Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Tuesday, August 27th
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 nice looking 9-game slate that features a good bit of everything. There are several strong pitchers up top as well as in the mid-tier, while on the hitting side, we find several offenses that compete with the weird little MIA/COL series in Coors Field. I am finding myself a solid group of 7-10 primary pitchers and stacks to build around, but within those groups, there is a lot of room for disagreement on the rankings.
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Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
I will split the pitchers up into two tiers, and after that, I am not seeing any reason to dip below $7,000 on DK or $8,000 on FD.
TOP TIER = FIVE GUYS!
Dylan Cease at Cardinals – 31.2% K, 8.2% BB, 3.43 ERA, 3.24 SIERA
Jack Flaherty vs. Orioles – 31.6% K, 4.7% BB, 3.00 ERA, 2.79 SIERA
Logan Gilbert vs. Rays – 25.4% K, 4.9% BB, 3.21 ERA, 3.44 SIERA
Spencer Schwellenbach at Twins – 28.2% K, 4.5% BB, 3.94 ERA, 3.12 SIERA
Logan Webb at Brewers – 20.8% K, 5.8% BB, 3.13 ERA, 3.58 SIERA
This is a tricky pitching slate, where most of the best pitchers are priced up in less-than-ideal matchups. Of the top pitchers, the one with the best matchup is Logan Gilbert, but he is also the lowest strikeout pitcher of the top four on this slate. Dylan Cease and Jack Flaherty have elite strikeout upside, and Spencer Schwellenbach appears to have joined them with 53 strikeouts over his last 6 starts.
Despite the strikeout numbers, the matchup and consistency are enough to call Logan Gilbert at least the cash game SP1. I’m giving him a pass on allowing six runs to the Dodgers last week and leaning into his elite 2.53 ERA and 0.82 WHIP in home games this season. Tampa just doesn’t have a good enough lineup to pose any real risk here, leaving him at the top of the board. However, he is also likely to be the most popular pitcher on this slate, and there are others with more upside, so I’ll be pivoting off of him fairly often in tournaments.
While the overall season numbers favor Jack Flaherty and Dylan Cease, the more we lean into recent data, the more Spencer Schwellenbach can make the case that he is the ace of this slate. Over his last six starts, Schwellenbach has a silly 36.3% K rate with just 3.4% walks, and they have not all been easy matchups. His strikeouts are much higher against righties, and I do expect we see at least 5 lefties for the Twins, but even with that, he’s not allowing any hard contact to lefties. The matchups for the top three strikeout pitchers are all close, and for me, Schwellenbach is the one I want to start with.
Jack Flaherty is a bit better with the control, but he and Dylan Cease are basically the same guy for strikeout upside. Neither of them have been posting ceiling games on a regular basis recently, but they are good and steady, and we know the upside is there. Given how close the talent level is, I would much rather be facing the Cardinals than the Orioles at this point, so I go with Dylan Cease slightly ahead of Jack Flaherty.
The bottom line here is that I would be thrilled with any of…
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