Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Tuesday, July 2nd
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’ve got a good-looking 11-game slate that appears to have a good mix of everything. We’ve got some high-end aces along with another Coors Field game, which is matched by another half dozen teams nearing a 5-run implied total. This gives us a lot of paths to lineup building, and at first glance, no clear and obvious best answer, which usually also mean that ownership gets somewhat spread out.
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
As I narrow things down, I’ll end up splitting this tier into a couple different pools, but we’ll start by calling the top tier these 9 pitchers who are priced at $8,000 and up on DK.
TOP TIER PITCHING
Tarik Skubal at Twins – 29.1% K, 4.9% BB, 2.32 ERA, 2.93 SIERA
Dylan Cease at Rangers – 31.3% K, 7.5% BB, 3.84 ERA, 3.08 SIERA
Reynaldo Lopez vs. Giants – 25.6% K, 8.5% BB, 1.70 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
George Kirby vs. Orioles – 24.2% K, 2.3% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.29 SIERA
Luis Gil vs. Reds – 28% K, 12.7% BB, 3.15 ERA, 4.06 SIERA
Nathan Eovaldi vs. Padres – 24.7% K, 8.7% BB, 3.45 ERA, 3.75 SIERA
Bobby Miller vs. Diamondbacks – 24.1% K, 13.8% BB, 6.75 ERA, 4.49 SIERA
Grayson Rodriguez at Mariners – 25.7% K, 7.2% BB, 3.72 ERA, 3.61 SIERA
Brady Singer vs. Rays – 22.6% K, 6.9% BB, 3.12 ERA, 3.70 SIERA
Tarik Skubal and Dylan Cease are in a tier of their own, with both skill set and salary. Realistically, there won’t be a lot of lineups where you can play both of them together on DK, and bringing the matchups in, it’s not immediately clear which one is the priority. While I generally consider Skubal to be the better overall pitcher, mostly due to the more bankable control, he is also a good 10+ pitches behind Cease in pitch-count ceiling, and when adding in the slightly higher raw strikeout ability of Cease, that gives Cease the edge in a best-case-scenario outing. If I’m going to pay over $10,000 for a pitcher, I’m playing for that best-case scenario, so officially, I give a very slight lean to Cease.
I’m out on Luis Gil on this slate at this salary. It’s just been too long since he’s looked right, and the poor control looks far more believable than the strikeout upside. With that being said, he absolutely has a ceiling, and this is a matchup with plenty of strikeouts. If you want to include him in your primary pool, have at it, but he’ll miss my cut. As I get up to 30+ lineups, I’ll add Gil back into the MME pool for that upside potential, but this is a guy with a 19.2% K rate and 13.5% walks in his last 5 starts, and that is just not OK on this slate.
I’m also totally out on Bobby Miller until he gives us some sign that we’re going to see the 2023 version of himself.
The next group of 5 pitchers is quite a tangled mess. We’ve got lower-strikeout pitchers with great control, led by George Kirby and then Brady Singer. We also have guys with strikeouts in the 24-26% range who have some upside, with the likes of Reynaldo Lopez, Nathan Eovaldi, and Grayson Rodriguez. All of these skill sets pale in comparison to Skubal and Cease, so I’d want to be getting either a sizeable discount and/or a clear matchup advantage.
I don’t see that matchup advantage for…
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