Million Dollar Musings: Tuesday, September 19

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! (And an extra happy Tuesday to Squirrel!). MLB takes center stage again tonight with some big prize pools on both sites for this 12-game slate. While there is plenty of offense to consider, the pitching takes center stage tonight with four aces leading the way at the top of the charts. Let’s jump right in and see what other MLB DFS picks we can find below them before moving on to the bats.

Tuesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

We’ve got a loaded pitching slate led by four aces, but also a big enough mid-tier to make non-ace lineups viable as well.

THE ACES ARE COMING OUT TO PLAY

Spencer Strider vs. Phillies – 37.6% K, 7.8% BB, 3.73 ERA, 2.82 SIERA
Blake Snell vs. Rockies – 31.4% K, 13.4% BB, 2.43 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
Luis Castillo at A’s – 27.2% K, 6.4% BB, 3.08 ERA, 3.69 SIERA
Zac Gallen vs. Giants – 25.7% K, 5.3% BB, 3.50 ERA, 3.70 SIERA

These four pitchers are far enough ahead of the pack that if salary cap didn’t exist, we’d be able to just X out everyone else on the slate. But of course, salary cap does exist, which makes Spencer Strider a tough sell on DK, where he’s all the way up at $12,800.

We should be getting close to the point where we need to worry about pitch count, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. The Braves gave Strider 110 pitches last week, and still being two weeks away from the first playoff game, my lean is just to consider him a full-go. Despite a few hiccups, he’s still my clear SP1 if not concerned about salary, which does make him the SP1 on FD, where the four aces are closely bunched. However, on DK, there’s just too big of a gap here. At $12,800, we need something like a 30+ point start on DK, and that is more of a possibility than a likelihood. I’m simply going to call him a guy in the big pool, but not a priority.

If you read what I wrote before the last Blake Snell start, you’ll know that the other side of it will be brought up today. What I said there played out perfectly for his big outing against the Dodgers. In case you missed it, my point was this – Snell is over-trusted and over-owned in good matchups, but under-trusted and under-owned in tough matchups. Tonight is the opposite side, where he has a great matchup against the Rockies, and should end up projecting as at least the best points per dollar ace, and I’d guess he’s the most popular of these four. But at the same time, because we have four aces, I don’t think we’re going to run into such massive chalk that we need to fade just based on that alone. Other than the obvious strikeout ability and the plus matchup, I am optimistic based on the low walk rates up and down the Rockies lineup. If Snell is going to get hurt, it’s usually from walks. We know the pitch count and strikeouts are going to be there. Officially, I am calling him my SP1 on DK and my SP2 behind Strider on FD. If the ownership starts to creep up too high ahead of the other aces, I’ll knock him down in lineups where I have chalkier bats.

Luis Castillo also has a good matchup and a high pitch count. His strikeout rate isn’t quite at Strider/Snell level, but 8-9 strikeouts is a common enough occurrence, that with the high-strikeout Oakland lineup against righties, I have Castillo very close to a virtual tie with Strider and Snell. On DK, he’s priced in between those two, which seems likely to make him less popular than Snell. This will be where I keep an eye on projected ownership throughout the day. My hunch is that Snell starts to creep up higher and higher, and for me, they are so close, that I’ll lean towards using more Castillo in smaller field tournaments where the ownership gets more condensed around chalk.

Zac Gallen has had three disastrous starts in his last four outings, which drops his salary down below the $10k mark on DK. I really don’t see any major cause for concern here, I just see baseball happening to him. Because of the recent hiccups and the fact that he’s 4th out of the 4 in strikeout ability, he is just an MME leftover for me on FD. But on DK, I think the salary is too low in comparison to the other aces. As much as I’m calling Snell the SP1, and Strider the non-salary cap -SP1, I am going to end up with essentially an even split of these four aces on DK.

I realize that is not super helpful to just tell you that I like all four aces, but it is the truth.

PLENTY MORE PITCHING

Hunter Brown vs. Orioles – 27.3% K, 8.2% BB, 4.61 ERA, 3.68 SIERA
Ryan Pepiot vs. Tigers – 22.4% K, 2% BB, 2.00 ERA, 3.66 SIERA
Yusei Kikuchi at Yankees – 25.4% K, 7% BB, 3.81 ERA, 3.94 SIERA
Logan Allen at Royals – 22.6% K, 8.8% BB, 3.60 ERA, 4.43 SIERA
Clarke Schmidt vs. Blue Jays – 22.4% K, 6.5% BB, 4.56 ERA, 4.18 SIERA
Paul Blackburn vs. Mariners – 22.7% K, 8.9% BB, 4.14 ERA, 4.43 SIERA
Alex Cobb at Diamondbacks – 20.5% K, 5.7% BB, 3.62 ERA, 3.79 SIERA

This is a lot of good pitching. Because we have four top-tier aces, I want to be pickier than usual in finding other options on a slate like this.

