Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Thursday, September 26th
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 today, with the main slate being a 6-gamer on DK that starts at 12:35 PM ET. The FD slate starts at the same time but includes just the first 4 games. I’m mostly going to focus on the DK slate but will add some FD notes into the Cliff Notes section.
You will quickly notice the severe lack of good pitching on this slate, but we also have a lack of good offenses, which leads to a lot of uninspiring dart throwing on both sides of the ledger.
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Thursday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The good news is we are all playing with the same slate, so your opponents also won’t have any good pitchers in their lineups!
Michael Wacha at Nationals – 21.6% K, 6.6% BB, 3.28 ERA, 4.13 SIERA
Mitch Keller vs. Brewers – 21.3% K, 6.4% BB, 4.21 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
Tyler Anderson at White Sox – 18.8% K, 9.4% BB, 3.70 ERA, 4.81 SIERA
Kumar Rocker at A’s – 3rd career start
Aaron Civale at Pirates – 21.6% K, 7.7% BB, 4.53 ERA, 4.29 SIERA
Reese Olson vs. Rays – 21.8% K, 7.3% BB, 3.49 ERA, 3.97 SIERA
Kyle Gibson at Rockies – 20.8% K, 9.3% BB, 4.13 ERA, 4.43 SIERA
JT Ginn vs. Rangers – 22.5% K, 5.8% BB, 4.40 ERA, 3.76 SIERA
Chris Flexen vs. Angels – 17% K, 9.1% BB, 5.15 ERA, 5.02 SIERA
Yippee! You know it’s going to be an exciting slate when Michael Wacha is the most expensive pitcher on the board. The only pitcher on this entire slate above a 22% K rate is a rookie who has not thrown more than 74 pitches or 4 innings and is not likely to top that here. That leaves us stuck choosing from a group of mediocre pitchers with below-average strikeout rates. Again, I say…yippee!
I would say I feel kind of OK with Michael Wacha as an ‘unlikely to get shelled’ kind of guy. As I’ve said a couple times this week, it’s not necessarily a good thing for a mid-level starter to be in a must-win game. While it does mean he won’t have any pitch count, it also means they are not going to let him stay out there if he gets in trouble. The lack of strikeouts in the Washington lineup means there’s a lack of realistic upside here. The good news is no one on this slate has realistic upside, so if salary is no thing at all, I guess I’d call Wacha the SP1. But just barely, and I will in no way prioritize him if the salary is not just sitting around.
Mitch Keller has been all over the map this season. Even in just the last few weeks, we’ve seen 2 disaster starts with 8 runs allowed and also 3 starts of 7+ strikeouts and 6+ innings. My lean here is more towards the downside, as the Brewers should play their top lineup since they still have an outside chance to get the coveted first round bye. There are similar pitchers at lower salaries with better matchups.
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