5% BB, 4.37 ERA, 3.83 SIERA
Domingo German vs. Blue Jays – 21.7% K, 6.8% BB, 3.65 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
Let me start with a couple quick notes of things that might jump out at you if you start looking through game logs.
Both Shohei Ohtani and Jon Gray had very short previous outings, but neither are causes for concern. Ohtani pitched two innings before being hit with a long rain delay, so there is nothing at all to worry about with him. Jon Gray was hit by something a little harder than rain, a baseball, but his 2-inning start was due to that comebacker and not any real injury or performance issue. Since he is on the mound tonight, I’m assuming he’s a full go.
The other more interesting item of note is the huge start from the questionable morals of the Yankees’ Domingo German. He had a career-best start with 11 strikeouts last week, which was almost certainly in no small part helped by the foreign substances found on his hand multiple times. We can’t know for sure what he was doing or how it affected things, but officially, I am not buying into the huge strikeouts we’ve seen early this season. Maybe, just maybe, he can continue to do it, either with umpire-aided nonsense or some real jump in skills, but I am not planning on that.
