Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Wednesday 5/21

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood) Last Updated 2025-05-21 15:34:32 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. 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 give you his musings on the upcoming MLB DFS slate.

Happy Wednesday! We’ve got a full day of baseball with split slates on both sites. I’ll focus on the main 7-game main slate, which has a 6:45 p.m. ET start time, but we’ll start with a quick peek at the earlier slates that are slightly different on each site. DK starts at 1:10 p.m. with a 5-game slate, while FD starts earlier at 12:35 p.m. as a 5-game slate. Be sure to note that the early DK slate is listed as a 6-gamer but will not be counting scores from the CLE/MIN game, so you can cross that one off your list.

We’ll also have expert tags and analysis in our MLB DFS optimizer, LineupHQ, for the early slates if you want more DFS takes.

While we’ve got a few games with dicey weather, the worst of them appear to be off any of the main slates, so most likely we’ll be OK on that front. You’ll still want to check the MLB weather page later to make sure nothing worsens for the TEX/NYY game, but hopefully we just get a full slate of games.

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Wednesday Early Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on FanDuel & DraftKings

We have one clear top ace on the mound for these early games and then a fairly jumbled mess after that. I’m going to get things narrowed down to a tight pool, but after Hunter Brown, you could make a case for just about anything:

• Hunter Brown at Rays – 32.2% K, 6.7% BB, 1.43 ERA, 2.72 SIERA
• Max Meyer vs. Cubs – 27.3% K, 7.4% BB, 4.47 ERA, 3.15 SIERA
• Brady Singer at Pirates (FD) – 21.7% K, 9.1% BB, 5.01 ERA, 4.22 SIERA
• Andrew Heaney vs. Reds (FD) – 18.2% K, 9.1% BB, 3.02 ERA, 4.52 SIERA
• Taj Bradley vs. Astros – 19.2% K, 10.3% BB, 4.80 ERA, 4.57 SIERA
• Andre Pallante vs. Tigers – 15% K, 7.5% BB, 4.11 ERA, 3.78 SIERA
• Cade Horton at Marlins – 2nd career start
• Shane Smith vs. Mariners (DK) – 21.3% K, 7.9% BB, 2.05 ERA, 4.02 SIERA
• Logan Evans at White Sox (DK) – 15.1% K, 8.6% BB, 2.57 ERA, 4.95 SIERA

Hunter Brown has been one of the best pitchers in the league so far this season, and there’s really no reason to overthink or overanalyze this one. Brown is a high-priority play as the SP1 on both sites. Salary may not allow you to play him in every lineup, and it’s always fine to fade in a few spots for ownership, but he’s so far ahead of everyone else on this slate, it’s basically a Don’t Overthink It.

On FD, you can argue over SP2 between Brady Singer and Max Meyer, while on DK, Meyer is in a tier of his own as the SP2. But I’ll say that he’s taken enough of a step back that I am not considering him a high-priority play on this slate. The way the pricing is today, I would much prefer to use a cheaper SP2 if that’s what I need to do to afford Brown. His home ballpark helps with the matchup, but this is still not a great spot, and I’d prefer to save salary. Even though the matchup is better for Brady Singer, he’s dropped off even more than Meyer, failing to top four strikeouts in any of his last four starts. I think he’ll be fine, and I give him a very slight nod ahead of Meyer just based on the matchup.

Taj Bradley is a huge question mark here. It looks wonky to see him at just $6,700 on DK after being such a good pitcher over the past couple of years. But the wheels have come off this season, and it’s not clear exactly why or if they are going to be able to be put back on. He’s throwing the exact same velocity this year with basically the same pitch mix, but it’s simply not working. Strikeouts are down, walks are up, swings and misses are down, and recently the pitch count is down as well. All I can say here is I don’t know. Somewhere in there is the same guy we saw the past 2 seasons, who would be a steal at $6,700 against Houston, but there is no compelling reason to think that guy suddenly shows up today. The lack of other great cheap options means I’m going to take the shot, but he’s just a guy in the mix and not a priority. On FD, you don’t need to mess with him at all outside of deep MME.

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