Million Dollar Musings: Wednesday, July 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 Wednesday! It would appear that we got the wonkiest day of the year out of the way yesterday, so hopefully we are back to something like normal baseball today! I’m just going with that assumption for now, that Tuesday was the outlier day of 2023 and not some nefarious return of the juiced ball.
Anyhow, moving on to the slates on hand, we have a split-slate Wednesday, with two decent-sized groups of games. I’ll focus on the main 8-game slate which starts at 7:07pm ET but will start with a quick peek at some MLB DFS picks for the early 6-game slate at 12:35pm ET on FD and early 5-gamer on DK starting at 1:05pm ET.
Wednesday Early Slate Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
The pitching options are very thin for this early slate, with basically a 5-man pool on FD, A 4-man pool on DK, AND maybe one cheap nonsense dart worth a look.
IT’S ALWAYS LUNCH TIME WHEN YOU HAVE FIVE GUYS
Brayan Bello at A’s – 20.8% K, 6.1% BB, 3.14 ERA, 4.03 SIERA
Julio Urias at Orioles – 24.3% K, 5.2% BB, 4.35 ERA, 3.91 SIERA
Sandy Alcantara at Cardinals – 19.6% K, 6.7% BB, 4.64 ERA, 4.31 SIERA
Jon Gray vs. Rays – 19.8% K, 8.3% BB, 3.45 ERA, 4.69 SIERA
Aaron Civale at Pirates (FD) – 19.7% K, 7.3% BB, 2.65 ERA, 4.61 SIERA
These five pitchers are all within $1,600 on FD and within $1,100 on DK. That’s not an irrelevant amount of salary, but essentially, there are so few pitching options today, that salary is not going to be factoring into my decisions.
I’m going to start by cutting Jon Gray out of the primary pool. Among the three pitchers here below 20% strikeouts, Gray also has the highest walk rate and the worst current form, with just a 16:13 K:BB ratio in his last five starts.
I understand the case to play some Aaron Civale on FD, but his low 19.7% K rate is actually propped up by one outlier start in early July against KC. Outside of the one great start, we’re looking at a guy who has 2-5 strikeouts in seven of his other nine starts this season.
That leaves me with Brayan Bello, Julio Urias, and Sandy Alcantara as the pitching core for today.
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