Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, July 20
CheeseIsGood, a two-time winner of a $1,000,000 first-place prize in DFS, 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 very early day, with the main slate being a 7-gamer starting at 12:20pm ET. I’ll try to get through this quickly to get it posted in time to be of use for the early start, and then I’ll also be on an early edition of Crunch Time to take questions and go over any last-minute thoughts. If you’re playing the 3-game slate later tonight, we’ll have some expert tags in LineupHQ this afternoon to help you get headed in the right direction there.
This 7-game slate is absolutely loaded with pitching, so the hitting side is going to be pretty dicey, but let’s jump in and see what we can find in the way of MLB DFS picks for this early Thursday jamboree.
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
Well, after a couple days of some very sketchy pitching, we are being rewarded with an incredibly strong group of options today. Almost every pitcher on the slate qualifies as a top tier option. We’ll whittle things down as best we can, but for starters, here’s the big ol’ bucket of aces or something-like-aces:
Spencer Strider vs. Diamondbacks – 38.9% K, 7.5% BB, 3.66 ERA, 2.65 SIERA
Blake Snell at Blue Jays – 32.4% K, 12.1% BB, 2.71 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Jorge Lopez at Mariners – 30.2% K, 6.9% BB, 4.24 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Zac Gallen at Braves – 26.3% K, 5.3% BB, 3.14 ERA, 3.62 SIERA
George Kirby vs. Twins – 20.7% K, 2.4% BB, 3.43 ERA, 3.90 SIERA
Andrew Abbott vs. Giants – 27.3% K, 8.6% BB, 2.45 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
Alex Cobb at Reds – 22.4% K, 5.7% BB, 2.82 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
Corbin Burnes at Phillies – 24.8% K, 8.8% BB, 3.73 ERA, 4.17 SIERA
Chris Bassitt vs. Padres – 21.9% K, 7.4% BB, 4.12 ERA, 4.32 SIERA
Taijuan Walker vs. Brewers – 21.1% K, 9.8% BB, 4.00 ERA, 4.65 SIERA
Michael Kopech at Mets – 25.5% K, 13.9% BB, 4.47 ERA, 4.85 SIERA
Michael Lorenzen at Royals – 19.5% K, 6.7% BB, 3.75 ERA, 4.50 SIERA
There are a few very obvious things to note about this big group. First of all, Spencer Strider is in his own tier, both in talent and salary. Secondly, we do have some pitchers down towards the bottom that are clearly not in the same class as the top few, with low strikeouts from Michael Lorenzen, wildness from Michael Kopech, and just sort of average-ish talent from guys like Taijuan Walker and Chris Bassitt. But the salaries are appropriately spaced to make them all of similar relevance for DFS.
But before we dig too deep into pitching, I think it’s worth getting a bird’s-eye view of the hitting side as well. It really won’t be all that tough to narrow down the pitching options if salary is not relevant, so we need to know how relevant it is.
All of the top offenses on this slate are facing good pitchers, so it’s not going to feel great to spend on teams like the Braves, Padres, Blue Jays, Reds, Phillies, etc. It’s possible that you could look at this slate and just decide you want something like the Tigers or White Sox just as much as you want the usual high-end options. In that case, we don’t end up needing to chase guys like Lorenzen, Walker, Cobb, and Bassitt.
I just wanted to have that thought in mind before I start talking about the pricing gaps at pitcher.
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