Million Dollar Musings: Saturday, April 1
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 Saturday! For the majority of this season, the one and only Justin Van Zuiden, Mr. STLCardinals84 himself will be with you on Saturdays and Sundays to walk you through the slate and help you with those MLB DFS picks. However, as he is an accountant in real life, he always claims to be ‘super busy’ the first couple weeks of April, so you’re stuck with me through the middle of the month. I don’t know, but it sounds made up, I think he is just up to shenanigans.
We’re back to a bigger slate after yesterday’s 5-gamer, and we’re also back to a little more excitement at the top of the pitching board. Both FD and DK are running their main slate with the 12 games starting at 2:10pm ET, so that’s what we’ll be digging into. With the early start, let’s just jump right into it.
Saturday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The pitching is strong up top with strikeout aces, and pretty deep beyond that, where I could make some sort of case for at least 15 starters on this slate. The dividing lines are somewhat vague, but I’ll put them into these three buckets:
The Five Aces
Spencer Strider at Nationals – 38.3% K, 8.5% BB, 2.67 ERA, 2.41 SIERA
Brandon Woodruff at Cubs – 30.6% K, 6.8% BB, 3.05 ERA, 3.03 SIERA
Kevin Gausman at Cardinals – 28.3% K, 3.9% BB, 3.35 ERA, 2.94 SIERA
Nick Lodolo vs Pirates – 29.7% K, 8.8% BB, 3.66 ERA, 3.29 SIERA
Zack Wheeler at Rangers – 26.9% K, 5.6% BB, 2.82 ERA, 3.19 SIERA
Matchup Based or Ace-Like Potential or Cheap Enough
Zach Eflin vs Tigers – 20.8% K, 4.8% BB, 4.04 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Patrick Sandoval at A’s – 23.7% K, 9.4% BB, 2.91 ERA, 3.94 SIERA
Chris Sale vs Orioles – Chris Sale is back? Seems like an April Fool’s
Edward Cabrera vs Mets – 25.8% K, 11.3% BB, 3.01 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
Tylor Megill at Marlins – 25.5% K, 6.5% BB, 5.13 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
Sonny Gray at Royals – 24% K, 7.4% BB, 3.08 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
Justin Steele vs Brewers – 24.6% K, 9.8% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.81 SIERA
Nathan Eovaldi vs Phillies – 22.4% K, 4.3% BB, 3.87 ERA, 3.55 SIERA
Jose Urquidy vs White Sox – 19.7% K, 5.6% BB. 3.94 ERA, 4.18 SIERA
Jack Flaherty – used to be Jack Flaherty
Lucas Giolito at Astros – 25.4% K, 8.7% BB, 4.90 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
Clarke Schmidt vs Giants – 23.7% K, 9.7% BB, 3.12 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
Shintaro Fujinami vs Angels
That’s A No For Me Dawg
Spencer Turnbull, Alex Cobb, Josiah Gray, Jordan Lyles, Rich Hill, Dean Kremer
WHICH ACE IS THE ACE
Strider, Woodruff, Lodolo, Gausman, Wheeler
We have just 131 innings of sample size on Spencer Strider, but Holy Toledo are they 131 great innings. He was far and away the highest strikeout pitcher in the league with a massive 38.3% K rate, and had just three starts out of 20 where he allowed more than three runs. He gets to start this season against one of the weakest lineups in the league. On top of just being other worldly with the strikeouts, he improved his walk rate in the second half down to 6.6%. Even at 9%, he’s my SP1, any improvement and it’s just unfair. I am fully on board here, and he’s my clear SP1 in all formats on all sites. With that being said, let’s again re-iterate what I’ve been saying the first couple days of the season. For this first time through the rotation, we have no way of knowing who is going to be on, who is going to be limited, who is going to struggle. Therefore, I will continue to be more spread out than I would be if we were in mid-season dealing with current stats.
