Welcome to the Monday FanDuel MLB edition of Picks and Pivots, a fantasy baseball column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for today’s Main slate which kicks off at 7:05 PM EST!
For those of you finding us for the first time, the concept behind FanDuel MLB Picks and Pivots is to first identify key building blocks that can be used for any roster construction and then identify pivot points to help differentiate your lineup in hopes of a big payday!
Sunday’s Main winning GPP scores were below our season average as it took 247 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 89 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 262.5 points. Looking back at last season, the winning GPP lineup on average scored 255 FanDuel points with a typical roster build that allocated 25% of your salary cap to your SP and the remaining 75% to your hitters.
Over the first 89 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 262.5 points.
Sunday’s Main winning GPP line-ups were really a mixed bags as there was no one dominant arm and no team stack that simply went off so as we look back at the various GPP’s on FanDuel you will see a variety of pitchers on the winning rosters (Ervin Santana, Sonny Gray) which is not overly shocking as yesterday’s pitching was largely all bunched together in terms of our options. From a hitting perspective the Yankees stack was the most common found among the winning line-ups but it was the one-off plays like Keon Broxton (40 FD points) that really set the winning lines apart!
Each day we will break down our top Starting Pitcher and our top hitting stacks of the day while giving you our thoughts on roster build and lineup construction.
As always, we will look to update our picks and final lineup thought prior to lock on our twitter account @FantasyCPR so make sure to give us a follow for all the late breaking lineup news.
Without further ado, let’s get into today’s slate!
FanDuel MLB – Top Starting Pitcher Pick:
The question on this short six game slate is whether or not you are going to pay up for Chris Sale ($11,700) and although I certainly cannot argue the merit of playing the best pitcher on any given slate I am also not interested in playing an arm that will likely be over 30% owned and sits at a price point nearly $2k higher than any other arm which means your Sale roster is going to look like everyone else’s and in GPP’s that is something I am just not interested in!
If I am going to pivot off Sale, I am going to go a route that I have been utilizing a lot lately with success and that is paying all the way down so that I can load up on high upside bats! German Marquez ($7,000) like many of the Rockies starters is extremely talented and any time we can get them outside of Coors Field we simply have to dig deeper.
Today Marquez will take on the Giants in an elite pitcher’s park in San Francisco in a game with a 7.5 total which is by far the lowest on the slate. The Giants have a projected run total of 3.98 which is just 0.3 runs higher than the Twins against Chris Sale so it is clear Vegas does not have much faith in the Giants anemic offense.
Although Marquez only has a 21% K rate on the season, when he steps out of Coors Field he sees that number spike to 25% on the road which would be a metric that aligns with arms like Carlos Carrasco and Jose Berrios on this slate. Marquez is the third cheapest arm on FanDuel today and comes into this spot with K rates of 31% or higher in two of his last three road starts (against the Cubs and Padres) and in those games sported a swinging strike rate of 12% and 17% which shows you the kind of upside he has!
What makes Marquez so much more effective on the road is that he can utilize his curveball which he throws over 25% of the time. At Coors Field the pitch simply does not get the break Marquez wants (as it does not for most pitchers in that park) but on the road this is a pitch he can lean on and considering it has generated a swinging strike rate of 17% this year, he could rack up a sneaky amount of swings and misses against this Giants team.
The Giants offense is scuffling right now and as a Mets fan I just watched them get swept by the Amazins which included a 7 K performance by Rafael Montero on Sunday one night after Jacob deGrom struck out the same amount! If Montero is able to rack up 7 K’s against this team then I have faith that Marquez could approach a similar number and at this price point gives us the ability to pick and choose whichever bats we want!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Los Angeles Dodgers versus Ricky Nolasco: A red-hot offense against a pitcher with the highest HR/FB rate on the slate – yes please. One of the reasons I think you need to pay down at starting pitcher today is so that you can afford to pay for the Dodgers bats against Nolasco who have the second highest projected run total on the slate.
Nolasco on the season is giving up 1.93 HR/9 to LHB and 2.98 HR/9 to RHB with a 36% and 41% hard contact rate so you can stack up hitters from both sides of the plate in this one! Assuming Corey Seager ($3,800) is back in the line-up tonight, and considering he was available to pinch hit yesterday that seems like a good guess, then a middle of the order stack is fully in play here which includes Cody Bellinger ($3,800), Justin Turner ($3,800) and Joc Pederson ($3,400).
Washington Nationals versus Eddie Butler: I expect the Dodgers and Yankees to be the chalk stacks people build around today which may leave the Nationals on the outside looking in ownership wise. Butler is not a pitcher I usually pick on as he has a less than 1 HR/9 rate to hitters from both sides of the plate but considering he has a 38% hard contact rate to left-handed bats this year and a 14.7% walk rate (which is almost equal to his 16% K rate), we should see base runners and hard hit balls which is typically a great recipe for stacks!
The Nationals have the left-handed bats needed to exploit this match-up so rolling out a Brian Goodwin ($2,600), Bryce Harper ($4,500) and Daniel Murphy ($4,000) three-man stack here is certainly in play here and from a roster build perspective works perfectly with the Dodgers stack noted above!
FanDuel MLB – Sample FanDuel GPP Line-Up and Slate Overview:
P: German Marquez ($7,000)
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C: Jose Lobaton ($2,000)
1B: Cody Bellinger ($3,800)
2B: Daniel Murphy ($4,000)
3B: Justin Turner ($3,800)
SS: Corey Seager ($3,800)
OF: Joc Pederson ($3,400)
OF: Bryce Harper ($4,500)
OF: Brian Goodwin ($2,600)
Slate Overview: Ultimately you need to decide whether or not you are going to pay up for Chris Sale tonight but I simply think game theory wise it makes sense to avoid that route. We have a short slate so the ownership on Sale is going to be massive and with no other pitchers within $2k of his price point you are going to have essentially the same roster build as every one else that rosters Sale so I don’t see a great path to differentiate with your hitters. You can however go a totally different route and load up on high-priced bats and take a flier on German Marquez against one of the worst offenses in baseball in an elite pitcher’s park and if Marquez can deliver a 35-40 FD point outing then you can let your bats carry you to victory tonight!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR on Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!