Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks for Wednesday, June 5th
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 a busy split-slate day, beginning with an early 6-gamer at 1:35 PM ET. That is smack dab in the middle of lunchtime here, which makes for some interesting decisions. Do we go for the early lunch? Or maybe a late-morning snack, with a later lunch? Or multiple snacks? Or maybe two lunches? I’ll keep you posted.
After that early slate, we have a 9-game main slate, which is also starting a bit earlier than usual at 6:40 PM ET. I’ll be on Crunch Time for both slates, so you can catch any of my last-minute thoughts there at 1:00 PM ET and then again at 6:00 PM ET. Baseball!!
Wednesday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings
This early pitching slate is not pretty at all. We’ll start with the spend-up trio, which lacks the firepower we’re used to seeing at these prices.
TOP-TIER TRIO
Aaron Nola vs. Brewers – 23.2% K, 7.2% BB, 3.03 ERA, 3.73 SIERA
Nick Pivetta vs. Braves – 30% K, 5% BB, 4.08 ERA, 2.90 SIERA
Ronel Blanco vs. Cardinals – 24.3% K, 10.6% BB, 2.44 ERA, 4.10 SIERA
The first thing I notice about this group is that there is no world in which Aaron Nola and Ronel Blanco are $10K pitchers. But the slate is weak enough that overpaying for something like average pitchers may still be a reasonable idea. But the next thing I notice is that Nick Pivetta is heads and shoulders above Nola/Blanco in K-BB%, and while his ERA is inflated, he is about a full run better than them in SIERA.
At first glance, the temptation is to say that Pivetta has the toughest matchup of the top three, but the reality of the 2024 numbers say that Nola’s matchup against Milwaukee is actually the toughest. Nola has a longer leash and is still a very good real-life pitcher, but personally, I don’t even think it’s close here. I would play Nick Pivetta ahead of Aaron Nola if they were at the same salary. With the significant discount, I have Pivetta at the top of my board in a tier of his own.
Ronel Blanco has struck out more than 6 batters just once in his last 9 starts, he has walked multiple batters in 8 of 10 starts, and he has one of the luckiest BABIPs of any starter in the league. While I prefer his matchup to Nola’s, if I’m going to spend all the way up, I prefer Nola.
Now the trick is to see if we can find a cheaper SP2 to pair with Pivetta to avoid having to overpay for the $10K options.
PEOPLE WITH ARMS
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