Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Sunday, April 7th
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 Sunday! Well folks, we made it a little over a week before we ran into something as wonky as Jack Flaherty chalk day. What a strange time to be alive! The pitching is pretty dicey, which should be obvious from the phrase ‘Jack Flaherty chalk day.’ That means the offense is pretty spread out as well. I’ll sort through all this as best as I can, while also getting to the point quick enough to have this out early for a 1:35pm ET start time.
Not only are the pitchers tough to decipher, the weather is also giving us some question marks. Both the LAD/CHC and CLE/MIN games open at Orange, and I am mostly ignoring these games today. Even if they play, it is poor hitting weather and decent pitching, but not quite the pitching that would be great for DFS.
Sunday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
I’m going to start with a sizeable top tier, but don’t worry- we don’t have to play all these guys.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Chris Sale vs. Diamondbacks – 29.4% K, 6.8% BB, 4.30 ERA, 3.50 SIERA
Jack Flaherty vs. A’s – 22.8% K, 10.2% BB, 4.99 ERA, 4.53 SIERA
Garrett Crochet at Royals – 16K in first two starts
Triston McKenzie at Twins – 19 IP since 2022
Bailey Ober vs. Guardians – 25.3% K, 5% BB, 3.43 ERA, 3.87 SIERA
Shota Imanaga vs. Dodgers – 2nd career start
Cristopher Sanchez at Nationals – 24.2% K, 4% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.33 SIERA
MacKenzie Gore vs. Phillies – 24% K, 8% BB, 5.06 ERA, 3.84 SIERA
Sean Manaea at Reds – 25.7% K, 8.4% BB, 4.44 ERA, 3.83 SIERA
Andrew Abbott vs. Mets – 26.1% K, 9.6% BB, 3.87 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
Kyle Gibson vs. Marlins – 19.5% K, 6.8% BB, 4.73 ERA, 4.40 SIERA
Dean Kremer at Pirates – 21.4% K, 7.5% BB, 4.12 ERA, 4.44 SIERA
Gavin Stone at Cubs – 5 career starts
Yikes and Yuck! Just a quick glance at this slate and it easy to see that Jack Flaherty is going to be mega chalk. Everything about that gives me the heebie jeebies. First of all, I completely agree that is the best option on this slate given the matchup and how well he pitched in his opening start. But this is still a guy who has been a flat-out bad pitcher since 2021. Of course, he was very good prior to that and can be given a lot of grace on the recent seasons due to injuries. But I’m also not ready to just assume he’s suddenly all the way back to 2021 Jack Flaherty because of one good start. I desperately want to give you a good reason to fade chalky Flaherty, but this matchup is just too good to find a real reason. Even in Flaherty’s down season last year, he was still pretty good against righties, and Oakland is likely to give him 5 high-strikeout righties as well as some high-strikeout lefties to face.
Officially, all I can say is that Flaherty is the very obvious top play and the very obvious chalk. Personally, I just have this nagging doubt that is going to cause me to be a little under the field here, and I just hope I can find two pitchers who outscore him.
Now the problem with a Flaherty fade becomes trying to find something else to play.
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