Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, August 8th
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’ve got a weird little 5-game slate where everything is very bunched up on both sides of the ledger. There is not a single pitcher ranking in the top 30 in the league in strikeouts, which gives us a lack of upside on the pitching side and no teams off the board for stacking.
We also have some weather to contend with in the LAA/NYY game, so you’ll need to check back in on the afternoon weather report before locking anything into that game. As usual, Kevin Roth has your MLB Weather needs covered each day.
If you’re playing the early 3-game slate at 12:05 p.m. ET, we have some Expert Tags in our MLB lineup optimizer, LineupHQ, to help you get started, and you also need to keep a close eye on the weather for that slate as the SFG/WAS game looks to be in some peril.
Editor’s Note: Looking for more places to play? Check out our PrizePicks promo code and Underdog Fantasy promo code, two of the best DFS apps available today.
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
I’ll call the top six pitchers the top tier, but on a lot of slates, nothing here would qualify as a top-tier option.
THE ACELESS TOP TIER
Kevin Gausman vs. Orioles – 22.4% K, 6.8% BB, 4.56 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
Bryan Woo vs. Tigers – 18.4% K, 2.6% BB, 2.08 ERA, 4.05 SIERA
Nestor Cortes vs. Angels – 22.7% K, 5.2% BB, 4.16 ERA, 4.00 SIERA
Kyle Gibson vs. Rays – 21.5% K, 9.3% BB, 4.04 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
Shane Baz at Cardinals – 22.2% K, 9.3% BB, 3.60 ERA, 4.36 SIERA
Dean Kremer at Blue Jays – 21.7% K, 9% BB, 4.39 ERA, 4.37 SIERA
This is one of the weakest pitching slates we’ve had in a long time, without a single pitcher above 23% strikeouts. But we’re all playing with the same pool, so the lack of upside is the same for everyone.
At first glance, I see something close to a 4-way tie up top with Kevin Gausman, Bryan Woo, Nestor Cortes, and Kyle Gibson.
I want to say that Kevin Gausman is the top pitcher here because at least we know we’re getting a guy with a pitch-count ceiling if things go his way. But I still can’t bear to look at his lack of consistency with the strikeouts, facing a team with this much power. Despite his history and the occasional good start this season, there is not a single above-average skill anywhere in his repertoire this season other than control against righties. He is at an average of 22% K% to both sides of the plate with below-average ground balls and above-average barrels to both sides of the plate. On DK, where he’s the most expensive pitcher, I can’t call him the SP1. On FD, we find the salaries all bunched together and can play whichever of the top four we want without much issue. Even there, when I look at the matchup, I can’t put Gausman at the top.
Let’s see what else we find…
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