Million Dollar Musings: Tuesday, May 23
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! We’ve got a 10-game slate with a whole bunch of everything. We’ve got aces, we’ve got Coors Field, we’ve got pitching and hitting with upside in all different pricing tiers. I’ll walk through all of it, but this is one of those slates with so many viable paths to lineup building that you could end up in a completely different place from me, and in a completely different place from yourself from one lineup to the next.
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
We are loaded with good pitchers on this slate. You could draw lines in several different places, but I’ll start with a six-man top tier, going mostly along with DK pricing.
One, Two, Or Six Aces
Spencer Strider vs. Dodgers – 41.5% K, 8.7% BB, 2.96 ERA, 2.47 SIERA
Gerrit Cole vs. Orioles – 26.8% K, 7.9% BB, 2.01 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
Sonny Gray vs. Giants – 29.6% K, 9.4% BB, 1.64 ERA, 3.62 SIERA
Yu Darvish at Nationals – 27.2% K, 8.2% BB, 3.56 ERA, 3.77 SIERA
Kodai Senga at Cubs – 29.4% K, 13.9% BB, 3.77 ERA, 4.24 SIERA
MacKenzie Gore vs. Padres – 29% K, 11.5% BB, 3.69 ERA, 3.97 SIERA
Spencer Strider is far enough ahead of every other pitcher in the league that he is still going to come in as the SP1 in any matchup at any salary. However, we have finally found a slate where he is not going to be a priority, particularly on DK at $12,300. His strikeout ability is so elite that it is matchup proof, but I do have a little concern about the extreme patience of the Dodgers lineup limiting his upside, as well as adding downside to his still borderline control. Overall, what I’m going to say here is that in any lineup where I just have all the salary I want, Strider is going to be my pitcher, but there is no point at which I’m going to sacrifice an otherwise perfect lineup just to find extra salary to force him in.
Gerrit Cole is still an ace, but where are the strikeouts? My opinion here is that we’re seeing a version of Cole who is matchup-based with his strikeouts. We should still see some double-digit K outings, but he’s less likely at this stage of his career to just mow down everybody he faces. This is the difference between Cole and Strider. On FD, I vastly prefer Strider. But on DK, an $1,100 gap is a bit much, so I’m more likely to settle on Cole as my SP1.
