Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Wednesday 8/26

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Aug 26, 2026

Last Updated 2026-08-26 17:48:34 Premium Content Part of the product MLB DFS

Whether you are looking for the top pitchers or the best stacks, Dave Potts (aka CheeseIsGood) has you covered with an extensive deep dive into his MLB DFS picks today. Cheese, one of the preeminent baseball minds in all of fantasy sports and a winner of a $1,000,000 1st-place prize on both DraftKings and FanDuel, is here to muse about the August 26, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Wednesday! We have a split slate kind of day with a 5-game afternoon slate starting at the odd time of 3:40 PM ET. After that, our main evening slate is a little different between the sites. DK is running a 7-gamer at the usual 7:05 PM ET, while FD is adding a couple extra games and starting at 6:40 PM ET.

And be sure to check out our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ, for Expert Tags and more analysis on the early slate.

Before we dive in to the slate, I just want to open a safe space to talk about the ace pitchers over the last couple nights. Baseball is always subject to randomness, and every good pitcher has the occasional bad start. But it becomes more noticeable when every ace pitcher has a bad start at the same time. I don’t recall a time when the two clear top pitchers have had disaster starts on back-to-back nights like we’ve seen the past couple days. It is tempting to read more into that than what is there. I simply want to caution you not to overreact to the fact that these four disaster starts (Chase Burns, Zack Wheeler, Gavin Williams, Jacob deGrom) all happened in rapid succession when they were all chalk. If any one of them had the bad start this week and another had theirs next week, etc., I don’t think it would seem this bad. My point here is this – every pitcher, ace or not, is going to have some bad starts, but they are all their own individual situations, and they are unrelated to the others.

Now let’s dive in and hope that Jesus Luzardo is reading this!

Wednesday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

This looks like a slate where we have a clear SP1, but then a pretty wide-open race after that. I see a little separation between the top four and the leftovers, so that’s where we’ll draw the first line.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Jesus Luzardo at Mariners – 30.1% K, 7.3% BB, 3.35 ERA, 3.08 SIERA
• Bryan Woo vs. Phillies – 24.3% K, 5.2% BB, 4.10 ERA, 3.59 SIERA
• Joey Cantillo at Angels – 25.5% K, 11.2% BB, 3.73 ERA, 4.08 SIERA
• Landen Roupp vs. Reds – 22.6% K, 11.1% BB, 4.34 ERA, 4.34 SIERA

Jesus Luzardo is heads and shoulders above the rest of the pitchers on this slate with his 30.1% K rate and both an ERA and SIERA that are far better than any other pitcher. He’s also been in top form recently, not only piling up strikeouts but also seeing a massive pitch count ceiling as well, with 100+ pitches in 5 of his last 6 starts. You can always fade a pitcher for ownership or salary, but this one is pretty close to Don’t Overthink It for me today.

If you have the salary to pay for one of these better SP2s, it’s an interesting discussion between Bryan Woo and Joey Cantillo. Woo has the great control, which should in theory make him better than Cantillo with their similar strikeout ability. However, not only does Cantillo have the far better strikeout matchup, but we’ve also got some questions around Woo after he missed his last start with a sore shoulder. He’s supposedly 100%, but even the slightest shoulder issue can be a huge problem for a pitcher. Adding to the difficulty of this decision, Woo has been incredible at home this season, with a 1.96 ERA vs. a 5.96 ERA away from Seattle. Meanwhile, Cantillo goes wherever the control takes him, and he’s basically a complete dart throw every time he takes the mound. For me, despite what happened to Cantillo’s teammate last night, the matchup here is just too far in Cantillo’s favor, compared to the very low-strikeout matchup for Woo. I’ll take Cantillo over Woo as my SP2.

You could also throw Landen Roupp into this discussion at home, but goodness gracious, he looks bad. The control has been an issue all season, and over his last 5 starts, we’re looking at a terrifying 16:16 K:BB ratio. Ground balls are great, but at some point, you gotta be able to throw a strike. On the plus side, he still has a 24.1% K rate overall against righties, and the bulk of his control issues come against lefties. The Reds are usually a right-handed-heavy lineup, with 6 righties projected today, so there is at least some hope here. Roupp is enough cheaper than Woo and Cantillo that I wouldn’t argue with you to play him as your primary SP2 on DK, but personally I have him down in 4th place with how bad he’s looked recently.

CHEAPER PITCHING

• Bubba Chandler at Padres – 20.8% K, 12.1% BB, 4.38 ERA, 4.78 SIERA
• Randy Vasquez vs. Pirates – 14.9% K, 6.4% BB, 4.19 ERA, 4.82 SIERA
• Nick Lodolo at Giants – 17.5% K, 9.2% BB, 5.04 ERA, 4.76 SIERA
• Grayson Rodriguez vs. Guardians – 20.5% K, 10.1% BB, 6.41 ERA, 4.57 SIERA

Well, folks, if there ever was a time for…

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