Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Saturday, March 30th
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! For the bulk of the season, you’re going to be joined here by Justin VanZuiden on weekends, but for the first couple weeks, you’re stuck with me.
We’ve got a boatload of games spread out all over the place today, and slightly different slates between the sites. Both sites have the same main evening 6-game slate starting at 7:05pm ET, while the early slate is bigger on DK and starts at 1:40pm ET. I’ll sort through everything as best as I can, and include my thoughts for the afternoon 4:05pm slate on FD as well. It’s as if AJ Puk was in charge of setting slates today, and he screwed it all up!
Saturday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We’ve got a solid pitching slate where there is not much separation between the top 9 or so options:
- Aaron Nola vs. Braves – 25.5% K, 5.7% BB, 4.46 ERA, 3.75 SIERA
- Tanner Bibee at A’s – 24.1% K, 7.7% BB, 2.98 ERA, 4.19 SIERA
- Joe Ryan at Royals – 29.3% K, 5.1% BB, 4.51 ERA, 3.44 SIERA
- Max Fried at Phillies – 25.7% K, 5.8% BB, 2.55 ERA, 3.38 SIERA
- Hunter Greene vs. Nationals – 30.5% K, 9.6% BB, 4.82 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
- Kenta Maeda at White Sox – 27.3% K, 6.5% BB, 4.23 ERA, 3.76 SIERA
- Seth Lugo vs. Twins – 23.2% K, 6% BB, 3.57 ERA, 3.97 SIERA
- Grayson Rodriguez vs. Angels – 25.1% K, 8.2% BB, 4.35 ERA, 4.01 SIERA
- Griffin Canning at Orioles – 25.9% K, 6.7% BB, 4.32 ERA, 3.80 SIERA
Well, all of these pitchers are pretty close in skill set based on 2023 numbers. Even if I think that Aaron Nola jumps back up to his 2021-2022 numbers, which might make him the best pitcher on this slate, he’s also the only pitcher on this slate facing the Braves. That’s all I need to know to knock him down into deep MME only territory.
The two guys here who jump out as upside with risk options are Hunter Greene and Joe Ryan. Both of these guys can strike out a ton of batters, but both come with a lot of power issues. The way I see it is that everyone has risk in their first start of the year, so give me the guys with the upside and I’ll just hope for the best. When adding in the control, Joe Ryan jumps up well ahead of Greene on my board. Neither of them have ideal strikeout matchups, but when they are on, they can strike out anybody. Everything here is close, but I’m going with Ryan as my SP1.
In playing the matchup game, Tanner Bibee, Kenta Maeda and Grayson Rodriguez are the next arms to join the party. Bibee’s ERA was fluky good last season, but there is a lot to like here, and he’s facing the A’s in Oakland. The A’s projected lineup is filled with strikeouts, with 7 batters at 25% or higher. That’s enough to get Bibee up to my #2 spot behind Ryan, and realistically, Bibee is the better cash game option due to the matchup.
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