Million Dollar Musings: Thursday, May 18
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! We’ve got a dinky little four-game slate today that starts early, at 12:35pm ET. There is not much to love on either side of things today, but anytime we have a slate with Dylan Cease as the highest owned player, I’m excited. I hope you can feel the excitement bursting through the screen.
Wheeeeeeee!!!!!
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
With only four games on the slate, let’s just take a look at all eight pitchers. I end up with four buckets to place these eight pitchers in:
THE DEFAULT ‘ACE’
Dylan Cease vs. Guardians – 25.5% K, 10.4% BB, 4.86 ERA, 4.27 SIERA
THE DEFAULT PRETTY GOOD SP2
Tyler Wells vs. Angels – 22.4% K, 5.2% BB, 2.68 ERA, 4.14 SIERA
THE EXCITING CHILDREN
Eury Perez vs. Nationals
Logan Allen at White Sox
Taj Bradley at Mets
THE NONSENSE
Tylor Megill vs. Rays – 17.3% K, 12.3% BB, 4.02 ERA, 5.44 SIERA
Tyler Anderson at Orioles – 14.4% K, 10.9% BB, 5.26 ERA, 5.78 SIERA
Trevor Williams at Marlins – 16.5% K, 5.5% BB, 4.23 ERA, 4.88 SIERA
With his long-term skills factored in, there is no way around projections putting Dylan Cease at the top of the slate today. Without adding in the 15 innings from Taj Bradley, the 25.5% K rate from Cease this season is still the best mark on this slate. It’s a big drop from the past couple seasons, and it comes with sketchy control, but it’s still good for this slate.
When we dig a little deeper into this season, I see good news and bad news. The good news is 97+ pitches in eight consecutive starts. That kind of consistent leash allows him to get to respectability even when he’s a bit off. But the bad news is more prevalent. Even with all those pitches, he hasn’t topped six strikeouts in a game since his second start of the year, his velocity is still at a career low, his swinging strikes are down along with his actual strikeouts, and his hard hits are up. All of this while not improving his control. Even with Jose Ramirez out, this is still a very low-strikeout Guardians lineup.
