Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 8/20

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Aug 20, 2026

Last Updated 2026-08-20 13:49:25 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 today. 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 muse about the August 20, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday! With the main slate beginning at 12:40 PM ET, we’ve got an early day, making it tough to even sort out what we want for lunch before the games begin. I mean, probably fried chicken, but I’m open to suggestions. This 6-game slate looks pretty evenly balanced, with plenty of good options on both the pitching and hitting sides.

There will also be a small 3-game evening slate that locks at 6:35 PM ET, and we’ll have Expert tags and analysis in our MLB DFS optimizer (LineupHQ) for those games if you’re playing through dinner as well.

Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

I’m going to start with six pitchers in my top tier, although it looks a bit more like a top two and then a secondary quartet.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Gavin Williams vs. Giants – 31.8% K, 7.5% BB, 3.74 ERA, 2.99 SIERA
• Ian Seymour vs. Blue Jays – 28.8% K, 7.8% BB, 4.11 ERA, 3.27 SIERA
• George Kirby at Brewers – 20.1% K, 5.5% BB, 3.89 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
• Landen Roupp at Guardians – 23.4% K, 10.9% BB, 4.31 ERA, 4.22 SIERA
• Robert Gasser vs. Mariners – 21.7% K, 6.1% BB, 4.54 ERA, 4.06 SIERA
• Gage Jump at Royals – 25.1% K, 10.9% BB, 4.50 ERA, 4.13 SIERA

Gavin Williams had a bad start last week, and let’s all say it together now … whoop-de-do! Now, while it is in fact a whoop-de-do, it’s also fair to point out that was his 6th start of the season allowing 5+ runs, so it’s not like it was a one-time outlier, but his great starts are far more common than his bad ones. Between his better matchup and a strikeout rate well above anyone else on this slate, this is simply a Don’t Overthink It for me. Sure, it’s possible he has another bad start, but no one comes even remotely close to his ceiling. On DK, $9,800 looks too cheap and is not all that hard to afford, so he’s an easy play and should be wildly chalky there. On FD, I can make more a case for a fade at $11,000. While I do like the matchup, the Giants are really not a bad lineup against RHP, and they do have enough power to give them a chance to do a little damage against his one weakness: the power. He’s still a clear SP1 there but less of lock button and more of a play if you can afford him.

Following closely behind Williams in strikeout rate – and well ahead of everyone else – is Ian Seymour. It still feels a little weird seeing his name up among the elite pitchers, but the skills look real. He’s still only 10 starts into his season after starting the year in the bullpen, but the skills have more than held up as a starter – they’ve actually improved. He has a truly elite 32.1% K rate with just 5.1% walks as a starter, and if not for a 20.4% HR/FB rate, he might be as expensive as Williams at this point. He’s also gotten a pretty healthy pitch count for a Tampa pitcher, going over 90 pitches in 3 straight starts – all of them 6 innings, and all of them with 7-9 strikeouts. This guy is good. Beyond his skills, I could even argue that his matchup is better than Williams’s. Toronto’s lineup has slightly lower strikeouts, but this is a team with almost no power against LHP, and they’ve added a couple more high-strikeout bats to the lineup recently. I’m fully on board here, and Seymour is my SP2.

George Kirby has the track record and the name recognition, but he just looks nothing even remotely close to Williams or Seymour for DFS purposes right now. A 20.1% K rate for the season is a depressing career low, he’s been bad on the road all season, and he hasn’t topped 3 strikeouts in any of his last 4 starts. It’s great to have strong control, but at this level of strikeouts, his DFS relevance is sketchy at best. He can always BABIP his way to a quality start, but to me, he’s priced too close to Seymour on both sites to make it into the primary pool.

Things just continue to spiral downward for Landen Roupp. Somewhere in there, I know he’s still got talent, but goodness gracious, it’s not showing up. The walks are ruining everything, and while he has moderate strikeout ability, it’s not nearly enough to make up for a walk rate that is all the way up to 14% in his last 8 starts. He’s still getting the ground balls, and Cleveland is a team with very limited power, so like Kirby, there is certainly a path to a quality start here if batted balls go his way. But for me, he’s nothing more than an MME dart throw.

Gage Jump had a stunningly bad start last week, with just 1 strikeout and 4 walks in 5 innings against Texas. That was his 2nd start of the season in which he had just 1 strikeout (both at home), but it’s still surprising for a guy with a 25% K rate. It could be the ballpark, and it could be a sample-size fluke, but it’s hard not to notice a 6.02 ERA at home and a 2.60 ERA on the road. The strikeouts are similar, but his control has been far better on the road, and I can at least imagine a case where that’s real, if he’s more scared of throwing a hittable strike in his hitter-friendly home park. Either way, this guy clearly has a high ceiling with the strikeouts and pitch count, but he also has a very low floor with the control and inconsistency. I don’t love the matchup, but it’s not clear yet whether matchup matters at all for Jump. Between the strikeout potential, the home/road splits, and his ability to limit barrels, I’m playing Jump ahead of Kirby and Roupp. He’s a play that is very volatile, with a wide range of outcomes, but the ceiling is high for his salary.

Robert Gasser has been a more consistent pitcher than Jump but without the same kind of ceiling, topping out at 7 strikeouts in a start this season. His pitch count is also a bit all over the place, but they’ve shown a willingness to let him go 6+ innings, so I’m not downgrading him for the up-and-down workload. He’s been great against lefties, so I’m really only concerned with 3 good righty bats at the top of the lineup for Seattle. Against righties this season, Gasser has been a fly-ball pitcher with a 19.3% K rate, so there is some risk, but I’d still call it a plus matchup overall due to the rest of the Seattle lineup. Gasser is also ahead of Kirby and Roupp on my board. I’m pretty torn between him and Jump, and I’ll likely end up with an even split. My lean is more towards Jump in larger-field contests (where you need that ceiling) and more towards Gasser in smaller-field contests.

CHEAPER PITCHING

• Randy Dobnak vs. A’s – 14.2% K, 9.1% BB, 1.73 ERA, 4.70 SIERA
• Michael McGreevy at Reds – 16.9% K, 6.3% BB, 3.48 ERA, 4.50 SIERA
• Brady Singer vs. Cardinals – 18.7% K, 7.5% BB, 4.66 ERA, 4.44 SIERA
• Anthony Kay vs. Braves – 18.1% K, 8.1% BB, 4.01 ERA, 4.52 SIERA

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