Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 5/14
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 give you his musings on the May 14, 2026 MLB DFS slate.
Happy Thursday! We have an early start today with a 7-game slate that starts at 12:35 PM ET. Sounds like lunchtime! It’s kind of a weird slate where virtually everything looks playable on both the pitching and hitting sides, but very little looks fantastic. We’ve also had a last-minute pitching change with the Twins, and at the time I’m writing this, no Twins players are showing up on FD at all, even though the game is on the slate. Maybe they’ll get that fixed, or maybe we’ll just go Twins-less, I don’t know!
Later tonight, there will be a small 4-game slate on DK and FD, and we’ll have Expert Tags and analysis available in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ, for that slate.
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel
Today’s top-tier trio is nothing like the elite top-tier trio we had last night, but each slate is its own entity, and for today, this is what we have:
TOP TIER TRIO
- Chase Burns vs. Nationals – 30.9% K, 8.6% BB, 3.29 ERA, 3.16 SIERA
- Nolan McLean vs. Tigers – 31.4% K, 7.7% BB, 2.41 ERA, 2.88 SIERA
- Kyle Harrison vs. Padres – 26.7% K, 9.1% BB, 3.25 ERA, 3.67 SIERA
Both Chase Burns and Nolan McLean are young pitchers with under 100 innings pitched, so we still have a bit of the unknown, but they have both shown clear strikeout upside. To this point in 2026, McLean has the better numbers with a 32.6% K rate and a 6.9% walk rate vs. a 26.1% K rate and an 8.7% BB rate for Burns. Basing on pedigree and projections, Burns is expected to be the more dominant major league pitcher, and even with the lower strikeout rate this season, he has a higher swinging-strike rate and Stuff+ numbers than McLean. I think it’s reasonable to argue either way over who the better pitcher is right now, but I’m on the side of…
Want to read more? Sign up for MLB Premium!
-
-
-
This content can help you make better MLB DFS picks
- To access this content, subscribe to MLB Premium or purchase a 3-day trial.
- An MLB subscription will allow you to access this content and much more!
About the Author
One of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has won contests at the highest levels of both season-long and DFS. He is a 2x winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize in DFS, having won the 2014 FanDuel baseball Live Final and following that up by taking down a DraftKings Milly Maker Tournament in 2015. In addition, he’s won the Main Event championship in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the NFBC Platinum League, which is the highest buy-in entry league. His consistent success in the NFBC tournaments earned him a prestigious spot in their Hall of Fame. Dave can also strum a mean guitar while carrying a tune, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see him do so on one of his MLB Crunch Time appearances. Follow Dave on X – @DavePotts2