Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Wednesday, August 14th
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 have another slate that is light on the pitching options, leading to a tremendous amount of high-end offense to sift through. The slate is also a bit unusual in that we have 6 games that begin before the usual start time, so everything moves up to a 6:35 Pm ET start time for this 11-game slate. With that, we will also be moving up GrindersLive and Crunch Time, and you’ll be able to get my final thoughts on this slate at 6:00 PM ET on Crunch Time.
If you’re playing the early 3-game slate, we have some Expert tags and analysis available in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ.
Editor’s Note: Looking for more places to play? Check out our PrizePicks promo code and Underdog Fantasy promo code, two of the best DFS sites available today.
Wednesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
Like yesterday, there is only one high-strikeout pitcher on this slate, which is likely to lead to high ownership for our old friend Robbie Ray. Yippee!!
TOP TIER PITCHING
Robbie Ray vs. Braves – 33.3% K, 10.7% BB, 3.98 ERA, 3.39 SIERA
Bryan Woo at Tigers – 19.2% K, 2.7% BB, 2.27 ERA, 3.96 SIERA
Ronel Blanco at Rays – 24.5% K, 9.9% BB, 3.02 ERA, 4.19 SIERA
The boom-or-bust Robbie Ray has a boom-or-bust matchup against an Atlanta team with high strikeouts but a lot of righty power. After 4 starts, it looks like Ray is going to be exactly what we’re used to. He is all the way stretched out, going to 105 pitches last week, so the elite upside is here. His control and home runs are also here just as always, with 10.7% walks and a 2.21 HR/9. My hunch in looking at this slate is that Ray ends up extremely chalky on DK and moderately chalky on FD. This seems like exactly the slate to play around with the Robbie Ray Rule. Because we don’t have other elite aces with slate-breaking upside, I am not going to completely avoid Ray, but I am going to avoid him in lineups with chalky offense. I am also going to stack against him early and often, but we’ll talk about that in the hitter section.
I am officially calling Ray my SP1, but because he is Robbie Ray, he will not be in more than 50% of my lineups.
Salary is not much of a thing at pitcher, but I still don’t love seeing Ronel Blanco as the most expensive pitcher. He’s been very good in real life and is not without some upside, with 7+ strikeouts in 7 of his 22 starts. But his control scares me, and we’ve seen his innings dropping off recently because of it. I love this matchup for him, but this is a guy I just can’t put ahead of Ray. I barely trust Blanco any more, and he doesn’t have the same type of strikeout ability.
Bryan Woo is the anti-Ray, with below-average strikeouts and elite control. It looks like he’s ready to settle back in around 90 pitches, which is plenty with his efficiency, and it gives him as much innings ceiling as either Ray or Blanco. The Tigers may use 4-5 lefties against him, but while they have a couple of power bats, this is a high-strikeout lineup with a lot of easy outs sprinkled in. It’s all very close, and none of it is great, but I prefer…
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