FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – June 27
Welcome to the Tuesday 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!
Monday’s Main winning GPP scores were just above our season average as it took 267.3 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 90 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 262.6 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 90 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 262.6 points.
Dave Roberts is officially enemy #1 of the DFS community today! The Dodgers waited until nearly 8:30PM EST to release their roster and considering the Dodgers stack was at the core of my Picks and Pivots line it made us have to react and essentially abandon our research which is the most frustrating part. The Monday slate seemed really straight forward from a roster build approach as there were tons of bats we wanted to pay up for and German Marquez was a value arm in a great spot that allowed us to get there. Well Marquez got smacked around and the bats were duds which left us well below the cash line! The winning GPP combination across the board on Monday was to pair Chris Sale with the Rangers/Indians bats who went off for 24 combined runs!
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:
Max Scherzer ($12,000) As I do each day I look through the slate in its entirety before I lock in on certain plays trying to understand what roster builds make sense given the landscape of the games we have to choose from. Although we have a variety of pitching options to choose from my gut reaction is that we have very few “must have” offensive spots which puts the premium on pitching for me and there is no better arm on this slate than Max Scherzer.
Across the board Scherzer has the most dominant advanced metrics with a 35.3% K rate (8% higher than the next closest arm), 16% swinging strike rate (tops on the slate) and has double-digit K’s in six straight games. In fact, over those six games Mad Max has 69 K’s compared to only 8 walks while giving up only 5 ER’s!
The Cubs come into today with the lowest implied team total and a top 10 K rate against right-handed pitching this season and frankly outside of Anthony Rizzo/Kris Bryant, this is a line-up we can pick on!
Two of the key hitters, Willson Contreras and Ian Happ have 30% + K rates this season and after the top four batters this lineup gets ugly really quickly so Scherzer should have his way with the Jon Jay/Albert Almora/Javier Baez crew!
There are a ton of “name” pitchers on this slate including Carlos Martinez, Luis Severino, Jake Arrieta, Justin Verlander and James Paxton but frankly none of them has the upside to even remotely touch Scherzer in this spot and all those arms will do is parse out the ownership which makes paying up for Max potentially more contrarian than it may seem at first blush!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Brewers at Reds Game Stack: Even though we have a full Tuesday slate today we only have three teams with projected run total over 5 runs and with temperatures across the East Coast coming down the hot and humid hitting environments are not as obvious as they have been in recent days/weeks.
The Brewers/Reds game has a 9.5 team total, the fourth highest on the board and interestingly it raised a half a run immediately after being released so Vegas seems to think runs will be scored in Great American Ball Park!
Starting with the Brewers, they will face off with Tim Adleman who has a given up 1.7 HR/9 and 32% hard contact so far this season. Adleman sees his home run rate, hard contact rate and fly ball rate increase against left-handed hitters and the prices on guys like Eric Thames ($3,100) and Travis Shaw ($3,600) are reasonable enough where we can pair them with a Scherzer based line-up without much issue!
One news item to keep in mind – Jonathan Villar ($2,700) is expected to return from the DL on Tuesday and will likely be over-looked in his first game back. Keep an eye on the news here as if Villar is back in the line-up he makes for a great value play as an addition to a Brewers stack!
On the Reds side of the game they will face off with Junior Guerra who has the highest SIERA of any SP on this slate at 5.78 which is over 2.5 runs HIGHER than his ERA so we know regression is coming. The one statistic that jumps off the page to me is the walk rate which is nearly 14% and we have seen Guerra walk 4 or more batters in each of his last three starts which could spell trouble against the Reds speed guys like Billy Hamilton ($3,000) and Jose Peraza($2,200).
Guerra is giving up nearly 50% fly balls and over 30% hard contact to left-handed batters this season which puts guys like Joey Votto ($4,000) and Scott Schebler (2,900) in play but do not over look Adam Duvall ($3,200) as Guerra has a 2.4 HR/9 to right-handed bats this season!
I love this spot for a full on game stack as I expect the majority will head towards the highest slate run totals in Boston and head back to Texas/Cleveland due to recency bias. I think this game in Great American Ball Park is largely overlooked and the price points work perfectly around Max Scherzer while still capturing elite power/speed upside!
FanDuel MLB – Sample GPP Line-up and Slate Overview:
P: Max Scherzer ($12,000)
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C: Manny Pina ($2,300)
1B: Eric Thames ($3,100)
2B: Jonathan Villar ($2,700)
3B: Travis Shaw ($3,600)
SS: Jose Peraza ($2,200)
OF: Adam Duvall ($3,200)
OF: Scott Schebler ($2,900)
OF: Billy Hamilton ($3,000)
Slate Overview: The key question today is whether or not you are going to pay up for Max Scherzer and without any clear must have offensive spots, I think it makes sense to lock in an arm who has 60 or more FanDuel points in five of his last six starts! The Reds/Brewers game is where I plan to look for my power stacks due to the pitcher’s on the hill, the ball park boost and the price points which all sit right around $3k.
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR on Twitter for all the late breaking line-up news and roster updates!