Million Dollar Musings: Tuesday, April 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 Tuesday! We’ve got a very interesting 11-game slate tonight that features two horrendous pitchers in Coors Field, an ace, several quality pitchers in good matchups, and a lot of high-end offenses in wild card matchups that could go either way.
I’ll skip the early morning shenanigans, jump right into it, and see what we can find in the way of MLB DFS picks for this Tuesday night slate.
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The Ace And Some Other Guys
Spencer Strider at Padres – 38.6% K, 8.9% BB, 2.74 ERA, 2.46 SIERA
Logan Gilbert vs. Brewers – 23.3% K, 6.4% BB, 3.16 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Clayton Kershaw vs. Mets – 27.2% K, 4.8% BB, 2.43 ERA, 3.07 SIERA
Blake Snell vs. Braves – 31.1% K, 10.1% BB, 3.70 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Jordan Montgomery vs. Diamondbacks – 21.9% K, 5.1% BB, 3.39 ERA, 3.63 SIERA
Marcus Stroman at A’s – 21.7% K, 6.9% BB, 3.22 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
Sonny Gray at Red Sox – 24.5% K, 7.7% BB, 2.77 ERA, 3.77 SIERA
Chris Sale vs. Twins
Nathan Eovaldi at Royals – 23.1% K, 4.4% BB, 4.18 ERA, 3.48 SIERA
Spencer Strider has not been super-efficient this season, and his control has been a little spotty, but he is still just in a tier of his own for DFS purposes. The strikeouts are up over 40%, with 9 K’s in each of his first three starts. While the matchup is not ideal, his upside is matchup-proof, and he is the no-brainer SP1 for me tonight. He is just expensive enough to say that I’m not going to go out of my way to force him in everywhere, but I’m not overthinking it with a guy who is just this much better than everyone else.
Clayton Kershaw is priced right next to Strider, and while he may still be a better real-life pitcher than Strider, they are not in the same DFS stratosphere. We saw one good strikeout game from him to open the season, but then he was right back down to four strikeouts in six innings in each of his last two starts. He’s more than 10% behind Strider in K%, and that gap is simply too big for the old lefty to overcome. There are not many lineup builds on DK that will allow for both of them, which means Kershaw gets the dreaded ‘MME flier only’ tag. Sorry buddy, I’m rooting for ya!
Logan Gilbert has looked sharp so far this year with a 20:4 K:BB ratio in three starts. His first two seasons in the majors were strong, with trustable control and above-average strikeouts. I’m not at all convinced that we’re seeing any new level yet, but even at just his career numbers of a 24.1% K rate with 6.1% BB, it puts him right near the top of this list. The Brewers have a lot of strikeouts in their lineup, and other than Marcus Stroman, I would choose this matchup over anything else in this tier. His DK salary makes him my preference for an SP2. On FD, I’m more interested in getting up to Strider, or saving another $2,000, but he’s very much in play.
Jordan Montgomery and Marcus Stroman are the two pitchers in a similar bucket as Gilbert. They are more about control and real-life skills than they are about DFS upside. In general, I prefer Montgomery for consistency ahead of Stroman, but tonight’s matchups sway things in the direction of Stroman. This is just a DK discussion, as FD is way too excited about Stroman’s trip to Oakland, pricing him at a goofy $11,000. I might pay $11,000 for Stroman if it came with a Toyota Camry as well. But on DK, Stroman is priced alongside Gilbert, with both of them coming in below Montgomery. If I’m chasing affordable quality starts, I go Gilbert, then Stroman. Montgomery probably just doesn’t make the pool for my first 50 lineups tonight.
The other guy who fits in that Gilbert type of category is Nathan Eovaldi. Like Gilbert, he’s more about control, but the strikeouts have come up a little in the early going this season. He got tagged for six runs against the Royals last week, but a 7:0 K:BB ratio in that start with a goofy .529 BABIP tells me he’s fine. I would play him ahead of Montgomery with the discount on DK but would prefer to spend the extra few bucks for Gilbert and Stroman.
