Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Wednesday, April 3rd
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 Wednesday! We’ve got a busy day filled with games and weather and aces all over the place. The slates are a bit unusual, but both sites have the same evening main slate, with 5 games starting at 6:45 PM ET. Before we get to that, we start with a 6-game slate on DK at 1:05 PM ET, while FD has that as a 5-game slate, followed by another 5-game slate at the very normal time of 3:37 PM ET.
I’m going to just look at the early DK slate, which mostly correlates with the first FD slate, and then come back a bit later with the evening slate analysis.
Weather is huge mess on the early slate, but for now, I’m just going to write as if all the games play. But know that there is some chance we lose the KC/BAL game, or even CIN/PHI or ATL/CWS. Losing any one of those games would massively change the slate on the pitching side.
You can also catch my final thoughts on both of these slates with two different Crunch Time shows today. The first is at 12:20 PM ET for the early slate, and then we’ll be back at 6:20 PM ET for the evening slate. And then, I will eat and go to sleep! (For the record, I’ll be eating this whole time.)
Wednesday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
RETURN OF THE ACES
- Spencer Strider at White Sox – 36.8% K, 7.6% BB, 3.86 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
- Corbin Burnes vs. Royals – 25.5% K, 8.4% BB, 3.39 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
- Zack Wheeler vs. Reds – 26.9% K, 5% BB, 3.61 ERA, 3.53 SIERA
- Cole Ragans at Orioles – 28.8% K, 10.5% BB, 3.47 ERA, 3.85 SIERA
Now this is some pitching! Strider, Burnes, and Ragans were all above 30% strikeouts in their first start of the season. Burnes looked the most impressive at first glance, with a huge 11-K performance with no walks in his first start for the Orioles. If I’m trying to pick holes, which I’m really not, that start was against the Angels, and he had just a 12.2% swinging strike rate, while Strider and Ragans were both up at 20% swinging strikes. When you combine the long-term stats with today’s matchups, there’s just no comparison for me until we get to salary.
Strider is the best DFS pitcher in the league, and he’s facing the White Sox. But we’re really being asked to pay for it all the way up at $11,300 on DK, while Burnes is at just $9,400, and Ragans is all the way down at $8,200. I’m not going to be able to make a completely firm decision here until I look at the salary savers available on the hitting side, but my initial lean is that Strider is not a must-play for me. I will go out of my way to have more Strider than anyone else, but Burnes and Ragans have just as much points-per-dollar upside.
However, on FD, somehow Strider ($10,800) is priced below Burnes ($11,200), making that less of a decision, and I will not overthink it at all with Strider in nearly every lineup.
Between Burnes and Ragans, I still have just enough concern over Ragans’ control that I side with Burnes ahead of him, but if I can’t get up to Strider, I’d mostly just want to play both Burnes and Ragans.
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