Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, June 1
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 and Happy June! Some days, you wake up and look around to see a third of the season in the rear-view mirror. Apparently, most of the teams in the league are pretty tired from their first two months, so they have decided to take the day off.
This leaves us with just a little 4-game main slate starting at 1:07pm ET and then a tiny 3-game slate later on. I’ll walk through these slates, but the less games we have, the less there is to say. This is particularly true on the hitting side today, as we have a very pitcher-heavy slate mostly in pitcher-friendly ballparks as well. There looks to be one very obvious game for bats on the main slate, but let’s see if we can find any off-the-wall MLB DFS picks for this slow Thursday.
Thursday Afternoon Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
There are more good pitching options for this four-game slate than we sometimes get on a full day. We start with five pitchers who are aces or have something like ace potential:
FIVE GUYS, WHO DO WE PUT IN N’ OUT OF OUR LINEUPS?
Kevin Gausman vs. Brewers – 31.9% K, 5.7% BB, 3.03 ERA, 2.99 SIERA
Max Scherzer vs. Phillies – 23.8% K, 7.9% BB, 3.54 ERA, 4.40 SIERA
Jesus Luzardo vs. Padres – 26.8% K, 7.3% BB, 3.67 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Joe Musgrove at Marlins – 22.6% K, 6.6% BB, 5.64 ERA, 4.13 SIERA
Freddy Peralta at Blue Jays – 24.2% K, 9.6% BB, 4.64 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
Even in something like a 20-max lineup build scenario, I don’t think we have to cross any of these guys off the list. If I’m going to cross anyone off, it would be Freddy Peralta. It’s not so much the matchup, it’s the recent disappearance of his strikeouts and the reappearance of his control issues. He’s the highest walk pitcher of this group and not in the same realm as Gausman in strikeout ability.
Kevin Gausman is very clearly the top option here based on both the skills and the matchup. He’s already topped 100 pitches six times this season, and he’s topped eight strikeouts in six of his last nine starts. This slate is good enough that he’s nowhere near a lock button or a Don’t Overthink It, but I will say that in any lineup that just has enough salary to play him, that’s what I’ll do.
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