Million Dollar Musings: MLB DFS Picks Today for Wednesday 9/23

by Dave Potts (CheeseIsGood)

Created Sep 23, 2026

Last Updated 2026-09-23 15:30:39 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 September 23, 2026 MLB DFS slate.

Happy Wednesday! With the Rays clinching the AL East last night, we have 4 of the 6 division winners decided, leaving just the AL Central and AL West up for grabs down the stretch. The NL Wild Card is still not technically decided yet, with the Diamondbacks still within mathematical range of passing any of the three current Wild Card teams. This gives us a handful of teams with motivation but also some very tough decisions, with the best pitchers on tonight’s slate on teams that have already clinched their spots. We’ll take that all into consideration as we dig through the slate.

As for the games, we have a 10-game DK slate at the usual 7:05 PM ET start time, while the FD slate will start a little earlier at 6:40 PM ET to add an additional 2 games (MIL/PHI and STL/PIT).

Wednesday Pitching: MLB DFS Picks on DraftKings and FanDuel

We have plenty of aces, and it’s certainly possible that they all just go ahead and pitch like aces on a normal workload, but it’s equally possible that we lose an inning or two of upside from most of them. Feel free to come to your own conclusions on any of these situations in this top tier.

TOP TIER PITCHING

• Chris Sale vs. Reds – 30.3% K, 4.9% BB, 2.18 ERA, 2.86 SIERA
• Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Padres – 26.1% K, 6% BB, 2.51 ERA, 3.37 SIERA
• Logan Henderson at Phillies (FD) – 30.7% K, 4.6% BB, 2.51 ERA, 2.97 SIERA
• Kevin Gausman vs. Marlins – 24.3% K, 6.3% BB, 4.55 ERA, 3.70 SIERA
• Nolan McLean at Rangers – 26.2% K, 9.6% BB, 3.18 ERA, 3.80 SIERA
• Sonny Gray vs. Guardians – 22.1% K, 6.8% BB, 2.82 ERA, 3.89 SIERA
• Gerrit Cole vs. Rays – 24.7% K, 4.4% BB, 3.63 ERA, 3.55 SIERA
• Ian Seymour at Yankees – 29% K, 6.7% BB, 4.38 ERA, 3.16 SIERA
• George Kirby vs. Astros – 19.9% K, 6.1% BB, 4.24 ERA, 4.11 SIERA
• Walbert Urena at A’s – 23.1% K, 11.1% BB, 2.74 ERA, 4.17 SIERA

The first thing I want to say here is that with all these pitchers on teams who have already clinched their playoff spots, we’re just guessing on if and how much their workload is scaled back. There is no rule that any of them have to be scaled back at all, and they certainly don’t have to tell us ahead of time what they are planning to do. Generally, you see all different ranges of reactions to these situations, with some teams pulling their aces after 3-4 innings, while sometimes, it’s just a normal game with their normal 90-100 pitches and 6-7 innings.

There is a little bit higher risk for elite aces like Chris Sale and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but at the same time, they have both been very consistent in their innings and pitch counts, and both teams have plenty of rest before their next games. This is especially true with Yamamoto and the Dodgers getting a first-round bye, while it would make sense to me that the Braves just want to keep Sale sharp and on his normal rotation given how well he’s pitching. My best guess as to what we see with both of these aces is something in the 90-pitch and 6-inning range. It would be a little less likely that Sale comes out for a 7th inning if he’s at 85-90 pitches, but still, that leaves him with plenty of ceiling to be the best pitcher on the slate. Against the high-strikeout Reds, Sale is still my SP1 – he’s just a little less of a priority than he might have been a couple weeks ago. Likewise, Yamamoto is still my SP2, but in a much lower-strikeout matchup, he falls behind Sale, and I don’t think I’ll consider getting to both of them in the same lineup on DK.

I’m a little more wary of the pitch counts for…

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