Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Tuesday, May 7th
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! With the way the schedule lines up, we end up with a very manageable 8-game slate. But even with a smaller-than-usual Tuesday night, we still have a lot of everything. At first glance, it appears that we’ll have some heavy chalk on the pitching side and some weather- and ballpark-related chalk on the hitting side. This leaves us with a big group of good pitchers against good offenses that makes for a fun GPP kind of slate.
Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This slate is filled with pitchers who have huge gaps between their ERA and their expected ERA, mostly in the direction of low ERAs that are fluky-good through 6-7 starts. However, most of these guys are also good enough that even when things regress to average, they are still well-above-average pitchers. Beyond the ERA gaps, the most noticeable thing about this slate is how many of the top pitchers have tough matchups. This is going to make for an easy-to-narrow-down pool and is also likely to lead to some heavy chalk. At first glance, I expect to be following that chalk, but let’s take a peek and see what happens.
7 ACES, OR MAYBE 1 ACE AND 6 OTHER PEOPLE
Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Marlins – 30% K, 5.7% BB, 2.91 ERA, 2.83 SIERA
Shota Imanaga vs. Padres – 26.5% K, 3% BB, 0.78 ERA, 3.03 SIERA
Reynaldo Lopez vs. Red Sox – 27% K, 8.7% BB, 1.50 ERA, 3.53 SIERA
Justin Verlander at Yankees – 19.1% K, 10.3% BB, 2.08 ERA, 4.80 SIERA
Luis Gil vs. Astros – 30.8% K, 15.4% BB, 3.19 ERA, 4.04 SIERA
Edward Cabrera at Dodgers – 35.3% K, 11.8% BB, 6.05 ERA, 2.99 SIERA
Kutter Crawford at Braves – 24.2% K, 7.9% BB, 1.56 ERA, 3.79 SIERA
There are three pitchers in this tier with strikeout rates of at least 30%. Two of them also have bad control and bad matchups. It is always viable to play any pitcher with immense strikeout upside in any matchup, but personally, I can’t make any real case for Luis Gil or Edward Cabrera outside of very deep MME builds. While Gil and Cabrera face the Astros and Dodgers, the other 30% K pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, is at home against the Marlins. Beyond the matchup, he also has outstanding control to go along with his strikeouts. Since his opening start disaster, he has gone 6 starts with just 6 runs allowed in 33 innings and a 40:7 K:BB ratio. He’s only $10,100 on DK and $10,200 on FD. This is the very definition of a ‘Don’t Overthink It.’ He is my SP1 and everyone else’s SP1.
The next two pitchers on the list are in that group of pitchers with fluky-good ERAs in the early going, but both Shota Imanaga and Reynaldo Lopez would still be aces even if their ERA matched their SIERA. He’s only 6 starts into his MLB career, but it appears that Imanaga is going to be a trustable ace. The dude has walked just 4 batters in 34 innings and is not getting hit hard. I fully buy his skills and talent, but if he’s ever going to see some home run regression, this is the kind of spot it could happen. He’s facing an extremely low-strikeout Padres lineup with the wind blowing out at Wrigley. I like the skills enough that I’m willing to play him in any matchup, however, he’s so far behind Yamamoto that he is just an MME afterthought. I don’t see prioritizing spending up on two pitchers on this slate, and I’m not going to overthink Yamamoto as that one spend-up.
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