Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 5/1

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-05-01 14:04:06 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. 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 give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday and Happy May! We’ve got an early start today, with the main slate beginning at 12:35 PM ET on both sites. We have some dicey weather, particularly in the STL/CIN game, so you’ll need to be sure to check the MLB weather page before finalizing lineups. For now, I’m going to write the analysis as if everything plays, but I will be ready to switch off that game if things don’t improve.

Later in the day, we have a smaller 4-game slate at 6:45 PM ET. We will have Expert tags and analysis in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ, if you are playing that slate.

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Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

It’s an interesting pitching slate, with a pretty obvious SP1 but enough lack of clarity everywhere else that I’m going to list all 14 pitchers in three different buckets:

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Paul Skenes vs. Cubs – 27.5% K, 2.8% BB, 2.39 ERA, 2.56 SIERA
• Shane Baz vs. Royals – 31.6% K, 7.9% BB, 2.45 ERA, 2.91 SIERA
• Kodai Senga vs. Diamondbacks – 22.5% K, 8.1% BB, 1.26 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
• Andrew Abbott vs. Cardinals – 32.8% K, 13.1% BB, 3.60 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
• Seth Lugo at Rays – 19.6% K, 8.1% BB, 3.08 ERA, 4.29 SIERA
• Tyler Mahle vs. A’s – 21.3% K, 10.7% BB, 1.14 ERA, 4.34 SIERA

As much as Shane Baz has been great this season, and even with less dominant numbers than last season, Paul Skenes is still just better than everyone else. The leash is completely off his pitch count, going over 100 pitches in 3 of his starts already this season, and he’s proven over and over that he is matchup proof. Because the strikeouts have not been quite as elite this season, he is priced reasonably, and he is the easy SP1 on this slate. I don’t see him as an absolute must-play, but if I can afford him, I’ll play him in every lineup.

Shane Baz looks great and already has 2 starts with double-digit strikeouts this season. His up-and-down control and the low-strikeout matchup are enough to keep him well behind Skenes, but he would be my SP2 in a world with no salary cap. Let’s see what else we find before we decide if it’s worth prioritizing a spend-up SP2.

Kodai Senga has a 1.26 ERA through 5 starts, so that looks great. But under the hood, we find 4 of those starts with 5 or fewer strikeouts, and he also had 2 walks in each of those 4 starts. His velocity is still well below his pre-injury rate of 2023, so I’m not confident that the strikeouts come roaring back yet. His matchup is no better than what Baz has, and I simply prefer Baz in this price range, though Senga is certainly in the MME pool.

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