Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, May 16th
CheeseIsGood, 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. 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! We’ve got a relatively slow day with just a 5-game main slate which starts a few minutes earlier than usual at 6:40 PM ET. We have a pretty clear top tier on both the pitching and hitting sides that should lead to some condensed ownership on a smaller slate. We’ll look for some pivots, but at first glance, the obvious top plays look pretty good.
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We have one long-term ace and a little baby child who is looking to join those ranks as well. Past them, there are a handful of decent, but not great, pitchers to save some salary.
TOP-TIER DUO AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE
Tyler Glasnow vs. Reds – 33.6% K, 6.9% BB, 2.53 ERA, 2.57 SIERA
Jared Jones at Cubs – 30.9% K, 3.9% BB, 2.68 ERA, 2.59 SIERA
Zack Littell at Red Sox – 24.1% K, 3.7% BB, 3.02 ERA, 3.31 SIERA
Justin Steele vs. Pirates – 19.6% K, 7.1% BB, 4.73 ERA, 4.12 SIERA
Cristian Javier vs. A’s – 16.7% K, 13.9% BB, 4.01 ERA, 5.85 SIERA
To me, the main question on this slate is whether or not Jared Jones can be considered an ace in the Tyler Glasnow realm. Jones has 8 career starts, while Glasnow has 97 career starts with a 31.1% K rate and a remarkable 6 straight seasons above 30% strikeouts.
At this point, Jones looks fantastic, but he’s also clearly having his pitch count monitored, and his strikeouts are not anywhere near the consistency of Glasnow. On any given night, on a per-inning basis, sure, Jones can be as good as Glasnow, but it does seem worth pointing out that his two big strikeout games came against the Rockies and Marlins. I am not in any way trying to downplay how fantastic Jones is—the kid is already an ace—and I’ll gladly play him in any lineup on any site. But he’s not Glasnow. Not yet.
Neither of these aces need help from the matchup, but I do slightly prefer Glasnow’s matchup against the Reds with their higher strikeout rate. The salary gap is relevant but not enough to get Jones into Glasnow’s tier for me. I just want to start with the elite ace who has been an elite ace for 6 years. Glasnow is going to be a ‘Don’t Overthink It’ for me tonight, and I will play him in every lineup the salary allows.
Jared Jones is definitely 2nd on my list, which does keep him in the FD pool and makes him my first choice for an SP2 on DK. But there may be need to go with a cheaper SP2, and we’ve got a couple solid options.
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