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 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
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