Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Sunday 3/30

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-03-30 14:23:04 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. 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 give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate.

Happy Sunday! Well, it took just three days into the season to find a new mystery to untangle. The Yankees hit themselves 9 home runs yesterday, which at first just seemed like one of those random baseball outliers. There was a strong wind blowing out at Yankee Stadium, so maybe that’s it. Of course, if it was just the wind, then the Brewers would have also been in on that party, which they were not. It could also be a mixture of Nestor Cortes and the Brewers pitchers being off, or it could be that Aaron Judge and his friends are just good. Or some combination of all that. However, now all the swirling rumors are that the Yankees have developed some new bat that is within the rules but moved the wood and weight around to new areas. At this moment, I have no idea if any of this is true, relevant, or to what extent this is going to change anything long term. I am certain that we are going to find out sooner than later, and it will all be cleared up one way or another. For now, all I can say is that it is reasonable if you want to load up on Yankees stacks just in case there is something to this. But for me, I’m just going about business as usual and assuming that yesterday was an outlier, except in the case of Mr. Judge, who will probably hit 3 home runs every day.

OK, on with baseball. We have a 10-game slate on both sites that starts at 1:35pm ET. We have a pretty good mix of pitchers and offenses that leads to another spread it out kind of day to open the season. With the early start, we should start to see lineups rolling in soon on our MLB starting lineups page, so let’s dive right into it!

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Sunday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

Being the 3rd-4th game of the season for these teams, I expected to see another steep drop-off in pitcher quality again today, but that is not the case. We have a solid group of aces to sort through, and as we’ve seen so far, the pricing on both sites is bunched up enough that there isn’t any need to go dumpster diving. No one is priced above $10,200 on FD or $9,200 on DK.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Jacob deGrom vs. Red Sox – 40 IP since 2022
• Aaron Nola at Nationals – 24% K, 6.1% BB, 3.57 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
• Robbie Ray at Reds – 33.3% K, 11.6% BB, 4.70 ERA, 3.51 SIERA
• Taj Bradley vs. Rockies – 26.6% K, 8.1% BB, 4.11 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
• Tanner Bibee at Royals – 26.3% K, 6.2% BB, 3.47 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
• Bailey Ober at Cardinals – 26.9% K, 6.1% BB, 3.98 ERA, 3.56 SIERA
• Chris Bassitt vs. Orioles – 22.2% K, 9.2% BB, 4.16 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
• Michael Wacha vs. Guardians – 21.2% K, 6.6% BB, 3.35 ERA, 4.17 SIERA

The biggest question here is whether or not Jacob deGrom is healthy and how stretched out he is. If we are getting anything remotely close to a full-strength deGrom, then finding the SP1 is the simplest task of the year: deGrom is on another level than all these other aces, with 7 straight seasons above 31% strikeouts and elite control to go along with it. But he has managed just 9 starts and 40 innings the past two season, and hasn’t made more than 15 starts in a year since 2019. Simply put, he is not going to last. But for DFS, we only need him to last one day, and that day is today. He threw 57 pitches in a spring game on March 19th and then up to 70 pitches in his last start five days ago. As far as pitch count goes, that is enough, and he could get up toward 80 today if all goes well. However, there were reports that he is not happy with his mechanics, and he managed a very not-so-deGrom-like 21.1% K rate in his three Spring Training starts. This all leaves us with a ton of guesswork, and I can’t pretend to know what version of deGrom we see today. For me, I’m confident enough in his ability that I am calling him the SP1, but this is nowhere near the lock button it would be if we knew he was full strength. My initial lean is to say I would use him in something like 50% of DK lineups and 30%-ish on FD, but let’s see what we find with these other pitchers and then reevaluate.

With matchup factored in, Taj Bradley looks like the clear next choice. This Rockies team is going to be a matchup to target all year on the road. The lineup has an absurd number of strikeouts, with 8 of the 9 projected batters above 24% last season against righties. That is some true nonsense. If an average pitcher like Zack Littell can strike out 7 of these jabronis, then a strikeout pitcher like Bradley has quite a ceiling here even if he only sees 5-6 innings. I don’t expect the Rays to push anyone deep in their first start, but we just don’t need that much, and I would say I like him every bit as much as deGrom today. No, let me restate that: I like him better than deGrom today.