The wild card matchup of the night is Sonny Gray vs. Chris Sale. Gray has allowed just one run in three starts this season, but it’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s one start of extreme sunshine, thorn-less roses, and then some Sonny Gray shenanigans around it. Surrounding that bizarro world 13-K start are two games with low strikeouts, shaky control, and extremely fortunate BABIP and HR/FB. I also see that it’s possible he’s still getting the weird Twins pitch count nonsense, where Rocco Baldelli just doesn’t love letting his guys go more than five innings unless they are in top form. I note all of this to say that, while Gray clearly has upside, I just don’t care for him at all at this salary on this slate.
As fortunate as Gray has been on batted balls this season, Chris Sale has gone the opposite way with a silly high .406 BABIP and 41.7% HR/FB rate. He has been hit hard, so it’s not entirely fluky, but the home runs will not continue at this rate. The strikeouts appear to be back. But the control is a huge question mark, as is the pitch count, topping out at 81 pitches so far. I don’t trust him one iota at this point, but he’s also priced down a full tier below everyone else we’ve touched on so far. He is below $8k on both DK and FD, and that is quite likable for a guy with a 30% strikeout rate who used to be the best pitcher in the league. If I’m going to take a high risk dart throw, I am going with Sale ahead of Blake Snell.
Speaking of Blake Snell, yikes. Yeah, he has that ability to pop off at any time, but the poor control is far more bankable than the high strikeouts. He gives out free passes and gets hit hard and in the air against a Braves team with patient, powerful right-handed bats. There are a few easier outs with some strikeouts at the bottom of the order, and sure, it’s possible that this works out. But it won’t be working out in my lineups.
A TRIO OF CHEAP NONSENSE
Clarke Schmidt vs. Angels – 23.2% K, 9.7% BB, 3.95 ERA, 3.95 SIERA
Ken Waldichuk vs. Cubs – 20.1% K, 7.8% BB, 6.52 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
Dean Kremer at Nationals – 16.7% K, 7% BB, 3.79 ERA, 4.65 SIERA
We had a similar situation last week with Dean Kremer, where he was cheap and in a good matchup on a slate where we needed cheap pitching. And shocker of shockers, he was awful for the third time in three starts this season. He’s such a low strikeout pitcher to begin with, that it’s downright scary that he’s managed to drop even further to just 13.8% K with 9% swinging strikes so far this season. Yeah, the salary is nice against Washington, but I just can’t do it.
Ken Waldichuk is a thing that makes me go hmmmm. He was supposed to be good, and then he almost was. And now, uh, not so much. He made seven starts last season with a completely acceptable 22.6% K rate and 6.8% walks. With more strikeout ability than expected from his minor league numbers, I was very hopeful coming into this season. But he’s fallen flat on his Waldi Face so far this season with a 10.20 ERA and just 15.1% strikeouts to go with 9.6% walks and a big drop in swinging strikes. It’s only 15 innings, and he at least has a high pitch count going for him and the helpful home ballpark, but it takes a bit of imagination to envision him being DFS useful tonight. Personally, I have this goofy, unreasonable hope that he puts it together, and officially, I’m playing him as my preferred cheap SP2 on DK. I was hoping he’d be way off the radar, but he seems more likely to end up as the chalky-ish cheap SP2. However, I don’t think anyone down here is popular enough to worry about.
So then that would leave Clarke Schmidt as the go-to cheap option, and I expect him to be the most popular in this range. My take on it is that I don’t see any reason at all to think that Schmidt has DFS upside. He hasn’t topped four innings yet this season, and his decent-ish numbers from 2022 were out of the bullpen. If he stays in the rotation, he should get there eventually. But as of this moment, he has never once in his entire life reached five innings in a major league baseball game. Not one time. Does he get there tonight? Yeah, maybe, but whoop-dee-doo. We’re hoping that maybe, just maybe, an average-at-best strikeout pitcher with borderline control gets five innings. I’ll pass.
PITCHING CLIFF NOTES
We have one elite ace in Spencer Strider, though it’s a tough enough matchup, along with his early season control issues, that I’m not calling this a must-play at his salary. He is my first choice for an SP1 on both sites, but I am willing to mix it up early and often.
On FD, that mixing up will be some Logan Gilbert at $9,700 and then looking to save even more salary with three pitchers under $8k in Blake Snell, Chris Sale, and Ken Waldichuk. Personally, while I don’t trust Snell or Sale, I have far less trust in Snell against the Braves. That means Sale will be my go-to as a cheap option, followed by Waldichuk.
