Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 6/18

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-06-18 18:46:12 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 June 18, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday! We’ve got a slower day, with just 5 games on the main slate (that most likely turns into 4 games when looking at the MLB weather report). I am going to cross the SF/ATL game off my list for now and put on my galoshes, as all of that Atlanta rain is coming past my house on the way there.

There is also a smaller early slate beginning at 1:35 PM ET, and we’ll have Expert tags and analysis available for that in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ.

Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We have yet another very dicey pitching slate, where I don’t feel even remotely confident in anything. Most of these games feature some mix of good offenses and good hitting conditions, and no matter where you land, you’ll be taking on downside risk with your pitchers. You could maybe put Ryan Weathers and Jose Soriano in their own tier, but I’ve got everyone on this slate lumped together in this one mediocre bucket. I don’t know what would make a bucket mediocre. If there is a hole, then it’s just worse than mediocre. But without a hole, it’s doing its job. Maybe it would be a bucket where there is just one little hole towards the top, closer to the handle. So, unless you’re filling that bad boy up to the brim, you can still carry water. I would rather talk about hole placement on imaginary buckets than talk about this pitching slate.

• Jose Soriano at A’s – 25.6% K, 11.7% BB, 2.79 ERA, 4.01 SIERA
• Ryan Weathers vs. White Sox – 26.6% K, 6.9% BB, 4.36 ERA, 3.45 SIERA
• Noah Cameron vs. Cardinals – 21.7% K, 5.8% BB, 4.11 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
• Aaron Nola vs. Mets – 23% K, 7.8% BB, 5.86 ERA, 3.94 SIERA
• Sean Manaea at Phillies – 23.8% K, 7.9% BB, 4.78 ERA, 3.60 SIERA
• Gage Jump vs. Angels – 20.2% K, 6.4% BB, 3.09 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
• Matthew Liberatore at Royals – 21.2% K, 8.8% BB, 4.71 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
• (Landen Roupp and Martin Perez – dicey weather)

Jose Soriano is more expensive than Ryan Weathers on both sites, and even before factoring in the matchup and ballpark, I just think Weathers is the better DFS pitcher (and probably the better real-life pitcher). Neither of them have been particularly consistent recently, with Soriano’s control woes and Weathers’ power issues, and if we can find two cheaper pitchers to like, I wouldn’t have any issue fading both. But that might be tough, so assuming we need one of these two, I’m going to side with Weathers. Part of this is the matchup and the ballpark, but part of this is also from slight concern from some vague health issues for Soriano. Most likely, it’s nothing, but he was pulled early from his last start with tightness in his chest and sore legs. He was hit on the chest by a hard line drive, so that probably explains all of it away – I’m just not 100% sure that the effects of being hit by a 98-mph line drive are completely gone after 5 days. I dropped a cup on my foot 3 weeks ago, and I’m still hobbling around like a wooden-legged pirate.

But even assuming Soriano is 100%, he has a low-strikeout matchup in a hitter’s paradise. At the same time though, Weathers has matchup with a White Sox team that ranks in the top 5 in the league in ISO against LHP, and he’s dealing with hitter-friendly conditions as well. The bottom line here is that I don’t love or completely trust either of these guys, but I will take the cheaper of the two – Weathers – as a starting point. This might change if projected ownership skews too far in favor of Weathers, as I don’t think either of these guys would be fantastic chalk.

The problem with fading both Weathers and Soriano is finding two other pitchers on DK…or even one on FD. I could make a case for Landen Roupp if that weather clears up in Atlanta, but he would be in a similar boat to both Soriano and Weathers anyway. Speaking of boats, he might need one tonight.

So, Noah Cameron? He had looked really good prior to his last start, and he’s generally a pretty good real-life pitcher, but the Cardinals have the 2nd-lowest strikeout rate in the league against LHP, and he’s not a big strikeout guy to begin with. He did have a few games of 7-8 Ks over the past month, but he is the kind of guy who is more matchup-dependent with those strikeouts. But he’s also cheap enough that he doesn’t need some massive ceiling, and he can always BABIP his way to a quality start. It’s OK-ish, but let’s see what else we find.

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