Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, May 11
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! After a super busy Wednesday with games all over the place, we have just six games today, spread out into two 3-game slates. There is very little analysis needed on a 3-game slate. Every single player in every single lineup is viable for DFS on a 3-game slate. I’ll give you a few of my favorite MLB DFS picks as we look into these slates, but basically, throw some darts. Some nonsense darts.
Thursday Afternoon Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The Five Pitchers Who Are Lively Enough
Yu Darvish at Twins
Kodai Senga at Reds
Bailey Ober vs. Padres
Mike Clevinger at Royals
Brady Singer vs. White Sox
I’m not listing Ben Lively here, who is nothing more than a bulk reliever with a career 15.3% strikeout rate. But sure, you can play anyone in MME on this small of a slate.
Because there are no sure things on the pitching side, I am definitely going to play all five of these pitchers early on in my builds. But if I’m narrowing things down, Yu Darvish is the only guy that I’m even sort of willing to call an SP1.
Every pitcher on this slate has had some problems this season, Darvish included. But Darvish is the one guy here with a long track record of strong skills, and he’s looked much better in his last couple starts. I don’t expect him to get back to the realm of being a consistent ace, but his 27% K rate is the highest on the slate this season. And his control is no worse than anyone else.
The robots who price DFS slates still think Kodai Senga is an ace, but they are the only ones. Perhaps he has like an uncle or something who is still a believer, but I doubt it. Senga’s ERA is surviving at 3.38, but this dude has walked four batters in each of his last four starts and has a 15.6% BB rate for the season. His 25.5% strikeouts still leave slight room for optimism, but that optimism goes down further when I look at his schedule so far this season. He has opened with an incredibly soft schedule, and if this is the best he can do against weak opponents, I’m just not on board. The good news for Senga’s uncle is that this is yet another good matchup, and it is quite possible that he strikes out as many batters as anyone on this slate. For that reason, he’s absolutely in this nonsense pool. But officially, I do not trust him, and I think he’s overpriced.