On DK, the pricing is quite different, most notably with Marcus Stroman. While Strider is up over $10k, both Gilbert and Stroman are under $9k, making them an interesting pairing. I have no issue with Jordan Montgomery or Nathan Eovaldi, but I prefer Gilbert/Stroman. Then we have some savings with Chris Sale at $7,500 and bigger savings with Ken Waldichuk at $6,100.
That is my primary pool, though I wouldn’t yell at you for including Clayton Kershaw, Blake Snell or some other cheap nonsense like Clarke Schmidt in your pool.
Tuesday Hitting: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This is a strange and tricky slate for bats. We have the very obvious Coors Field game with bad pitching, but it’s still the Pirates and Rockies holding the bats there. Then we have a gaggle of good teams in OK, but not really perfect, situations. I’m going to try to sort them into a couple different buckets, but really, it’s one big glob after the first game.
TOP TIER OFFENSE
Colorado Rockies vs. Vince Velasquez
Pittsburgh Pirates at Jose Urena
Baltimore Orioles at Josiah Gray
NY Yankees vs. Jose Suarez
Houston Astros vs. Chris Bassitt
Toronto Blue Jays at Jose Urquidy
Last night was about as Coors Field as Coors Field gets. The Pirates scored 14 runs on 16 hits with a grand total of three extra base hits. And only two of them from players in the starting lineup. They were certainly good DFS plays at their salaries, but there was not a single Pittsburgh bat at 20 DK points. For a team scoring 14 runs, it was all kind of underwhelming. And that is exactly the problem with mediocre teams at Coors Field, especially on big slates. You still need a handful of players who put up big individual scores. A team scoring 14 runs spread out all over the place is only moderately useful.
At first glance, this certainly looks like a similar spot for Pittsburgh. They are facing a terribly low strikeout pitcher, so there will be balls in play. At Coors Field, a lot of those balls in play are bound to be hits. And…whoop-dee-doo? I just don’t see the power bats to get excited about here. Jose Urena has been allowing more power this season through three starts, but long-term, he’s a ground ball pitcher facing a team with a bunch of ground ball hitters. The two cheaper lefties with fly balls that I’ll sprinkle in outside of stacks are Carlos Santana and Jack Suwinski. I expect runs, but basically, I just don’t care. All I can do is throw my hands in the air. Like I just don’t care.
Where I see power bats and a more power-prone pitcher is on the Rockies’ side. Vince Velasquez has five straight seasons of a HR/9 over 1.30, with fly balls over 46% each of the past two seasons. On top of that, his control is unpredictable, and this guy can go off the rails in a hurry. The stand-out here is C.J. Cron, and he’s really the only bat I can get wildly excited about. But I do love the DK salaries on Jurickson Profar, Elehuris Montero, and Elias Diaz, along with the FD salaries on Kris Bryant and Ryan McMahon. I am calling Colorado the top stack on this slate, but they won’t necessarily be my highest-owned, pending ownership projections. It’s too big of a slate, with too many better teams, to go overboard with a mediocre lineup.
The first two teams that jump out at me for obvious Coors-beating upside are the Orioles and Yankees.
Josiah Gray has been a little less horrific this season, and he’s changed his pitch mix slightly that has added in more ground balls in place of the previous 50%+ fly balls. However, with that, his strikeouts have dropped to 18%, and I need to see more than three starts with moderate usage of one new pitch before I assume he’s a different guy. But what I can say is that it’s possible enough that he is not the world’s biggest jabroni anymore. So while I do like the Orioles here, I’m mostly just focused on the top four of Cedric Mullins, Adley Rutschman, Ryan Mountcastle, and Anthony Santander. If Gray has improved, those four big bats still have the fly ball power to hurt him. And if we get 2022 Gray, then they hit 3 HR each.
Jose Suarez is a fine-ish pitcher, but he basically just throws strikes and gets hit in the air by righties. It helps him a little to see Stanton out of the lineup, but Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres are top of the line plays here. And then this lineup gets extremely easy to fit in with the likes of Anthony Volpe, Jose Trevino, Aaron Hicks, and Oswaldo Cabrera. For the full stack, I prefer the cheap bottom-of-the-order Yankees ahead of the less-cheap bottom-of-the-order Orioles.
