Million Dollar Musings: Sunday, June 4
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first-place prize in DFS, 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! Cards is making his way home from vacation, so you’re stuck with me to close out this weekend. We have a very interesting 10-game slate with a lot to like on both sides of the ledger. We find pitchers to like in all different pricing tiers, and enough obvious offense that it can’t all end up chalky. Let’s jump right in and sort through some of these MLB DFS picks for this Sunday afternoon.
Sunday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This is a very interesting pitching slate we have today. There are three pitchers up over 29% strikeouts in tougher matchups, and then some pitchers with horrendous surface numbers in outstanding matchups at enticing salaries. I start with these two buckets:
Things You Can Spend On
Sandy Alcantara vs. A’s – 20.5% K, 8.5% BB, 4.93 ERA, 4.53 SIERA
Joe Ryan vs. Guardians – 29.1% K, 5% BB, 2.77 ERA, 3.27 SIERA
Nathan Eovaldi vs. Mariners – 24.6% K, 4.9% BB, 2.42 ERA, 3.50 SIERA
Kodai Senga vs. Blue Jays – 29.8% K, 13.2% BB, 3.44 ERA, 4.12 SIERA
Michael Kopech vs. Tigers – 26.7% K, 11.8% BB, 4.52 ERA, 4.35 SIERA
Taj Bradley at Red Sox – 34.4% K, 4.1% BB, 3.60 ERA, 2.66 SIERA
Bryce Miller at Rangers – 23% K, 2.2% BB, 3.00 ERA, 3.86 SIERA
Triston McKenzie at Twins – Season Debut
Things You Can Save On
J.P. France vs. Angels – 22.2% K, 6.8% BB, 4.00 ERA, 4.08 SIERA
Ranger Suarez at Nationals – 21% K, 8.6% BB, 7.13 ERA, 4.11 SIERA
Brady Singer vs. Rockies – 19.5% K, 9.2% BB, 7.12 ERA, 4.72 SIERA
Matchup vs. Skills vs. Who Knows!
Taj Bradley leads the slate with a 34.4% strikeout rate and excellent control. With no other information, if we just took his first six MLB starts at face value, he’d be the ace of this slate. But the other information is that he has not topped 90 pitches in any start, he has not reached six innings in any start, and he’s facing a tough opponent in Boston. I do see enough strikeouts in the back half of this lineup that he is still very much on my board for MME, but he is not going to be a priority.
The other two pitchers today with 29%+ strikeouts are Joe Ryan and Kodai Senga.
Joe Ryan is always going to be I my pool as well, but this is an even lower strikeout matchup than what Bradley has, and he should face at least five lefties, where his strikeouts are just a pretty good 24%. Cleveland’s lack of power and Ryan’s longer leash do put him ahead of Bradley on my list.
Kodai Senga is the first of several Who Knows! After laughably terrible control all season, he pitched a gem with nine strikeouts and no walks in his last outing. That now makes two out of 10 career starts where he’s been below three walks, while six of his 10 starts have come with at least seven strikeouts. At this point, I’m assuming the strikeouts are real, but I have no clue about the control. While the control has been a little better against righties, that is also where the strikeouts are lower, which all leaves him as a kind of OK maybe in MME for me today. If salary were no issue, I would definitely play Ryan ahead of him, but with his discount, I guess I’d say Senga is the better points per dollar option.
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