Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Wednesday, April 10th

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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.

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Happy Wednesday! We’ve got another split slate kind of Wednesday, with the main slate being a 7-gamer starting a few minutes earlier than normal at 6:40 PM ET. I’ll start with a quick peek at the early 6-game DK slate, which begins at 1:10 PM ET. Just in time to have some lunch, then watch some baseball.

Wednesday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

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We sort of have a top tier, but it’s all close enough to just lump all the pitching options into one group for this early slate:

Bobby Miller at Twins – 23.6% K, 6.3% BB, 3.76 ERA, 3.93 SIERA
Logan Gilbert at Blue Jays – 24.6% K, 4.7% BB, 3.73 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
Aaron Nola at Cardinals – 25.5% K, 5.7% BB, 4.46 ERA, 3.75 SIERA

Lance Lynn vs. Phillies – 23.6% K, 8.3% BB, 5.73 ERA, 4.33 SIERA
Jordan Hicks vs. Nationals – 28.4% K, 11.2% BB [Bullpen]
Zack Littell at Angels – 19.5% K, 3.2% BB, 4.10 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Mariners – 25.9% K, 6.9% BB, 3.86 ERA, 3.86 SIERA

Jose Soriano vs. Rays – 1st career start, 40 bullpen IP

Before we go any further, let’s all pause and appreciate an uncommon moment of gloriousness that often goes unnoticed. Please go back and look at the 2023 stat lines for Zack Littell and Yusei Kikuchi. What do you see? That is correct; they both had the exact same ERA and SIERA last season. This almost never happens, and it just makes me happy when we can just know for sure that a dude’s ERA is what his ERA was supposed to be. Yippee!

OK, back to baseball…

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I’ve talked about in each of his first 2 starts, and I’ll talk about it again here…it’s possible that Aaron Nola is in the decline phase of his career. I am not by any means certain that is the case, but I am open to that possibility. Just using the 2023 numbers, he is essentially in a 3-way tie with Bobby Miller and Logan Gilbert. But if we bring in the 2 starts each for 2024, Holy Toledo, one of these 3 is not like the others:

Bobby Miller 2024 – 43.8% K, 9.4% BB
Logan Gilbert 2024 – 30.6% K, 4.1% BB
Aaron Nola 2024 – 15.2% K, 10.9% BB

Can you spot the downside outlier? I know you can. Bobby Miller is almost certainly just as fluky to the upside, but Miller and Gilbert are young pitchers with room for improvement, while Nola is just maybe not the same guy as he used to be. Between Miller and Gilbert, I prefer Miller, both with the higher-strikeout matchup. His last start was worrisome, but I’m much more optimistic based on what we saw in his first outing, with 11 strikeouts. But I will also say that I don’t see it as a necessity to spend up on any of these guys.

With similar-ish matchups as well, it’s super easy for me to just say that Miller and Gilbert are Tier One and then Nola gets dropped down to Tier Two. He’s very much in the pool—and I promise I’m not saying he’s washed—I’m just saying I think Miller and Gilbert are better and safer with more potential upside.

If you can’t afford a pair of $10k pitchers, we do have several cheaper options, going all the way down to $4,400 if you really need it.

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About the Author

CheeseIsGood
Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

One of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has won contests at the highest levels of both season-long and DFS. He is a 2x winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize in DFS, having won the 2014 FanDuel baseball Live Final and following that up by taking down a DraftKings Milly Maker Tournament in 2015. In addition, he’s won the Main Event championship in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the NFBC Platinum League, which is the highest buy-in entry league. His consistent success in the NFBC tournaments earned him a prestigious spot in their Hall of Fame. Dave can also strum a mean guitar while carrying a tune, and if you’re lucky, you’ll see him do so on one of his MLB Crunch Time appearances. Follow Dave on Twitter – @DavePotts2