After Coors Field, the Yankees, and the Orioles, the game I’m most intrigued by is the Blue Jays vs. Astros. These are decent pitchers, but they aren’t great pitchers, and they are both star-studded lineups. Because of the talent of the pitchers, my preference here are individual spend-up bats, with Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker on one side and the Toronto top five on the other side. Jose Urquidy is more power prone to righties, which is ideal for this Blue Jays lineup with Vladimir Guerrero, Matt Chapman, Bo Bichette, and George Springer all checking in as top plays. They are all pricey enough that I don’t love the full stack, and I also don’t have a strong enough lean between them to focus on one over the other. I’ll gladly play any of them here as positional needs dictate. For full stacking, my preference is on the Houston side, as I’m not fully sold that Chris Bassitt is back at full strength. After an awful first start, his control has been unusually sketchy, and he doesn’t have enough strikeout ability to overcome that.
TIER TWO JUMBLE
Atlanta Braves at Blake Snell
LA Angels at Clarke Schmidt
Washington Nationals vs. Dean Kremer
Boston Red Sox vs. Sonny Gray
Minnesota Twins at Chris Sale
Texas Rangers at Brad Keller
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Drey Jameson
LA Dodgers vs. Tylor Megill
Seattle Mariners vs. Colin Rea
Chicago Cubs at Ken Waldichuk
The first thing I’ll say here is that you could include any of these teams in the top tier. Or you could replace my top tier teams like Toronto and Houston with any of these teams. Or you could have other teams that I’ve skipped, or remove any of these teams altogether. This is why I call it a jumble, because it really is.
What I want to do is figure out where I’m stacking, where I’m picking out individual bats, and where I’m only playing salary savers if needed.
The first team that jumps out for stacking is the Braves. Blake Snell is either going to have his best stuff and shut them down, or he’s going to be Blake Snell, making it impossible to predict which Braves get walked and which ones hit the ball in the air. I’ll be fine to land on Austin Riley on his own, but mostly, I just want to be stacking.
Clarke Schmidt looks to me like a below average pitcher to lefties. and just maybe OK, but with fly balls to righties. I love, love, love Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout tonight.
The Red Sox vs. Twins game is as wild card-ish for the hitting as it was for the pitching. Officially, I want to play some Rafael Devers and Byron Buxton, and then I’m just throwing a few ‘just in case’ stacks against the wall. I don’t expect a bloodbath on either side here, but once I’m 15-20 lineups into my day, these teams will crack the list.
I would love to attack Dean Kremer, but other than a few MME stacks just because they are cheap, I can’t be messing with the Nationals on an 11-game slate.
Another team that I really want to like more than I do is Texas against Brad Keller. But Keller is again looking real-life respectable, with his 50%+ ground balls to both sides of the plate and even a few more strikeouts than usual. Marcus Semien is the only bat here that thrills me, but in comparison to other spend-ups on this slate, he’s kind of just a leftover. I’ll stack Texas before I get to Boston or Minnesota, but like everything here, it’s just OK.
I always love the way the Cardinals lineup looks on paper, but Drey Jameson is probably going to be a good pitcher with above average strikeout ability and at least moderate ground balls. I’m most interested in just hoping that Jameson is still limited to 4-5 innings, and I do have plenty of interest in St. Louis stacks against the Arizona bullpen.
Tylor Megill has strikeout ability to righties, and that’s about it. Mookie Betts doesn’t particularly care about strikeout ability, and then we’ve got three lefties to prioritize with Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, and James Outman. When I look at this tier, the Dodgers jump up right behind Atlanta as my second favorite stack.
Last week, Milwaukee was forced to call up journeyman Colin Rea, who surprised with a strong 5+ innings in San Diego. Just be aware that this is not some high-upside prospect; he’s a 32-year-old filler with a career 18.4% K rate in 160 major league innings, mostly back in 2016. I would love to go see another Colin Rea show, but If You Get There Before I Do, just know that I’ll be loading up on Mariners power bats, leaning on the reverse splits he’s shown in the past. Julio Rodriguez, Teoscar Hernandez, and Eugenio Suarez are priority plays for me, and the stack is coming in third among this tier for me. That’s My Story and I’m sticking to it.
Finally, while I am playing Ken Waldichuk as my cheap SP2, his early career numbers against righties are pretty scary, with a .310 ISO allowed. Patrick Wisdom has massive power, and guys like Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ are on my radar as well.