The first thing that jumps out is that Ryan Pepiot has a 2.00 ERA, a 2% walk rate and faces the Tigers. We’re still just 27 innings into his season, and I don’t fully believe the control, but it’s tough to argue with 2 walks in 27 IP. The strikeouts are just OK, but it’s the Tigers. The Lance Lynn fade worked out last night, but we are not going to see the same type of silly ownership on Pepiot tonight. He’s overpriced on FD in my opinion, and I’m just getting up to the aces ahead of him. The $9,100 price tag on DK looks just right and I’ve got him slotted in as my SP5, which also makes him my SP1 among the non-aces.

The highest strikeout pitcher in this tier is Hunter Brown, and he’s arguably closer to the ace tier than to the rest of this group. But we’ve seen just enough of a drop-off as the season wears on to leave him here. His control has been shaky and his innings have been even shakier, failing to top 5 innings in any of his last six starts. The strikeout rate is still ace-level, so theoretically if everything comes together tonight, I do think he has slate winning upside at this salary. But the matchup doesn’t help him and I really don’t like the innings. On FD, he misses my primary pool, while on DK, I guess I will begrudgingly call him my top SP below the $9k mark, but still not a target.

The next highest strikeout rate among this tier belongs to Yusei Kikuchi. He had a rough go of it last week against Texas, but he’s been very solid and consistent, and the Yankees are something like an average matchup at this point. What concerns me is five straight right-handed batters with power and a pitch count that likely won’t get stretched the rest of this season. He’s in my MME mix, but I won’t play him ahead of Pepiot or Brown.

Logan Allen is fine. This guy is really what the word fine was made for. He’s fine. If you want 5 innings and 5-6 strikeouts, this is probably your guy. This is where I’d prefer to chase the potential upside from Brown or just find something cheaper.

The two guys who jump out for salary purposes are Clarke Schimdt and Paul Blackburn. There’s really not much gap in skills at all between these guys and Allen or the recent form of Brown. I don’t love picking on the healthy Blue Jays, but Schmidt is a guy whose splits work out very well for this right-handed heavy lineup. He’s a 26% K pitcher with just 4.2% walks against righties. With that factored in, I like him every bit as much as the other pitchers in this tier, so with this sizeable discount, I will be using Schmidt as a primary SP2 on DK and a salary saving option on FD.

Paul Blackburn has seen his control go a bit wonky, and the innings going down with it. He’s up at an 11% BB rate in 8 starts since the beginning of August, with a disturbing 9 walks in 11 innings over his last three starts. He’s had a couple tough matchups, so maybe it was just a short-term problem, but it’s enough for me to leave Schmidt ahead of him. He gets some strikeouts in the matchup and the boost from pitching at home, so he’s very much in my primary pool at $6,700 on DK. I have to assume that if he were to pitch well, the pitch count would go back up and his recent short outings were simply due to the lack of effectiveness.

I have a little less confidence in Alex Cobb getting a full workload, but skill set wise, he’s right there with Schmidt and Blackburn as affordable SP2 options on DK. He’s completely out of my pool on FD at that salary. Since his bizarre, 131-pitch complete game at the end of August, they’ve been babying him, and the strikeouts just aren’t there to make up for it.

CHEAP DARTS AND NONSENSE

Javier Assad vs. Pirates – 18.2% K, 9.7% BB, 3.10 ERA, 4.80 SIERA
Drew Rom vs. Brewers – 16.8% K, 12.1% BB, 5.96 ERA, 5.58 SIERA
Jackson Rutledge vs. White Sox – 2nd career start

These three are DK only for me, as I’m not considering going lower than Schmidt on FD.

I’m going to ignore the Coors Field start from Javier Assad last week, and look at what he’d done prior to that. The overall numbers contain more bullpen outings than starts, but the skills are about the same in the rotation, with a 17% K rate and 8.5% walks in 9 starts. The two games where he had 7 strikeouts appear to be outliers, but he did have a string of 4 quality starts in 5 games and he has not allowed more than three runs in any outing this season outside of the Coors start. The matchup is something like neutral, and while I certainly don’t like him, he’s the one pitcher here I’m willing to throw some darts at in MME.

Jackson Rutledge was terrible in the minors, and he was even more terrible in his major league debut. Sure, the White Sox are bad, but this guy has to show me something before I go anywhere near him.

