Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 5/28

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-05-28 15:28:45 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

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 28, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday! We’ve got a very slow day in MLB, with just 6 games spread out all over the place. I usually wouldn’t Muse about a slate as small as tonight’s 3-gamer, but we’ve got pretty decent contests on both sites, so let’s go ahead and take a look and see what we find. Just keep in mind that the smaller the slate, the weirder you should get, and playing for random outliers is always a viable strategy.

Also note that if you’re playing the early 3-game slate on DK that starts at 1:10 PM ET, we’ll have some expert tags and analysis available in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ.

Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

Tonight’s pitching slate is very clearly split up into a two-man top tier and then a steep drop-off to everyone else. This should be reflected in ownership as well, so let’s see if we can find any reason to get away from this very obvious chalk:

TOP TIER DUO

• Paul Skenes vs. Cubs – 28% K, 3.9% BB, 3.00 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
• Nathan Eovaldi vs. Astros – 23.8% K, 5.5% BB, 3.65 ERA, 3.29 SIERA

Paul Skenes has allowed some runs this season, including 9 total in his last 2 starts. Even including a 5-run opening start in March and those 9 runs in his last 2 starts, he sits at a great 3.00 ERA with an even better 2.86 SIERA. When I look at those last 2 starts, I don’t see any logical reason why his SwStr% fell, and most likely, this was just random baseball stuff happening, with a .400 and .385 BABIP in those starts and a home run allowed in each. All I can really say here is that in his 11 starts this season, there are 5 starts where you wouldn’t have been buried by fading him. If you want a reason to fade him, that’s it. He is one of the best pitchers in baseball, but he hasn’t actually posted must-have DFS scores in 5 of his 11 starts. And, at least in theory, the Cubs’ very patient lineup could be able to make him work hard enough that even if he pitches great, which he probably will, maybe they can hold him to 5-6 innings rather than the 8 innings he could get in a must-have game.

For the record, I think you should play Skenes, at least on DK. He’s the best pitcher, but sure, there’s a case to be made to fade him.

In the 2025 season and in his last 4 starts this season, Nathan Eovaldi is very close to a Skenes-level pitcher. When he is on his game, which he has been recently, he is an extremely efficient pitcher with elite control who can pile up easy innings in any matchup. We’ve seen 29 strikeouts in his last 4 starts, all of which are 7-8 innings. Even earlier this season when he was struggling with power, he still reached 7 strikeouts in 3 of his 6 ‘bad’ starts. Hiding under the 3.65 ERA from those early home runs, we find a career-high 15.4% SwStr% that is considerably higher than Skenes’. We also find that all of his power issues came against lefties, and as always, that mostly means he needs to get past just one great hitter in the Houston lineup. The matchups for Eovaldi and Skenes are about the same for strikeouts, but I prefer Eovaldi’s matchup overall when factoring in splits. Sadly, even if Eovaldi is much lower owned than Skenes, he is still going to be chalk on DK, and we’re not getting any real sneakiness here, but I am going to play Eovaldi ahead of Skenes in lineups where I can only play one of them.

On FD, I’ll split them up pretty evenly but with a slight preference for Eovaldi.

TIER TWO AND EVERYTHING ELSE

• Spencer Arrighetti at Rangers – 22.9% K, 14.3% BB, 1.32 ERA, 4.74 SIERA
• Colin Rea at Pirates – 18.8% K, 7.3% BB, 4.83 ERA, 4.07 SIERA
• Patrick Corbin at Orioles – 16.8% K, 6.8% BB, 3.86 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
• Chris Bassitt vs. Blue Jays – 15.3% K, 8.6% BB, 5.51 ERA, 4.62 SIERA

These are not terrible options for pivoting off the chalk, but it’s a very clear drop-off. I’d also say that while there are a few spend-up bats, it’s quite possible, if not likely, that we just need the most raw points at pitcher regardless of salary. This is one of the big differences between a small 3-game slate and a normal bigger slate. On a 12-game slate, you would more often want to get 15 DK points from a $7,000 pitcher rather than 20 DK points from a $10,000 pitcher. But on a small slate, unless every single expensive bat goes off, which is never likely, you probably just need the 20 points.

There are three main scenarios in which you win by fading the top two pitchers:

1) One or both of them bust.
2) A cheaper pitcher has a ceiling game.
3) The expensive bats do so much damage that salary matters.

Options 1 and 3 explain themselves, so let’s start by seeing if there’s a clear path to a ceiling game from one of these cheaper pitchers.

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