Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, May 23rd
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 an early start with a 6-game slate starting at 12:35pm ET. The slate is pretty well split down the middle with an obvious top pitching tier that includes a couple veteran aces and some exciting young upside arms. It looks like we have some very slight weather concerns in most of these games, but nothing threatening enough to change any plans, so let’s dive in and see what we find.
Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We’ve got a strong top tier with four aces, including the world’s favorite shiny new toy.
TOP TIER QUARTET
Zack Wheeler vs. Rangers – 29.1% K, 7.8% BB, 2.52 ERA, 3.16 SIERA
Luis Gil vs. Mariners – 31.2% K, 13.6% BB, 2.39 ERA, 3.74 SIERA
Paul Skenes vs. Giants – 3rd start of career (46.2% K!)
Luis Castillo at Yankees – 26.8% K,6.1% BB, 3.28 ERA, 3.33 SIERA
Well, this is fun! We have the consistent veteran aces in Wheeler and Castillo, the up and down with huge upside of Gil, and then the next big thing with the rookie Skenes.
The thing that jumps out first is that the two more established veterans, Wheeler and Castillo, have the tougher matchups among these four. When combining with the huge upside we’ve seen from the young guns, I am initially expecting to see Luis Gil and Paul Skenes as the more popular choices today.
There is no denying the upside for Luis Gil, and he’s coming off a 14-K outing against the White Sox. Now he faces the highest strikeout team in the league, so it’s clear there is a massive ceiling here. What I’ll say is that we still have a lack of consistency here with control question marks. As thrilling as that 14-K game was, if you look back just one start past that, we find his previous 4 starts came with strikeout marks of just 3, 5, 5, and 6. It’s not like this is just some locked in superstar skill set. To put it another way, he’s no Zack Wheeler, and he’s no Luis Castillo. The matchup gap is huge enough that of course I understand calling Luis Gil the SP1, and in a world with no ownership considerations, he is my SP1. Let me move on and look at the other choices and then loop back.
Between Luis Castillo and Zack Wheeler, I would definitely be on the Wheeler side before considering salary. However, when I bring in the $11,000 salary on both sites with this matchup, it’s really hard to make a strong case for Wheeler being a priority. He is one of the best pitchers in the league if you just take his numbers against righties, but he’s really not elite against lefties. I expect we see 7 lefties against him, with only one of them being over a 21% strikeout rate. I really want to like him as a spend-up to be slightly different with a more talented pitcher, but I’m just not getting there in primary lineups.
Luis Castillo is great, but the power risk is obvious, and the Yankees are one of the lowest strikeout teams in the league on top of all that power. The lineup will have a lot to do with my view on Castillo. Like Wheeler, he’s elite against righties, but he is way down at 20% K to lefties this season. It’s possible he only sees 3-4 lefties, and that would be enough for me to play him ahead of Wheeler with the added discount. I do prefer Gil ahead of him, but I’m going to play some Castillo pivots based on ownership.
And now we come to the exciting young Pirates ace.
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