Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 6/25

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-06-25 17:40:38 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 25, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday! We have a slower day in MLB, with just a 6-game main slate that starts a little earlier than usual at 6:40 PM ET. But despite only 6 games, there is quite a bit of everything. On the pitching side, we’ve got two of the league’s best pitchers if you want spend-up aces, and we also have decent mid-tier options and a couple cheap options. On the hitting side, there isn’t the one clear high total that stands out, but 9 of the 12 teams start with implied totals between 4-5 runs, and there are ways to build upside lineups in all salary ranges. Let’s dive in and see what we find.

Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

This is a pitching slate with two of the best pitchers in the league who are in their own salary tier, and they are followed by a reasonably deep pool of viable pitchers at lower salaries. I’m going to lump everyone together after the top two aces, as it’s not really clear where the place would be to draw a line in the salaries.

TOP TIER DUO

• Cristopher Sanchez at Nationals – 28.5% K, 4.7% BB, 1.80 ERA, 2.71 SIERA
• Cam Schlittler at Red Sox – 29.5% K, 4.9% BB, 1.71 ERA, 2.93 SIERA

This slate would be very easy if there was no salary cap. We could just play these two aces and move along with our day. These are two of the best pitchers in the league, both ranking in the top 5 of all qualified starters in K-BB%, ERA, SIERA, and pretty much every other category. Neither of them have the best possible matchups tonight, but matchups barely matter for aces of this caliber. However, we can also view this sort of like the Shohei Ohtani situation last night on DK, where at some point, the salaries reach a level where elite pitchers are not must-plays just because they are elite pitchers. Deciding when that is the case has more to do with the rest of the slate and whether we can find cheaper pitchers who can get close enough to them to be worth saving the salary.

Choosing between Cristopher Sanchez and Cam Schlittler is no easy task either. Both of them have shown ceiling games, and both have had times where their strikeouts are average enough that you could win without them, even though they were still great. In regards to the matchups, Sanchez is so crazy elite against lefties that he has as good a chance as anyone of shutting down the two elite Nationals batters, and then the rest of the lineup has lower strikeouts, but this is also a team that has at least 4 lower-power bats in the lineup. Adding the ground balls and efficiency to his overall awesomeness, I’ll call Sanchez the SP1 if salary allows.

On FD, that means Sanchez is the SP1, but on DK, we get a $1,000 discount to Schlittler. I think we should probably ignore the season-high 13-strikeout gem from last week and just assume that was an outlier to the high side. If you look at everything before that, he’s more of a guy who is likely to go 6 innings and land in the range of 5-8 strikeouts, rarely allowing much damage in the way of hits or runs. He has gotten more strikeouts against lefties this season (31.1% K rate), and he has a Sanchez-level 56% ground-ball rate against righties. Boston has a couple more high-strikeout bats than Washington, and they also have 4-5 low-power bats in the lineup for most games. Any way I look at it, I prefer a matchup with the Red Sox over a matchup with the Nationals. With the $1,000 discount, I’m happy with Schlittler as the SP1 on DK.

MID-TIER AND BEYOND

• Kevin Gausman vs. Rangers – 24.3% K, 5.5% BB, 4.04 ERA, 3.61 SIERA
• Connelly Early vs. Yankees – 22.5% K, 8.8% BB, 3.64 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
• Freddy Peralta vs. Cubs – 22.1% K, 9% BB, 4.83 ERA, 4.20 SIERA
• MacKenzie Gore at Blue Jays – 25.6% K, 10.3% BB, 4.07 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
• Matthew Boyd at Mets – 1st start off IL
• Troy Melton vs. Astros – 15.2% K, 7.2% BB, 2.56 ERA, 4.84 SIERA
• Tatsuya Imai at Tigers – 26.5% K, 13.3% BB, 6.15 ERA, 4.25 SIERA
• Cade Cavalli vs. Phillies – 23.5% K, 8% BB, 4.07 ERA, 3.85 SIERA

This group pitchers ranges from $6,100 to $8,500 on DK and from $7,600 to $10,100 on FD. That’s a wide range, but that gap from Kevin Gausman down to Cade Cavalli on DK is still smaller than the gap between Sanchez and Gausman. While the salaries matter, it shouldn’t be difficult to play any two of these pitchers if you are fading the aces.

The obvious top choice out of these leftovers is Kevin Gausman, and my initial thought is that he ends up as the highest-owned pitcher on the slate, at least on DK (and possibly even on FD). His skills are good – but certainly not great – and his lack of consistency warrants him being down closer to all of these other pitchers rather than up near the aces. I really can’t find any rhyme or reason to which starts he puts up the games of 25 DK points (that would make him a must-play at this salary) or all of the other games (where he’s allowed 4+ runs in 3 of his last 4 starts). There is nothing in his batted-ball profile to explain why he should have HR/FB or BABIP issues, and he’s walked more than 2 batters in only 2 of his 16 starts all season. Everything I see tells me that his solid 3.61 SIERA is who he is. I don’t love the matchup, nor do I hate the matchup, and any way I slice it, he’s very clearly in his own tier on this slate. He’s not Sanchez or Schlittler, but he’s better than everyone else. I’ll say that if ownership doesn’t matter to you, then I’d just play Gausman. Let’s see what else we find though, because I am not quite confident enough to want to just load up on a guy who could be 70% owned in single-entry contests on DK.

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