I really want to like Drew Rom, and I think he’s better than what those skills show, but still, yuck. The control is just too sketchy to make up for the lack of swing and miss ability. We have seen 2 decent starts in 5 tries, and I am stubbornly just blindly hoping for another one. This is one of those spots where I tell you that I do not officially recommend him, I’m just letting you know that I am going to have a Rom lineup or two in MME on DK.

PITCHING CLIFF NOTES

This is an excellent pitching slate, and you could quite reasonably go in several different directions.

Starting with the top 4, I will be heavily invested in that top tier on FD where the salaries are bunched. I do not plan to take any big stand there, I will simply go Spencer Strider, then Blake Snell, then Luis Castillo, using those three in the majority of my lineups. They are affordable enough that I don’t have much interest in the $9k range, so where I’m not going with the aces, I drop all the way down to Clarke Schmidt with some Paul Blackburn as well.

On DK, the upper mid-range gets added into the pool, but I’m still mostly focused on either double-ace lineups or one ace with a salary saver. With the price on Strider, he is more of an MME leftover, and I’ll focus on Castillo, Snell and Gallen as my aces. For the most part, I’ll pair one of them with Schmidt or Blackburn, but also tossing cheap darts Javier Assad and Drew Rom into the pool. If I can get away with spending a tad more than Schimdt or Blackburn, I go Ryan Pepiot, Hunter Brown and then Yusei Kikuchi in the upper mid-tier.

Tuesday Hitting: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

I am sorting the offenses into 3 buckets tonight. We have a top tier, followed by weaker teams against weaker pitchers and then better teams against decent pitchers.

TOP TIER OFFENSE

Atlanta Braves vs. Sanchez / Lorenzen
LA Dodgers vs. Detroit
Chicago Cubs vs. Bailey Falter
Houston Astros vs. Kyle Gibson
SD Padres vs. Ryan Feltner
Texas Rangers vs. Tanner Houck
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Megill / Rea

We start with the usual suspects here with the Braves and Dodgers leading the way.

As always, the Braves have slate winning upside, but the Phillies are going to make it a little tougher tonight, pairing two decent pitchers, one from each side. I really don’t have a lot of interest in spending top dollar for one-offs against a guy like Cristopher Sanchez with his ground ball ability, and then we add in being backed up by a solid real-life pitcher like Michael Lorenzen. If it was just a Lorenzen start, I’d include the big bats in the primary pool, but as it is, this is just going to be an MME stack for me tonight.

My preference among top offenses is with the Dodgers against a Tigers bullpen game. It’s a right-handed heavy bullpen that isn’t exactly terrible, but isn’t set up well to carry an entire game. As much as possible, I want to just load up with the top five here – Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Max Muncy and J.D. Martinez. Where I can’t afford them all, I will start with Betts and Freeman and then filter in the cheaper lefty outfielders. I’ll just hope that having just one lefty reliever allows Jason Heyward, James Outman and David Peralta to stay in for the full game.

As much as I like the Cubs, Bailey Falter is a non-terrible real-life pitcher with excellent control. It looks like the weather is not going to give them any help here either, and so they come in a full step below the Dodgers. On FD, I’ll use Christopher Morel, Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ in primary lineups, but the DK salaries seem a bit out of whack, other than maybe Suzuki.

Kyle Gibson is another decent real-life pitcher, but decent is not going to cut it here. Particularly with an 18.7% K rate against lefties facing Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker. Everyone else for Houston falls into the Braves/Cubs bucket of fine to stack, but Alvarez and Tucker are top of the slate targets.

The Padres had a big night on Monday and they get another great matchup tonight. Ryan Feltner has been out since May and has not gone deep in his rehab starts, so it’s more likely this is something like a bullpen game for Colorado. The Rockies have one of the worst bullpens in the league, and I absolutely love this for the Padres stack. The Rockies are heavily right-handed, which will make me prefer Trent Grisham and Jurickson Profar as the salary savers alongside the high-end trio of Fernando Tatis, Manny Machado and Juan Soto. Overall, I land on the Padres as my #2 stack behind the Dodgers.

Tanner Houck is another kind of OK pitcher, but like with Gibson against Houston, kind of OK just doesn’t cut it in this matchup. Houck’s 59% GB rate against righties leaves me with a strong preference for Corey Seager, Nate Lowe, Jonah Heim and Evan Carter, and saving Marcus Semien, Mitch Garver and Adolis Garcia for full stacks. They end up in the same spot as the Braves and Cubs, clearly with slate winning upside, but a little too pricey to end up in primary lineups with so many other things to spend on tonight.