Let’s Talk Salary
Basically, as I walked through those top couple tiers, it didn’t do much to help sort things out. I’ll give you my stack rankings and favorite spend-ups in the Cliff Notes, but it really is all so jumbled that it’s just one big glob.
Let’s see if maybe we can get any clarity by seeing where the value is, and then we can build from the bottom up.
On FD, as usual, salary means something different. Even in a Spencer Strider lineup, you have $3,000 per bat, going down to Gilbert gives you almost $3,200 per bat, and going down from there, you can play just about anyone. This means that there is little reason to goof around with nonsense stacks like Washington, and teams with cheaper bottom of the orders like Texas, Minnesota, and Boston are much less interesting to me. That is because you can get bats like this around the $3k mark:
Kris Bryant, Ryan McMahon, Jurickson Profar, Anthony Santander, Carlos Correa, Daulton Varsho, Alex Bregman, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Eugenio Suarez, Teoscar Hernandez, Ozzie Albies, J.D. Martinez, James Outman, Seiya Suzuki
I’m not going to play sub-par nonsense to fill out a stack when I can just play bats like that instead.
As usual, it’s a bit trickier on DK. Although if you’re passing on Strider, you may only need a couple cheap bats to make everything work.
So, this is what I notice as I work through DK salary savers vs. FD salary savers. On DK, there are plenty of decent sub-$3K bats, but none of them are standing out on their own. They are all grouped with other teammates that I really only like as part of at least a mini-stack, if not a full stack. The way I’m looking to build tonight is to use spend-up bats as my fill-ins and using salary savers in my stacks. With that in mind, these are the groupings that I’m looking at. It’s a lot of names, so I’ll sort them out at the end:
Yankees – Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera, Jose Trevino, Aaron Hicks
Orioles – Terrin Vavra, Adam Frazier
Nationals – Dominic Smith, Jeimer Candelario, Alex Call
Twins – Jose Miranda, Ryan Jeffers, Kyle Garlick, Michael Taylor (It’s nutty how cheap this team is after Buxton/Correa)
Red Sox – Triston Casas, Reese McGuire, Jarren Duran, Christian Arroyo
Rangers – Jonah Heim, Robbie Grossman, Josh Smith, Leody Taveras
Astros – Mauricio Dubon, Corey Julks, Jake Meyers, Martin Maldonado
Blue Jays – Brandon Belt, Cavan Biggio
Pirates – Jack Suwinski, Carlos Santana, Rodolfo Castro, Canaan Smith-Njigba
Rockies – Elehuris Montero, Yonathan Daza, Ezequiel Tovar
Braves – Vaughn Grissom, Kevin Pillar, Marcell Ozuna
Dodgers – Miguel Vargas, Jason Heyward, Miguel Vargas
OK, now, a couple ways to look at this. The first thing is which of these teams am I willing to stack just with the cheap names listed. That would be the Yankees, Nationals, Astros, Twins, and Pirates. You’ll be able to add in at least one expensive bat to any of these stacks, but these are teams where I am OK with just cheap guys plus one spend-up in the stack.
On the flip side, with the Orioles, Blue Jays, Rangers, Rockies, Braves, and Dodgers, I really don’t have interest in building stacks around the cheap bats mentioned here. So with those teams, I’d need to be able to start with three high-end bats and then only use these names as fillers.
You can have different ideas about which players or teams you prefer to build this way, but I just wanted to walk you through that kind of thought process as to how I decide which teams to use as expensive stacks vs. cheap stacks.
HITTING CLIFF NOTES
This is a lot to sift through. Other than the very obvious Coors Field game, which I still don’t love, it’s just a tangled mess. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Officially, because we like things to be official, these are my favorites:
Top Stacks, Ownership Factored In – Yankees, Braves, Orioles, Astros, Rockies, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Pirates
Favorite Individual Bats – Aaron Judge, C.J. Cron, Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Vladimir Guerrero, Yordan Alvarez, Bryan Reynolds, Kyle Tucker, Rafael Devers, Bo Bichette, Matt Chapman, Freddie Freeman, Byron Buxton
There are so many great individual bats that I will be focusing as much as possible on using my salary on those one-offs and using my cheap plays to fill in stacks.