Million Dollar Musings: Tuesday, August 22
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! Many thanks to Cards for filling in the last few days so I could waltz into a hurricane or whatever that was out there. I’ll be here with you for the next couple days, coming to you live from my mom’s basement in Denver, before heading off to Philadelphia for another weekend of DFS shenanigans.
We’ve got a big 12-game slate tonight that features a whole bunch of everything. The pitching pool is deep but not exactly thrilling at any salary level. On the hitting side, I can make some sort of case for pretty much every team on the slate, but the Braves will be the one thing that jumps out clearly ahead of the pack. Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of these MLB DFS picks for Tuesday night.
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We’ve got a fairly deep pitching pool. I’ll sort based on DK salaries, which gives us this top tier of eight pitchers priced at $8,500 and above:
Blake Snell vs. Marlins – 31% K, 13.7% BB, 2.65 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
Zac Gallen vs. Rangers – 26.1% K, 5.1% BB, 3.17 ERA, 3.65 SIERA
Lucas Giolito vs. Reds – 24.8% K, 8.4% BB, 4.44 ERA, 4.21 SIERA
Justin Verlander vs. Red Sox – 20.2% K, 7.5% BB, 3.36 ERA, 4.64 SIERA
Jesus Luzardo at Padres – 27.7% K, 7.1% BB, 4.13 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
Bailey Ober at Brewers – 24.6% K, 4.8% BB, 3.40 ERA, 3.94 SIERA
Bobby Miller at Guardians – 22.4% K, 7.1% BB, 3.70 ERA, 4.16 SIERA
Yusei Kikuchi at Orioles – 24.9% K, 6.6% BB, 3.44 ERA, 3.93 SIERA
When Blake Snell is on the mound, I am always most interested in seeing what everyone else is going to think of Blake Snell on that day. My hunch here is that, because of the matchup, he should project well enough to be the highest-owned pitcher and certainly the higher-owned of the $10k+ aces. I certainly get it, but I also certainly don’t love it. We know his control is a wild card, and even his strikeouts have been very up and down. The consistent thing about Snell is his pitch count, which always gives him the upside to be the top pitcher on a slate when combined with his strikeout ability. Where I stand here is that Snell is my favorite raw points spend-up in a vacuum with no regards to ownership or risk, but I don’t plan to make spending up a priority tonight.
Zac Gallen is the best pitcher on this slate, but he’s also facing the Rangers, while Snell is facing the Marlins. Gallen is a matchup-proof ace but more from a real-life perspective than a DFS perspective. He’s absolutely playable and in my pool, but like with Snell, I’d prefer to spend down.
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