Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Tuesday, August 20th
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 Tuesday! We have a doozy of a 13-game slate with almost no bad pitching and no ideal hitting conditions. This leads to a massive tangle of offense that is difficult to wade through. Because of that, I’m going to be quite narrowed down on the pitching side, although you could absolutely spread out there if you wanted to as well.
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Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
There are almost no bad pitchers anywhere on this slate. You can dig down 15-20 pitchers deep and find a reason to play them all if you really want to. I’m not going to list every single decent pitcher, I am just going to try and narrow things down as quickly and concisely as possible.
TOP TIER DUO
Cole Ragans vs. Angels – 28.9% K, 7.8% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.41 SIERA
Zack Wheeler at Braves – 27.5% K, 7.3% BB, 2.72 ERA, 3.49 SIERA
While we have a plethora of good pitchers, DK has made it kind of easy to just play the two best and move on with your day. There are several pitchers in the next tier who have the same ceiling as these aces, but none have their consistency and pitch count ceiling from start to start. On FD, they are priced up a little more, but it’s still not all that difficult to just play these two aces.
My hunch here is that Cole Ragans ends up slightly more popular than Wheeler, although it’s unlikely to be a big enough gap to matter. The matchups are a plus for both Ragans and Wheeler, as both of these guys are up over 30% strikeouts to right-handed batters. Ragans could face 9 righties, while Wheeler likely sees 6. The skill sets between these two are remarkably similar, the innings and strikeout upside are remarkably similar, and the matchups are quite similar as well. I’m going to say that I very slightly prefer Ragans over Wheeler, but it’s close enough that I would gladly shift to Wheeler if we see a sizeable gap in projected ownership.
The bigger picture is less about which of these two aces to play and more about how easy it is to just spend up for the aces and let everyone else chase all the question marks in the next tier.
THE MID-TIER THAT COULD INCLUDE ALMOST EVERYONE
Luis Gil vs. Guardians – 27.9% K, 11.9% BB, 3.25 ERA, 4.06 SIERA
Robbie Ray vs. White Sox – 32.6% K, 13% BB, 6.00 ERA, 3.76 SIERA
Ronel Blanco vs. Red Sox – 24.3% K, 9.6% BB, 2.89 ERA, 4.15 SIERA
Bailey Ober at Padres – 26.5% K, 6.4% BB, 3.49 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Jose Berrios vs. Reds – 18.8% K, 7.1% BB, 3.85 ERA, 4.46 SIERA
Cody Bradford vs. Pirates – 22.8% K, 4.1% BB, 3.50 ERA, 3.94 SIERA
Shane Baz at A’s – 20.1% K, 8.8% BB, 4.21 ERA, 4.54 SIERA
Nick Pivetta at Astros – 30% K, 5.9% BB, 4.49 ERA, 3.21 SIERA
Erick Fedde vs. Brewers – 21.1% K, 6.7% BB, 3.40 ERA, 4.15 SIERA
As I said above, there are plenty of pitchers here who have the same type of ceiling as Ragans and Wheeler. Most notably…
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