Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Thursday 5/7

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-05-07 15:59:05 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 7, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Thursday! We’ve got an early start with a 6-game slate on DK kicking off at 12:35 PM ET. That is some pre-lunch baseball in a lot of time zones, so there are food-related decisions to be made! The evening slate is just a 4-gamer on both sites, starting a little earlier than usual at 6:40 PM ET. It appears as if the weather is going to cooperate on both slates, so let’s jump right on in and see what we find.

Thursday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings

We have a very sketchy pitching slate on this early 6-gamer. I’m going to use $7,500 as the cutoff between tiers, but it’s really sort of a day where there is only one pitcher who would even maybe be in the top tier on most slates.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Seth Lugo vs. Guardians – 20.6% K, 8.7% BB, 3.81 ERA, 4.43 SIERA
• Shota Imanaga vs Reds – 22% K, 5% BB, 3.44 ERA, 4.12 SIERA
• MacKenzie Gore at Yankees – 27.7% K, 9.9% BB, 4.26 ERA, 3.77 SIERA
• Mitch Keller at Diamondbacks – 19.8% K, 6.9% BB, 3.93 ERA, 4.25 SIERA
• Zac Gallen vs. Pirates – 20.4% K, 8% BB, 4.77 ERA, 4.31 SIERA

Shota Imanaga looks like the clearly chalky SP1 on this slate. He’s been excellent this season with a 27% K rate and a 6.3% walk rate, giving him a 2.40 ERA and 3.37 SIERA through 7 starts. The strikeouts still look a little on the fluky side, as it’s really been a couple good starts propping up his numbers. But I do see enough in the swings and misses to think that he may be able to approach the 25% K rate that he showed back in 2024. We shift back to more hitter-friendly conditions in Wrigley today, which certainly hurts Imanaga and his fly balls, but this is also a great matchup for strikeouts, with the Reds having 5 high-strikeout batters in the projected lineup. With his control and adding in a few extra strikeouts from the matchup, Imanaga could be the top pitcher on this slate even if he allows a couple home runs. It’s not hard to afford him at $9,000. I’ll just say that while I do think he’s pretty clearly the top option, we could see the ownership getting pretty extreme. He’s good, but this is not a guy I’d be excited to play at 70% ownership with the downgrade from the weather. But let’s see if we can even find two reasonable pivots.

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