The Cardinals are hanging around the fringe of this top tier or being relegated down into the next bucket. The big bats to prioritize are righties, and Colin Rea is really a pretty respectable pitcher against righties with 23% K and a 51% GB rate. This leaves the Cardinals righties in that Cubs territory of completely playable, but not priorities. As far as the lefties who have the better splits matchup, I’m just kind of lukewarm on Lars Nootbaar and Alec Burleson. But when I glance at the DK salaries on Burleson and Richie Palacios, I perk up a bit. I’m going to be willing to play them on their own to fill in around pricier stacks.

WEAKER VS. WEAKER

Washington Nationals vs. Jose Urena
Chicago White Sox at Jackson Rutledge
Milwaukee Brewers at Drew Rom
Cleveland Guardians at Cruz / Marsh

Jose Urena vs. Jackson Rutledge? LOL. Jose Urena is one of the lowest strikeout pitchers in the league and he’s facing a low strikeout lineup. The lack of fly ball power is an issue here, but there are going to be a lot of balls in play, and at the very least, I am going to prioritize CJ Abrams and Keibert Ruiz. With salary factored in, the Nationals are on my primary list of top stacks on DK.

The White Sox have a few more individual bats with power, with a focus on Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez and Andrew Vaughn. I have no reason to think that Rutledge is worthy of being a major league pitcher, so as much as I hate stacking the White Sox, they officially land inside my top 5. Yippee!

Just to clarify one thing since I’m picking on Rutledge, this guy is a decent prospect with stuff that scouts like. I am not saying he won’t make it in the majors, I am just saying it doesn’t look like he’s ready yet.

I like the White Sox and Nationals enough to not feel the need to mess with Brewers or Guardians full stacks in primary lineups. Both remain in the MME mix, but for the most part, I am just looking at four individual bats in those games – Jose Ramirez, Josh Naylor, Willy Adames, William Contreras.

BETTER VS. BETTER

NY Yankees vs. Yusei Kikuchi
Toronto Blue Jays at Clarke Schmidt
Seattle Mariners at Paul Blackburn
Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Alex Cobb
Boston Red Sox at Nathan Eovaldi
KC Royals vs. Logan Allen
Baltimore Orioles at Hunter Brown

This slate was already pretty jumbled with that whole top tier being a tangled mess. We can make that tangle as big as we want, but as far as full stacking, I’m going to be 20+ lineups in before I start getting to these teams tonight.

There are two bats that really jump off the page in this group – Bobby Witt and Aaron Judge. If I’m not going to full stack the pricey top tier offenses, then I am just as happy with Witt or Judge as my spend-ups as anyone on this slate.

I will end up with a few mini-stacks of Yankees righties, adding Gleyber Torres and Giancarlo Stanton alongside Judge, but I’m not crazy about stacking against Kikuchi.

Because of the poor control we’ve seen from Paul Blackburn recently along with the Oakland bullpen, I’ll be sure to get a couple Seattle stacks in as well, but I really don’t love a team in Oakland with so many strikeouts in the middle of the lineup.

Basically, I can build a case for any of these teams, but it’s really all just ‘hey, it’s baseball’ MME dart throwing.

HITTING CLIFF NOTES

We end up with a pretty big and jumbled group of offenses. All of the kind of obvious top tier teams are very expensive and I don’t see any of them as being must-plays. What this means for me, is that while I have an order of preference, it is very much a spread-it-out kind of slate. This is how it all shakes out:

STACKS – Dodgers, Padres, Astros, White Sox, Braves, Cubs, Rangers, Nationals, Cardinals, Guardians, Brewers, All The Tier 3 Teams

INDIVIDUAL BATS – Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Yordan Alvarez, Bobby Witt, Aaron Judge, Corey Seager, Fernando Tatis, Juan Soto, Kyle Tucker, CJ Abrams, Luis Robert

SALARY SAVERS

FD – Eloy Jimenez, Andrew Vaughn, Keibert Ruiz, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Volpe, Nelson Velazquez, Alec Burleson, Willy Adames, Josh Donaldson, Evan Carter, Jurickson Profar, Trent Grisham, Cal Raleigh, Teoscar Hernandez, James Outman, Jason Heyward

DK – Eloy Jimenez, Andrew Vaughn, Dominic Smith, Everson Pereira, Yan Gomes, Jack Suwinski, Kole Calhoun, Andres Gimenez, Nelson Velazquez, Edward Olivares, Alec Burleson, Richie Palacios, Tyrone Taylor, Jurickson Profar, Trent Grisham, James Outman, Jason Heyward

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