Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Saturday, June 8th
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 Saturday! Your usual Saturday compatriot is out on a much-needed vacation this week, so you’ll be stuck with me today and tomorrow.
The main slate today is a 10-game mid-afternoon fiesta. I’ll pop back in later and take a brief peek at the later 4-game slate as well, but we’ll focus on this primary slate with the 4:05pm ET start time.
Saturday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
TOP TIER PITCHING
Freddy Peralta at Tigers – 32.7% K, 7.7% BB, 3.74 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
Kevin Gausman at A’s – 22.7% K, 5.8% BB, 4.60 ERA, 3.65 SIERA
Luis Castillo at Royals – 25.3% K, 6.9% BB, 3.88 ERA, 3.59 SIERA
Brayan Bello at White Sox – 21.5% K, 7.9% BB, 4.36 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Charlie Morton at Nationals – 24.9% K, 10.7% BB, 3.88 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
Kyle Bradish at Rays – 32% K, 11.2% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.25 SIERA
Taj Bradley vs. Orioles – 28.6% K, 8% BB, 5.81 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
MacKenzie Gore vs. Braves – 27.3% K, 7.7% BB, 3.57 ERA, 3.41 SIERA
Ben Brown at Reds – 29.6% K, 8.7% BB, 3.33 ERA, 3.18 SIERA
On DK, every single one of these pitchers is between $8,100 – $10,000, while on FD, there is just a slightly bigger gap with Freddy Peralta up at $10,500 and Taj Bradley down at $7,800. But for the most part, salary is not really a huge issue with pitchers today. With the old caveat that it’s baseball, and any random thing can happen on any given day, things look pretty clear cut to me.
Freddy Peralta is the best pitcher on this slate, and he has one of the best matchups of these top-tier pitchers. He’s always likely to allow a home run or two, but he has a long leash, a high-strikeout ceiling, and good control. I don’t see any reason to overthink Peralta as the SP1.
That leaves Luis Castillo as the spend-up-to-be-different pivot. Castillo is an awesome real-life pitcher with plenty of DFS upside, but he’s not as much of a strikeout pitcher as Peralta, and he has a tougher matchup. This is just a deep MME flier for me.
Where this slate does get a little tricky is with the strong matchups for Kevin Gausman and Brayan Bello. Neither of these guys have great numbers this season, and at least Gausman is likely to be very chalky due to the matchup. The strikeouts have been very inconsistent, and while it’s possible they spike in this matchup, I’m not banking on it. This is more of a safety play with his likelihood of a quality start. I would call him the SP2 if you have no concerns about ownership, but I’m much more willing to fade Gausman chalk than I am to fade Peralta chalk. Let’s see what pivots we find before determining how heavily to lean on Gausman.
Brayan Bello is similar to Gausman in that he is really not getting any consistent strikeouts, but he has a steady leash and a great matchup. He is up over 55% ground balls to both sides of the plate, which makes up for the middling strikeout numbers. I prefer Gausman, but I feel similarly that we have a good shot at a quality start here, although the realistic upside is questionable.
If you want to chase upside, the Kyle Bradish – Taj Bradley matchup looks like the first stop. Bradish had a disaster start against this Rays team in his last outing, but he had looked fantastic in his 5 starts prior to that. I don’t see any cause for concern- he simply ran into a wildly fluky .700 BABIP despite 60% ground balls in one outlier bad start. But I’ll also say that his 32% K rate is almost certainly an outlier, and he looks more to me like the same 25% K pitcher that we saw last season. Even if we use the combined 2023-2024 data, he’s still a better pitcher than either Gausman or Bello, and the matchup really isn’t all that far off. He is in a good pitchers park facing an offense with only two batters below a 23% K rate and only two batters above a .165 ISO. I think I am going to play Bradish ahead of Gausman.
While Bradish got knocked around against Tampa, it’s no match for what happened to Taj Bradley against the Orioles in his last start. He allowed a scary 9 runs in 3 innings, which included a less fluky 4 home runs. It was also his second straight start with 3 walks, so there are some questions marks here. What’s not a question mark is his strikeout upside, but for me, this matchup is so much tougher than every other pitcher we’ve looked at so far that he is out of my primary pool.
Two weeks ago, MacKenzie Gore had a 10-K gem against this Braves lineup. Before getting shelled by the Mets this past week, Gore had gone 11 starts without allowing more than 3 ER. His numbers are strong across the board, and he’s playable in any matchup. However, despite the great outing last time in this matchup and the Braves not being what they once were, this is still a team without a lot of strikeouts against lefties and still with four middle-of-the-lineup bats above a .200 ISO against lefties on the season. Gore is no higher than 6th on my list, which makes him just an MME flier.
I just can’t get there with Charlie Morton on this slate. He still has strikeout ability and a long leash, but this control is just too shaky. He is at no discount from more trustable pitchers, and the matchup is good but not as good as several others in this tier. He’s playable like Gore but just nowhere near my primary pool.
Ben Brown has good overall numbers, but it’s still just one start where he looked like an actual ace-level SP. The matchup does come with a lot of strikeouts, and I would say it’s completely viable to put him in the same bucket as Taj Bradley and MacKenzie Gore. We’re just chasing potential upside on a slate where there are a lot of similarly priced options in better matchups. It’s all fine for dart throwing or spreading out your MME exposure, but none of these guys hit my primary pool.
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