Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, April 18th
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 Thursday! We have a super slow day with only a 3-game main slate starting early at 1:10 PM ET. I’ll do the usual walk-through, but the smaller the slate, the more you should just be throwing the most random of darts. The pitching is particularly nonsensical, but we are still required to roster two of them on DK, so let’s see if we can find something worth getting excited about. Get excited everybody!
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have a tough 3-game slate, particularly on DK. I only see one pitcher that I’m even sort of excited about playing, and my initial plan is to just spread out and throw darts at SP2. But let’s see if anything different jumps out as we dig into it.
THREE PEOPLE WITH ARMS
Ryan Pepiot vs. Angels – 25.9% K, 4.5% BB, 3.07 ERA, 3.44 SIERA
Griffin Canning at Rays – 25.1% K, 6.6% BB, 4.86 ERA, 3.87 SIERA
Kenta Maeda vs. Rangers – 25.9% K, 6.7% BB, 4.45 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
Looking at the 2023-2024 stats for this trio, it’s remarkable how similar they all are. Ryan Pepiot comes out a little ahead with the lower walks, but they are all within a 1% range in strikeouts and all with perfectly acceptable control. We can even dig into other stats, and they remain close. All three have fly-ball rates over 40%, and all three have swinging-strike rates between 12.2-12.8%. They have all made 3 starts this season, so let’s just take a peek and see if they are all still basically tied:
Ryan Pepiot 2024 – 30.8% K, 7.7% BB, 5.40 ERA, 3.16 SIERA
Griffin Canning 2024 – 18.2% K, 6.1% BB, 9.88 ERA, 4.64 SIERA
Kenta Maeda 2024 – 15.9% K, 7.9% BB, 6.00 ERA, 4.86 SIERA
Holy Toledo, they are not tied at all! Yes, it’s only 3 starts, but Ryan Pepiot jumps way up into a tier of his own. The swinging strikes also confirm those strikeout numbers, as Canning’s and Maeda’s have fallen way off. It’s very worth noting that almost all of those strikeouts for Pepiot came in one big start, so I don’t by any means believe he’s just a 30% K pitcher now, but it’s just as much about the drop-off for the other two.
Canning is still sitting a full 2 MPH below last season’s velocity and has allowed 5 HRs and 15 runs in 13+ innings. Until he shows me either the velocity is back, or some consistency in getting strikeouts without it, I’m out. Now, it’s only a 3-game slate, so if you’re going to MME, really everyone should be in the pool, but for any sort of narrowed-down pool, I am not going Canning today. I’ll just keep my vegetables in the fridge like a normal person.
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