Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, August 1st

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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.

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Happy Thursday…maybe! We’ve got a small 5-game slate that starts a little earlier than usual at 6:40 p.m. ET. However, 3 of the 5 games start the day as Yellow/Orange from Roth in the MLB Weather Report. With these few games, it would throw a huge wrench in things if we were to lose any game or have a couple of games with high delay chances. For now, I’m just going to write this up as if everything plays, but this is not a set it and forget it kind of day.

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Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

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We’ve got a pretty clear dividing line with four good pitchers up top, followed by a bunch of mediocre pitching, including several in tough matchups.

TOP TIER PITCHING

Sonny Gray at Cubs – 30.6% K, 6% BB, 3.79 ERA, 2.96 SIERA
Seth Lugo at Tigers – 21.8% K, 5.6% BB, 2.66 ERA, 3.88 SIERA
Charlie Morton vs. Marlins – 23.2% K, 9% BB, 4.16 ERA, 4.07 SIERA
Shota Imanaga vs. Cardinals – 24.9% K, 3.8% BB, 2.95 ERA, 3.55 SIERA

Sonny Gray has suddenly allowed a slew of runs over his last 5 starts. After 21 runs in 28 innings, his ERA climbed from 2.81 to 3.79. However, even with all those runs, the underlying numbers still look strong. He’s at a 27.8% strikeout rate with 4% walks over those 5 starts, which still leaves him as the best pitcher on this slate in terms of K-BB%. He simply has a silly .425 BABIP and 22.7% HR/FB in that span, and none of that is going to continue. It’s all very close with these top four, but Gray is officially my SP1.

The winner of the best matchup competition goes to…

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About the Author

CheeseIsGood
Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

One of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has won contests at the highest levels of both season-long and DFS. He is a 2x winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize in DFS, having won the 2014 FanDuel baseball Live Final and following that up by taking down a DraftKings Milly Maker Tournament in 2015. In addition, he’s won the Main Event championship in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the NFBC Platinum League, which is the highest buy-in entry league. His consistent success in the NFBC tournaments earned him a prestigious spot in their Hall of Fame. Dave can also strum a mean guitar while carrying a tune, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see him do so on one of his MLB Crunch Time appearances. Follow Dave on Twitter – @DavePotts2