Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Saturday 4/12

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-04-12 21:28:12 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks. Cheese, one of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy sports and 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.

Happy Saturday! We have another day with games spread out all over the place, and I’ll touch on the two bigger slates. Both sites have a 5-game slate at 4:05pm ET, and then for the evening, we have a slightly different start time with 6:40pm ET on DK and 7:10pm ET on FD.

It looks like we should be clear with the weather, as the only real concern is earlier than these main slates, so we can just sit back and wait for the MLB starting lineups to roll in.

A housekeeping note to start – I am writing this super duper early in the day (like more obscenely early than usual) because we apparently have a wedding shower at our house this morning, and even more exciting than that, it is a “Bunco Brunch-o” (what?), where I guess I will get to roll some dice and have a bunch of people yelling while drinking my coffee? Anyhoo, what that means is that if there are any changes to this slate, I will be back to update things well before the early slate and again before the evening slate. Also, if you have a toaster or something you don’t want, wrap it up and bring it on over.

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Saturday Afternoon Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

Other than maybe putting Sandy Alcantara and Drew Rasmussen into their own grouping up top, we don’t really have tiers today, so I’m just going to look at everyone together.

• Sandy Alcantara vs. Nationals – 2 starts since 2023
• Drew Rasmussen vs. Braves – 28.5% K, 4.6% BB, 2.33 ERA, 2.70 SIERA
• Bowden Francis at Orioles – 22.5% K, 5.9% BB, 3.29 ERA, 3.90 SIERA
• AJ Smith-Shawver at Rays – 22.6% K, 12.9% BB, 3.46 ERA, 4.50 SIERA
• David Peterson at A’s – 20.3% K, 9.7% BB, 2.87 ERA, 4.37 SIERA
• Richard Fitts at White Sox – 32 IP – 12.6% K, 8% BB
• Martin Perez vs. Red Sox – 18.9% K, 8.5% BB, 4.21 ERA, 4.57 SIERA
• Trevor Williams at Marlins – 22.3% K, 6.6% BB, 2.47 ERA, 3.92 SIERA
• Tomoyuki Sugano vs. Blue Jays – 3rd career start
• JT Ginn vs. Mets – 34 career IP

The best pitchers here are Sandy Alcantara and Drew Rasmussen. We are still in a bit of guessing mode with Alcantara after just 2 starts back from his year-long absence and then missing his last start on the paternity list. While he threw 91 pitches in his opening start, he has yet to top 5 innings this season, and while he looks pretty good, we don’t know yet if this is the 23-34% K pitcher from 2021-2022 or just the 20% K pitcher from 2023. Either way, the ground balls should be there, and I’m expecting the control to be good, though again, we can’t say for sure until we get some more sample size. The matchup is decent overall but not great for strikeouts. Plus, he likely sees 6 lefties, against whom he has never been much of a strikeout pitcher. It is quite possible that the Nationals are without CJ Abrams today, which helps a little, but they still have plenty of lower-strikeout lefties. All this added together makes me think, sure, I guess he’s sort of the SP1 by default, but I am not going out of my way to pay up for this if it isn’t an easy fit.

I think Drew Rasmussen is a better pitcher than Alcantara at this moment, but he hasn’t reached 80 pitches yet this season, and while the control remains outstanding, the strikeouts haven’t been there yet. He’s still sitting below last season’s velocity, so for now, I’m assuming what we’ve seen so far is what we’re getting. That is something like 5-6 innings with maybe a strikeout per inning and great control. That leaves him with a lack of upside, and everyone has some downside risk as a strike thrower against Atlanta. He has a big enough discount from Alcantara that I lean toward Rasmussen as my starting point, but I’m not crazy about either of them.

David Peterson early on looks like the same wild card as he’s been in the past. Sometimes he pops off for a big strikeout game, but his control is all over the place, as we’ve seen from 8 walks in a couple of starts this season. As the most expensive pitcher on FD and just $200 less than Rasmussen on DK, I have very little interest.

I want to like AJ Smith-Shawver, but this guy has now made 8 MLB starts, and he has a 20.4% K rate with 11.4% walks. He couldn’t even get to 5 innings against Miami, and he’s still $8,000 or more on both sites. I just can’t get there until he shows us something at the major league level.

Bowden Francis is probably something like an average pitcher, but one who gets all his upside against righties. He is now down to a career 17.1% K rate against lefties vs. 29.2% to righties. The Orioles likely use 6 lefties against him with a heap of power. I’d play him ahead of Smith-Shawver, but we’re not getting much of a discount here either. Yuck.

We finally start to see a useful discount when we get down to Richard Fitts. He had a scary low 10.6% K rate in his 4 starts last season and is so far just at 15.4% in 2 starts this year. He was simply an average strikeout pitcher at Triple-A, so this is almost certainly a low K pitcher, but I would also say that he’s almost certainly better than the small sample from last season. The best things going for him today are the matchup and the pitch count. While we have a bunch of guys hanging around 80-ish pitches, Fitts threw 102 pitches last week, giving him his second quality start of the season. If he’s ever going to get a couple extra strikeouts, this is the spot for it, and while the White Sox have proved not to be a pushover, this is still a lineup worth attacking. I don’t love this, and I don’t trust him, but this is a slate where I really want to find a reason to play cheaper pitching. We’ll see what we find next, but right now, he’s in the primary pool on DK. On FD, he’s priced too closely to Rasmussen to be any more than a leftover.

Martin Perez is back to doing things like the old Martin Perez. He has allowed just 1 run in 12 innings while even managing a magical 9 strikeouts in his first start of the season. I don’t believe the strikeouts for a second, but I do believe that he’s still a guy with the ability to keep hitters off balance and have some BABIP-aided quality starts like we’ve seen so far. There is all kinds of downside here as well, but Boston is a much better matchup for left-handed pitchers, and just like with Fitts, this slate is one where I just want to save salary and hope to survive at pitcher. The FD salary is goofy, and I’m not playing him there, but I think I’m going to play him ahead of Fitts on DK. May I please say again… yuck.

If I’m playing Richard Fitts and Martin Perez, you better believe I’m playing Trevor Williams in Miami. Somehow, Williams still seems to have the reputation of being a bad pitcher, but we’ve now got a 15-start, 76-inning sample size since last season that says he’s average at worst, if not better than average. His control has been great, and he’s right around the league average in strikeouts to both sides of the plate. Longer term, he’s much weaker against lefties, and I still think it’s most likely he returns to that. Even if he suddenly reverts to the old Williams, it’s not likely that he gets shredded by this Marlins lineup. There is very limited power upside and a good pitching ballpark, and he’s $7,100 on FD and $6,800 on DK. It seems absurd to say this, but 2024-2025 Trevor Williams is better pitcher than the last time we saw Sandy Alcantara for a full season. No matter whom you play on this slate, you have some downside risk with a lack of obvious upside. I’m on the side of saving the salary, and Williams is going to be my highest-owned pitcher on DK. If I haven’t said it yet… yuck!

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