Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Wednesday 7/8

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2026-07-08 16:11:04 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 July 8, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Wednesday! We have a very tricky slate, as DK and FD are drastically different. DK has a very narrowed-down 8-game slate starting at 7:10 PM ET, and I see some very clear chalk that is not easy to get away from on both sides of the ledger. But on FD, they are adding an additional 6 games and starting at 6:35 PM ET, which opens the slate up massively on the hitting side in particular. I will walk through things a bit differently, with FD-specific sections after the group of plays that are available on both sites.

Wednesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

On the DK slate, we have just two pitchers priced above $8,500, and all of the ownership is likely to flow to a group of cheaper pitchers. I’ll look at this more from a DK angle first, then we’ll add in another group of FD pitchers after that.

DK & FD PITCHING

• Chase Burns vs. Phillies – 29.7% K, 7.9% BB, 2.40 ERA, 3.33 SIERA
• Kyle Harrison at Cardinals – 30.6% K, 6.2% BB, 2.82 ERA, 3.04 SIERA
• Davis Martin vs. Red Sox – 22.7% K, 7.3% BB, 3.08 ERA, 3.93 SIERA
• MacKenzie Gore vs. Angels – 25.5% K, 9.6% BB, 4.31 ERA, 3.98 SIERA
• Jake Bennett at White Sox – 19.7% K, 4.5% BB, 3.10 ERA, 3.82 SIERA
• Connor Prielipp vs. Guardians – 23.8% K, 8.4% BB, 4.96 ERA, 4.01 SIERA
• Roki Sasaki vs. Rockies – 22.8% K, 9.7% BB, 5.40 ERA, 4.27 SIERA
• Christian Scott vs. Royals – 28% K, 11.7% BB, 3.49 ERA, 4.01 SIERA

This is a very bizarre pitching slate, and I think I am going to do things in a different order because of it. When I glance at salaries, matchups, and projections, it looks to me like the chalk is going to be MacKenzie Gore plus a mix of Roki Sasaki and Connor Prielipp. It’s also possible that Christian Scott sneaks up there, which would lower ownership even more drastically on the spend-up pitchers in tougher matchups.

Gore, Sasaki, and Prielipp have three of the best possible matchups in the league against the Angels, Rockies, and Guardians. I don’t think anyone loves the talent or fully trusts any of these pitchers, but it’s going to be hard to overlook them. This is going to leave us with a slate where some far better pitchers are going to be lower owned. This is more true on DK but will probably still hold at least a little on FD as well.

Of those three potentially chalky pitchers, MacKenzie Gore has the highest strikeout rate (25.5%) and faces an Angels team that likely has 5 extremely high-strikeout batters in the lineup. There is always plenty of power risk here, but Gore has done a pretty good job limiting righty power this season, with a 7.5% barrel rate and .150 ISO allowed. He’s far from consistent, but the pitch count is always there, and he has at least 5 strikeouts in 6 straight starts. He has not shown a lot of high-ceiling games, though in theory, this would be the place for it. I don’t love the potential high ownership, but I do like the salary and matchup.

I feel even shakier about Roki Sasaki chalk. I’ve been saying this for weeks now: this guy is fully in Robbie Ray Rule mode. Play him when he’s sneaky, fade him when he’s chalk. He’s been bad far more often than he’s been good, and even if he is matchup-dependent (I don’t think he is), this is my least favorite of the three good matchups. Sasaki has walked 12% of lefties, has allowed power to both sides of the plate, and has absolutely no consistency at all. The Rockies are really not a high-strikeout lineup against RHP, and I’d expect them to use at least 6 lefties. Of course he can be good, and the salary is great, but this is as sketchy as chalk gets.

Connor Prielipp is another pitcher who lacks consistency, but he has shown pretty good per-inning upside. It makes me slightly nervous for his pitch count that he was skipped in the rotation and hasn’t pitched in 10 days, but it’s equally possible that could even help him, so I’m not changing my outlook on his innings. In his last 3 starts, he has thrown between 93-98 pitches and gone 6 innings. The results are all over the place, but he had 10 strikeouts in one of them, which means he’s had 7+ strikeouts in 4 of his last 8 starts. I’m only slightly more confident in him than Sasaki, but I much prefer Prielipp’s matchup. The Guardians are some real nonsense against LHP, as the projected lineup has only 2 batters who have even moderate power and 5 high-strikeout bats. I wouldn’t call him safe or amazing either, but I am willing to play Prielipp assuming that he and Sasaki split up the low-end ownership enough such that neither is going to be like 50% owned or more.

I’ll add Christian Scott in next, as he’s also priced down near Sasaki and Prielipp on DK, and he has a much higher strikeout rate than either of them. The main problems with Scott are his control and the way that control stops him from pitching deep into games. He hasn’t reached 6 innings in a start all season, and he has failed to reach 5 innings in all of his last 3 starts. It’s not a pitch-count issue as much as an efficiency issue. A home matchup against the Royals is decent but not in the realm of what Prielipp gets against Cleveland. When you add in his power issues, which have led to a total of 6 HRs in his last 3 starts, he’s falling behind even Sasaki on my list. He’s certainly playable on DK for the salary, but I’m not going to get him into the primary pool.

So, officially, if that group ends up as the chalk, I am OK with Gore and Prielipp, not so much on Sasaki, and even less on Scott.

But then what about just playing far better pitchers like Chase Burns or Kyle Harrison at likely lower ownership due to the salaries and matchups?

Want to read more? Sign up for MLB Premium!

-

-

-