Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, July 11th
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 split slate day, with the main slate starting earlier than usual at 6:05 p.m. ET on both DK and FD. I will focus on that 7-gamer but first will take a quick peek at the early 4-game slate, which starts at 1:10 p.m. ET.
If you want some more MLB DFS analysis for the early slate, we also have some Expert tags in our MLB lineup optimizer, LineupHQ, to get you pointed in the right direction.
Thursday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The early slate is loaded on the pitching side with two of the best pitchers in the league, as well as an upside arm against the Rockies. Even after four good pitchers up top, the cheaper options look quite viable, leaving us with plenty of ways to go for a small slate.
TOP TIER ACES
Paul Skenes at Brewers – 33.6% K, 5.2% BB, 2.12 ERA, 2.53 SIERA
Hunter Greene vs. Rockies – 26.7% K, 9.9% BB, 3.45 ERA, 3.92 SIERA
Jack Flaherty vs. Guardians – 33% K, 4% BB, 3.24 ERA, 2.51 SIERA
MacKenzie Gore at Mets – 27% K, 8.2% BB, 3.83 ERA, 3.62 SIERA
Paul Skenes is amazing. Nothing else really needs to be said. It does not appear as if matchups are relevant. He’s just going to mow everybody down. He’s expensive enough that he’s not a 100% lock on a slate with other good pitchers, but this is the SP1.
If there’s a pitcher in the league who is as good as Paul Skenes, it might just be Jack Flaherty. The problem with Flaherty is that he’s missed 2 weeks with a back issue, and we have no way of knowing if he’s going to come back with a full workload. Adding in a tougher matchup with low strikeouts, he’s well behind Skenes, but I am still very interested in playing him ahead of Hunter Greene assuming that Greene ends up as the chalk.
Hunter Greene is facing the Rockies while Flaherty is facing the Guardians. Because of that, the guy with the weaker skill set is probably going to be 3x the ownership of the better pitcher. Because of the questions around Flaherty’s pitch count, I do rank Greene ahead of him, but I still lean towards thinking it is ‘more correct’ to play a better pitcher at lower ownership. Personally, I plan to have more Flaherty than Greene, but in reality, I won’t have a ton of either. I’ll have mostly Skenes plus a cheaper SP2 on DK.
The Greene vs. Flaherty discussion is even more interesting on FD…
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