Best MLB DFS Picks Today: Top Value Plays for September 9

Wednesday’s MLB slate is loaded with exactly the kind of pitching depth DFS players love to build around, and it comes on a night with more than a dozen games spread across three windows. Two legitimate Cy Young-caliber arms anchor the pool, a couple of thumpers in plus matchups round out the value column, and the Dodgers’ middle-of-the-order continues to look like the smash-spot stack of the week against a leaky Reds staff.

Our approach today leans on pitching first, then builds around one clear offensive smash spot before rounding things out with a couple of mid-tier bats who offer real power upside relative to their price. Here are the five MLB DFS picks worth prioritizing for cash games and GPP builds tonight on DraftKings and FanDuel.

Jacob Misiorowski, SP — Milwaukee Brewers

Misiorowski has been the best pitcher in baseball by results this season, and tonight’s rematch with the Cubs at American Family Field is close to the ideal setup for another monster line. He enters at 14-5 with a 1.97 ERA, a minuscule 0.79 WHIP and 227 strikeouts across 155 innings, numbers that rank at or near the top of the league in every meaningful category. His stuff has only gotten sharper as the season has worn on, and he’s coming off a start against this same Cubs lineup where he punched out nine over 6.1 innings while allowing just one run.

The Brewers are lined up as sizable home favorites in this one, which matters for DFS because it raises Misiorowski’s floor for both innings pitched and win equity. Chicago’s lineup, led by Pete Crow-Armstrong’s power and Seiya Suzuki’s ISO, isn’t punchless, but Misiorowski has already shown he can neutralize this group. At a premium DraftKings price point, he’s the pitcher to build cash lineups around tonight, and his strikeout ceiling makes him a legitimate GPP anchor as well.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, SP — Los Angeles Dodgers

Yamamoto draws one of the softer matchups a top-tier arm can ask for down the stretch, facing a Reds offense that ranks among the league’s weaker units against right-handed pitching and sending out Rhett Lowder (6-9, 5.43 ERA) on the other side. Yamamoto sits at 12-8 with a 2.67 ERA and an elite 0.90 WHIP across 165 innings this season, and his strikeout-to-walk profile remains one of the best in the National League. DraftKings actually trimmed his salary slightly into this start, which only sweetens the price relative to his upside.

Los Angeles is priced as a heavy moneyline favorite in this spot, and a Dodgers team that has been dominant at home all year should give Yamamoto every chance to work deep into the game and pile up strikeouts against a Reds lineup that will lean on contact-oriented bats rather than power threats. He pairs well in the same build as the Dodgers stack below, letting you double down on the same game environment without needing to fade the pitcher you’re rostering.

Shohei Ohtani, 1B/OF — Los Angeles Dodgers

Ohtani is back in the middle of the Dodgers lineup and remains one of the most explosive bats in baseball even after a brief absence, sitting on a .277 average, 30 home runs and a .902 OPS on the season. Facing Lowder’s below-average fastball command tonight, Ohtani represents exactly the kind of premium bat that’s still priced like a mid-tier piece, with DraftKings keeping him around the $6,500 range even as the offense heats up behind him.

Stacking Ohtani with Yamamoto is a logical correlation play in game-total-driven builds: if the Dodgers are running up the score against a shaky Reds staff, Ohtani is almost certainly a central figure in that outcome, and it keeps your roster concentrated in a single lopsided matchup rather than spreading exposure across multiple coin-flip games. He’s a premium play in both cash and tournament formats tonight.

Riley Greene, OF — Detroit Tigers

Greene has been scorching hot over the last week, going 10-for-26 with three home runs in his last seven games, and he carries that heat into a home matchup with the Twins. On the season he’s hitting .279 with 19 homers and an .843 OPS, and Detroit’s lineup around him has been productive enough to keep him hitting in a run-producing spot near the top of the order. At a mid-tier DraftKings salary in the $4,000-$4,500 range, he offers premium-bat upside without the premium price tag.

The Twins-Tigers total has trended toward the middle of tonight’s board, but Greene’s individual form is what matters most here — he’s been squaring up the ball consistently, and any pitcher struggling with fastball command becomes an instant target for his left-handed power stroke. He’s one of the better value bats to build around at this salary tier.

Nick Kurtz, 1B — Athletics

Kurtz gets a favorable spot at home against Toronto’s Spencer Miles, who has been effective overall (6-2, 2.77 ERA) but has thrown just 1.1 total innings across his last two outings after working almost exclusively as a multi-inning reliever recently, which raises real bullpen exposure for Oakland’s lineup if Miles is limited in length. Kurtz is hitting .256 with 21 home runs and a .879 OPS on the year, and Sutter Health Park has played as a hitter-neutral-to-favorable environment for the A’s power bats this season.

He’s not the cheapest option in the pool, but relative to the premium bats above him, Kurtz still represents value given his raw power ceiling and a matchup that could turn into extra plate appearances against Toronto’s bullpen. He’s a strong GPP piece if you’re looking to differentiate from the popular Dodgers and Brewers stacks elsewhere on the slate.

Building Your Lineup

Tonight’s pool rewards prioritizing the two elite arms up top — Misiorowski and Yamamoto — and building outward from there rather than trying to force in a third premium pitcher. In cash games, pairing either ace with Ohtani gives you correlated exposure to a game environment that should be lopsided in the Dodgers’ favor, while Greene and Kurtz let you fill out the rest of the roster with real power upside at salaries that leave room for the studs at the top.

If you’re building multiple GPP lineups, consider pivoting off the Dodgers stack in at least one build since it’s likely to be the most popular team total on the board — Detroit and Oakland’s lineups offer lower-owned paths to the same power-based scoring you’re chasing. For bankroll management and staying disciplined with your DraftKings lineup construction across a long slate like this, it’s worth reviewing basic salary-cap strategy before you lock anything in, and it never hurts to shop lines with a live MLB odds page open alongside your optimizer to make sure the market still agrees with the matchups you’re targeting. Above all, stay disciplined on exposure — even in a slate this pitching-heavy, spreading rostership across a couple of different game environments protects you if one of tonight’s favorites underperforms.