Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Saturday 9/12

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Sep 12, 2026

Last Updated 2026-09-12 14:19:50 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 today. 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 muse about the September 12, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Saturday! We’ve got an early start on DK with a 9-game main slate that begins at 1:10pm ET. FD is starting a few hours later with a 6-game slate at 4:05pm ET, and 5 of the FD games are on the DK slate as well, while there is a straggler, with the HOU/TBR game just being a part of the FD slate. I’m going to talk mostly about this from the DK perspective with the extra games, but will note the FD differences in the Cliff Notes.

Saturday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We’ve got one clear top ace, and then everything on this slate is bunched up enough that I am just going to list everyone in the same tier:

• Tyler Glasnow at Marlins – 32% K, 7.8% BB, 3.12 ERA, 3.02 SIERA
• Gerrit Cole vs. Mets – 24.9% K, 4.9% BB, 3.41 ERA, 3.57 SIERA
• Paul Skenes at Cubs – 28.3% K, 7% BB, 3.83 ERA, 3.33 SIERA
• Ian Seymour vs. Astros (FD) – 28.8% K, 6.8% BB, 4.33 ERA, 3.18 SIERA
• Michael King at Giants – 21% K, 9.6% BB, 3.00 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
• Walbert Urena at Nationals – 22.5% K, 11.8% BB, 2.74 ERA, 4.36 SIERA
• Clay Holmes vs. Pirates – 18.6% K, 8.6% BB, 2.83 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
• Ranger Suarez vs. Royals – 22.5% K, 7.4% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
• Kyle Bradish at Blue Jays – 21.5% K, 10.4% BB, 3.91 ERA, 4.45 SIERA
• Andrew Alvarez vs. Angels – 22.7% K, 10.7% BB, 3.60 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
• Connor Prielipp vs. Guardians – 24.8% K, 8.6% BB, 5.25 ERA, 3.83 SIERA
• Andrew Sears vs. Rockies – 12 career IP

We haven’t seen nearly as much of Tyler Glasnow this season, but his strikeout ability has remained steady throughout his career, and he’s right back up over 30% again this year. He got up to 96 pitches in his third start off the IL, so there are no pitch count concerns, and we add a good matchup and ballpark on top of his superior skill set. He should see 5 high-strikeout bats in the lineup against him, giving him a much better matchup than any of the other spend-up pitchers on this slate. He’s in a tier of his own, and a “Don’t Overthink It” anywhere you have the salary.

I’m out on Paul Skenes today, and I would be even if we didn’t have great hitting weather in Wrigley Field. He’s clearly just not right, and this is a tough matchup without much discount.

Gerrit Cole would be the other spend-up pitcher in my MME pool on DK today. He’s $1,200 cheaper than Glasnow, and that salary might matter. However, he’s really not particularly close to Glasnow in realistic strikeout ceiling, and he has always had some power risk with all his fly balls. He’s also got a lower-strikeout matchup, and we haven’t seen much in the way of upside recently. With all that, he’s a huge step below Glasnow, and I think we can find some cheaper pitchers who are similar enough that he misses my primary lineups today.

On FD, we also add Ian Seymour to the mix, where his skill set this season puts him ahead of Cole and Skenes. He doesn’t have their track record, and he’s been pretty shaky over the past month, but the overall skills are still eye-opening. If Seymour were on the DK slate, I might be considering him, but on FD, he’s just not close enough to Glasnow to make it into the primary pool.

Given that Michael King and Walbert Urena don’t have standout skill sets to begin with, I’m moving them down the list with them both being over $8,000 on DK and over $9,000 on FD. It is certainly viable to play Michael King in San Francisco, as he continues to put up strong real-life numbers despite a simply average skill set. It’s a good matchup in a good ballpark; I just don’t see him as an $8,500 pitcher even though the ERA says otherwise.

I’m also out on the low strikeouts of Clay Holmes in the Wrigley wind game against a Pirates team with a lot of power. Kyle Bradish is another easy cut for me with his dwindling strikeouts against the low-strikeout Blue Jays.

That brings me to a couple of cheaper pitchers who are likely to be the more popular SP2s on this slate: Ranger Suarez and Andrew Alvarez.

Ranger Suarez looked real-life elite in his last start, with 7 scoreless innings against the Orioles. That was very nice to see, as it looked closer to the old Suarez with his ability to pile up ground balls and soft contact. However, the strikeouts continue to be nonexistent, with an obscenely low 12.5% K rate over his last 7 starts. He hasn’t topped 4 strikeouts in a game since July 26th, and he hasn’t even seen his usual ground-ball ability over that span, sitting at just 46%. Perhaps that last start was a sign that he is going to at least get his ground balls and efficiency back even if the strikeouts remain low, but he doesn’t have the same kind of upside that he used to. This matchup plays into his hands for limiting power, but it doesn’t help at all with the upside. My lean here is that he is more likely to post a quality start than anyone on this slate after the top two pitchers, but he’s also very unlikely to put up any kind of score that you can’t win without. With the state of this slate overall, I think a boring quality start for $7,600 on DK or $8,600 on FD is completely fine. I like him far more on DK.

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