Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Tuesday, June 25th
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 big 12-game slate that features a huge tangled mess of decent pitchers. That also leaves us with a huge tangled mess of offense, although there are a few more standout situations on the hitting side. I’m going to sort through everything as best as I can, but particularly on the pitching side, outside of a little Hunter Brown chalk, this is just a whole bunch of Play Whoever You Want!
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
At first glance, this pitching slate strikes me as a wildly difficult jumbled mess. The pricing agrees with that, as we have 13 pitchers between $7,800-$9,800 on DK. I can’t really even break this up into tiers to start with, so I’m just going to list all these names, and then we’ll see what happens.
Joe Ryan at Diamondbacks – 26.5% K, 4.2% BB, 3.13 ERA, 3.29 SIERA
Gerrit Cole at Mets – 2nd start of season
MacKenzie Gore at Padres – 28.2% K, 7.2% BB, 3.49 ERA, 3.30 SIERA
Seth Lugo vs. Marlins – 20.8% K, 5.7% BB, 2.42 ERA, 3.92 SIERA
Reynaldo Lopez at Cardinals – 25.9% K, 7.8% BB, 1.57 ERA, 3.63 SIERA
Mitch Keller at Reds – 21.8% K, 6.2% BB, 3.11 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
Hunter Greene vs. Pirates – 26.6% K, 10.1% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.86 SIERA
Bobby Miller at White Sox – 18 IP this season
Kevin Gausman at Red Sox – 23.1% K, 5.6% BB, 4.24 ERA, 3.66 SIERA
Hunter Brown vs. Rockies – 25.5% K, 9% BB, 4.72 ERA, 3.64 SIERA
Tyler Anderson vs. A’s – 16.4% K, 10.7% BB, 2.48 ERA, 5.21 SIERA
Brandon Pfaadt vs. Twins – 22.3% K, 5.9% BB, 4.37 ERA, 3.81 SIERA
Brayan Bello vs. Blue Jays – 20.4% K, 8.6% BB, 4.83 ERA, 3.98 SIERA
Andrew Heaney at Brewers – 22.6% K, 6.4% BB, 4.21 ERA, 3.90 SIERA
Mitch Spence at Angels – 19.7% K, 5.9% BB, 3.86 ERA, 3.82 SIERA
As I talk through all these names, it’s going to get a little messy, and I will almost certainly end up saying that everyone and everything is playable. As usual, I will clarify my thoughts in the cliff notes after I’ve gone through this jumbled mess.
I would love for Gerrit Cole to be the answer, but he is just one start into his season, going 4 innings and 62 pitches in his debut. Even if we bump him up to something like 80 pitches, that leaves him very little margin for error. He was just a good, but not elite 27% K pitcher last season, and in his first start, his velocity and swinging strikes were at their lowest level since 2016. He’s absolutely playable with the lack of great options, but for me, this is not a guy to target until he gets the pitch count worked up.
I want to say that Joe Ryan is the best pitcher here, and maybe he is, but there is also nothing elite about a 26.5% K rate, which comes with fly balls to both sides of the plate. The matchup is about average for strikeouts and power, and when you add in the relative consistency and innings of Ryan, I guess I’m calling him the SP1 in a world where the salary doesn’t matter.
At this point, I’ll stop burying the lead, which is…
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