Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, June 8
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 Split Slate Thursday! We’ve got a 5-game early slate starting at 12:35pm ET, and then things break up a little later for the main slates depending on the site. FD has a 5-game slate starting at 6:05pm ET, while DK has a 4-game slate starting at 7:07pm ET. Note that DK is saying players from Game 2 of CWS/NYY will NOT accrue points, despite the game technically being listed on their slate.
I’ll start with a look at the early 5-game slate (that fortunately includes the same games for each site), and it also includes some obvious chalk on both sides of the ledger. I’ll be back a bit later to look at some MLB DFS picks for the “main” slate.
Thursday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
One important note to kick things off. As I’m writing this at 7am ET, Tyler Glasnow has not been officially confirmed as today’s starter for Tampa. It sounds most likely that he’s the pitcher, so I’m just writing this under that assumption.
TWO ACES AND SOME PEOPLE WITH ARMS
Clayton Kershaw at Reds – 30% K, 6.1% BB, 3.25 ERA, 3.19 SIERA
Tyler Glasnow vs. Twins – 33.3% K, 9.5% BB (2 starts)
Merrill Kelly at Nationals – 27.6% K, 10% BB, 2.80 ERA, 3.87 SIERA
Bailey Ober at Rays – 22.5% K, 6.2% BB, 2.33 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
Kyle Bradish at Brewers – 20% K, 7.3% BB, 4.13 ERA, 4.47 SIERA
Alex Cobb at Rockies – 21.8% K, 6.1% BB, 2.71 ERA, 3.49 SIERA
Josiah Gray vs. Diamondbacks – 19% K, 11.4% BB, 3.09 ERA, 5.10 SIERA
GLASNOW, KERSHAW, AND THAT’S THAT
Tyler Glasnow has made two starts this season after just two starts in 2022. He has not thrown 100 innings in the majors since 2018, but no matter when we see him, or for how long, all he does is pile up strikeouts. His career mark of 30.2% strikeouts would top this slate, and every time we’ve seen him since 2019, he’s been over 33% strikeouts. I’m going to assume that the Rays try to keep his pitch count down around 90, but there’s potentially a little more. And even at 90, I would say he has the highest strikeout upside on this slate against a Twins team with the highest strikeout rate in the league. Glasnow would be the SP1 on this slate even if he were at the highest salary.
Because of how early into the season we are with Glasnow, I don’t want to be all-in on him in MME. As great as his strikeout ability and matchup are, he’s still not as good a real-life pitcher as Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw is a more efficient pitcher, and I don’t see any reason for concern over a few more runs than usual showing up in his last few starts. He’s had a very tough stretch of matchups, and he’s still sitting at a 3.25 ERA and similar 3.19 SIERA. The Reds will be all right-handed against him, but that may be a good thing, as he’s getting all his strikeouts against righties this season, up at a 33.3% clip. If we didn’t have Glasnow on this slate, I’d be completely happy with Kershaw as my SP1. And with Glasnow on the slate, I’ll call Kershaw the SP1-A.
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