Now things start to get a little wild and crazy with our old pal Robbie Ray. We haven’t seen much of him since 2022, but Robbie went full Ray is in his 7 starts last season. If you’re unfamiliar with what that means, he is a pitcher with massive strikeout ability but also wonky control and HR issues. This makes him one of the most unpredictable pitchers in the league, and you may be able to guess who the famed Robbie Ray Rule was named for. If you’re new to the Musings and don’t know the Robbie Ray Rule, it is “fade him when he’s chalky and play him when he’s not.” You can’t guess which version of Ray is going to show up on any given day, and he is not matchup dependent. It’s Ray vs. himself. While I say he’s not matchup dependent because of all the fly balls, he is still going to be a bit more susceptible to a good shellacking in a ballpark like Cincinnati, but those fly balls only matter if someone hits them. I expect deGrom and Bradley to pick up the vast majority of the ownership, but it is possible that Ray comes in next. If that is the case, then he is not popular or unpopular enough to base the decision solely on ownership. What I’ll say is that while I think Ray gets plenty of ownership in large-field MME contests, I don’t think he is going to see much in smaller-field stuff. The Reds may pummel him, but there are also a lot of strikeouts here, and he did have a 32% K rate in spring. I don’t feel great about it, but I’m in on Ray unless we see any unexpected steam heading his way in terms of ownership. I’m just going to give a hot take that he outscores deGrom today and build lineups accordingly.

You are seeing my thoughts on the slate evolve in real time, which is what we do here in the Musings. I opened the slate assuming I would play deGrom/Bradley and move along with my day. It’s more gut feeling that anything, and I’m not trying to talk you into it, but now I think I want to be in more on Robbie Ray and let the field overplay deGrom, while I just hope that maybe he’s not ready to go yet. Officially, I am not saying that’s likely; I’m just telling you what I’m thinking. Maybe I just didn’t get enough sleep.

We also have Aaron Nola to toss into this discussion. The issue here is three straight seasons of declining numbers from Nola, slipping from 29% K in 2022 to 25.5% in 2023, then all the way down to 24% K last season. Now, if we didn’t know the old Aaron Nola, there is nothing to sneeze at with his 2024 numbers. This is still a very good pitcher, plus it’s quite possible he can turn things back around, as he’s still just 31 years old. My best guess is that he lands somewhere in that 24-25% K range with continued excellent control, which would make him mostly matchup and salary dependent for DFS purposes. On this slate, he has a middle-of-the-road matchup against a Washington team with only a couple high strikeout bats in the lineup. I’m fine with Nola, and I would expect a decent performance, but given that he’s on the higher end of the salary spectrum, I don’t think I’m going to use much of him. I prefer deGrom, Bradley, and Ray.

Tanner Bibee is back after being scratched from his first scheduled start with an illness. In general, I think Bibee is a slightly better version of Aaron Nola (but more or less the same guy). Today’s matchup is tough enough that it just leaves him in the MME bucket.

Bailey Ober has almost identical strikeout and walk numbers as Bibee, but he leans heavily toward fly balls, making him more dependent on HR/FB. The Cardinals are not a massive power lineup, but they do have enough to cause him some issues. Like Bibee and Nola, it’s a lower strikeout matchup, so I can’t predict any huge strikeout boost in this opening start. I have virtually no separation among these three, who are ranked 4-6 on my list, and it’s simply going to be random mixing and matching in MME. I’d love to have a firmer take for you on them, but with the first start of the season, now is the time to lean into the unknown and just split them up.

Chris Bassitt and Michael Wacha don’t quite fit into the same ace category as the top 6, but these are solid veteran pitchers capable of big games at any time. The problem here is that, because of their lower strikeout rates, they generally get their upside from innings, particularly in the case of Bassitt. I can’t expect more than 6 innings from anyone, so that upside is capped. With the way the Orioles are hitting the ball out of the gate, I don’t have a lot of interest in Bassitt. As far as Wacha, I will note that this current Cleveland lineup looks way different than what we saw last year when they were one of the lower strikeout teams in the league. The projected lineup is actually one of the highest strikeout teams on this slate, with 6 batters above a 26% K rate against righties last season. That’s enough to keep Wacha in the pool and ahead of Bassitt. Wacha is priced just enough below the top 6 that he makes it into the MME pool, and I’m not completely opposed to using him in smaller-field contests if the salary is necessary.

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