Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Tuesday 7/21

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-07-21 19:23:58 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks today. Cheese, one of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy sports and a winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize on both DraftKings and FanDuel, is here to muse about the July 21, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Tuesday! We have another big slate on tap but with a very different setup than what we saw yesterday. Even though the top pitchers didn’t dominate last night, it would sure be nice to have a few more of them to choose from on this weak pitching slate. On the hitting side, we have both sides of the Coors Field game way out ahead of the pack, but then there is a massive tangle of pretty good offenses beyond that.

This slate also has a couple of very important games with MLB weather concerns. Both the PIT/NYY and BAL/BOS games are at some risk of a PPD. For now, I’m writing this as if they play, but you’ll need to keep an eye on those situations as the day progresses, and hopefully, we’ll know one way or another before lock.

Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

There is kind of only one ace on this slate, with Chase Burns priced up accordingly, and then the rest of the spend-up pitchers come with questions marks in their skill sets, matchups, weather, or all three.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Chase Burns at Mariners – 28.6% K, 9% BB, 2.54 ERA, 3.60 SIERA
• Kevin Gausman vs. Rays – 24.7% K, 6.8% BB, 4.33 ERA, 3.77 SIERA
• Drew Rasmussen at Blue Jays – 25% K, 4.3% BB, 3.26 ERA, 3.36 SIERA
• Ranger Suarez vs. Orioles – 25.8% K, 6.9% BB, 3.15 ERA, 3.59 SIERA
• Kyle Bradish at Red Sox – 23.3% K, 11% BB, 3.61 ERA, 4.30 SIERA

This is one of those slates where we have a very clear SP1, but it’s also not immediately clear whether or not it’s completely necessary to prioritize him at his salary. The 28.6% K rate of Chase Burns is the highest mark on this slate, and he gets as big of a ballpark upgrade as you can get, going from Cincinnati to Seattle, but he’s also not really had that many ceiling games where you would have needed him for $11,500 on DK or $10,500 on FD. The FD salary looks about right, while that DK salary is giving me some pause. He hasn’t topped 25 DK points since mid-May, and at $11,500, I don’t really want a 20-point start. It also makes me nervous seeing an 11.9% walk rate to lefties this season, with Seattle likely using 7 lefties against him. For raw points and best-case-scenario ceiling, he’s the clear SP1, but I just don’t know that I have to have him. The problem with fading Burns is less about Burns and more about how weak the slate is past him.

Kevin Gausman is a fine pitcher, but his control has been pretty wonky for the last month, up to a 12.4% BB rate in his last 6 starts, and this is not a great strikeout matchup for his splits. Tampa will likely use 7 lefties against him, where he has a simply average 22.3% K rate this season. I think he’s fine, but even more so than with Burns, I just don’t really want to spend this salary on him.

Drew Rasmussen is off my board completely for now. I am sure he’ll be fine, but he fell apart in his last couple starts before the All-Star Break, and with how cautiously Tampa treats their pitchers, his pitch count could be a huge issue after such a long layoff.

There are weather concerns with the Kyle Bradish vs. Ranger Suarez matchup, but assuming it plays, these are both pretty good pitchers, at least sometimes. Bradish has been all over the place, with some great starts interspersed with mediocrity. I am encouraged seeing 7+ innings in 3 of his last 5 starts, but both the strikeouts and the walks seem like complete guesswork. He clearly has a very high best-case-scenario ceiling, but I also can’t trust a $9,000 pitcher who has walk rates over 10% to both sides of the plate this season and no consistency with the strikeouts. He’s fine-ish, I suppose.

I generally prefer Ranger Suarez to Bradish, but there are issues here as well. The main one is that he hasn’t pitched since July 5th, when he left after 53 pitches with adductor tightness (what’s an adductor?) and a groin strain. Suarez is a guy who needs innings to reach his ceiling, and I’m not overly optimistic that he gets those innings after the layoff and injury concerns. Baltimore is a good matchup for LHP, so I’d play him ahead of Bradish and Gausman, but I’m still not crazy about this one either.

You can see why the Chase Burns situation is so tricky now. He may be “overpriced,” but who else are you going to play? Probably cheaper stuff, so let’s see what we find there.

CHEAPER PITCHING

• Luis Castillo vs. Reds – 20.8% K, 7.2% BB, 4.93 ERA, 4.23 SIERA
• Framber Valdez at Cubs – 18.6% K, 7.7% BB, 4.10 ERA, 4.29 SIERA
• Brandon Sproat vs. Mets – 24.7% K, 11.1% BB, 5.16 ERA, 4.20 SIERA
• Matthew Liberatore at Angels – 21.4% K, 8.7% BB, 5.00 ERA, 4.39 SIERA
• Noah Schultz at Rangers – 20.3% K, 12.6% BB, 5.60 ERA, 5.06 SIERA
• Tatsuya Imai vs. Marlins – 27% K, 14.2% BB, 6.06 ERA, 4.41 SIERA
• Kumar Rocker vs. White Sox – 20.5% K, 8.7% BB, 4.40 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
• David Peterson vs. Tigers – 18.3% K, 9.7% BB, 6.45 ERA, 4.53 SIERA

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