FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Monday July 17
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 DFS action!
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!
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Sunday’s Main Slate winning GPP scores were right above our season average as it took 291.9 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 107 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 263.9 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 107 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 263.9 points.
Sunday’s Picks and Pivots line-up was built around Jose Quintana who had a boom or bust match-up against a strikeout prone Orioles team and he came through at single digit ownership with a monster 67 FanDuel points on the back of 7 innings, 12 K’s and the Win/QS bonus! The Nationals stack came through in a big way as they exploded for 14 runs with Daniel Murphy being the key cog in winning DFS line-ups but it was a late home run from Nelson Cruz that made the difference in the majority of our contests as it pushed us safely cross the cash line on the very last play of the slate!
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:
Lance McCullers ($9,100): Sunday night after the day had worn down I started to take a spin through the pitching options for Monday, quickly wrote down McCullers name and started to dig through the rest of the options. I went to bed, woke up and did another look through the slate with “fresh eyes” and after those two sessions the piece of paper in front of me says – “Starting Pitchers….McCullers…..”
Literally I cannot find another pitcher I am even willing to consider on this slate and as a GPP player that’s shocking to me as I can almost always find a tournament dart throw on any slate. The reality is McCullers is in a tier of his own today as the lone elite strikeout arm on the main slate and he will be the anchor for 100% of my rosters.
McCullers has a 28% K rate and a 12.6% swinging strike rate, the highest such marks on the slate and even higher than Stephen Strasburg who toes the rubber in the lone early game.
Let me put it to you another way – here are the top 5 arms today by K rate – McCullers, Eduardo Rodriguez, Jon Lester, Brent Suter and Zack Wheeler. When Suter and Wheeler are top 5 anything on a slate I think that tells you all you need to know about your pitching options.
This is a scenario where I simply ignore ownership, I take the best arm on the slate and let others try to talk themselves into why Chad Kuhl or Tom Koehler is a sneaky GPP play!
McCullers has the highest K upside, is a massive -215 home favorite and has a an elite 63% ground ball rate which would be top on the slate if it was not for Luis Perdomo taking the mound in Coors FIeld.
The game log watchers may look at the previous two outings for McCullers and see 16 FanDuel points per game and try to fade this spot but the reality is, in those games McCullers was partially a victim of bad luck as he had a .425 BABIP with only as 10% hard contact rate!
McCullers will take on a Mariners team today he has dominated in his career, as over 86 at bats he has 31 strikeouts which would be an absurd 36% K rate! Over those 86 at bats, McCullers has given up only 6 doubles and not a single triple or home run!
I can understand the game theory of fading McCullers if he is going to be insanely high owned but I honestly do not see a single pivot play that I am comfortable going to on this slate. The price point at only $9.1K reflects his recent bad luck and it is reasonable enough that you can still mix and match high upside bats including Coors Field if you are so inclined!
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FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Houston Astros versus LHP Ariel Miranda: Yeah I know there is a game in Coors Field but as a member of team #FadeCoors, I simply let the masses flock towards those bats and I am happy to spend up on the most explosive offense in baseball at home against a left-handed pitcher!
Miranda is absolutely dominant against left-handed batters but against righties, he has a 1.9 HR/9 with a 54% fly ball rate which is 20% higher than his mark against lefties. Miranda has actually faced Houston three times already this season and has given up 10 ER and 5 HR’s in those three starts so it is safe to say the Astros bats are comfortable against him!
George Springer ($4,300) is the premier play here and BvP enthusiasts will love his career numbers against Miranda as he is 4 for 11 with every single one of those 4 hits being a home run! Carlos Correa ($4,200) is my favorite secondary play here due to the landscape of the SS position – seriously go look at it and tell me that paying up for Correa isn’t the best roster choice!
Miami Marlins versus Jerad Eickhoff: If players are opting to fade Coors it will likely be for the Astros bats so I certainly do not expect any “sneaky” ownership there and combined with the likely chalk SP in McCullers we need to find some ways to be different with the rest of our roster!
The Marlins bats get an exceptional match-up at home against Eickhoff in a spot that will likely be ignored but should not be! Eickhoff on the season has drastic splits, giving up a .378 wOBA, 1.5 HR/9 and a 37% hard contact rate to left-handed hitters and will face a Marlins team that has had success up and down the lineup against him!
The lefties are where I think you should start your roster build today, specifically with Justin Bour ($3,400) and Christian Yelich ($3,500), who are a combined 7 for 17 with 2 home runs against Eickhoff in their careers. Dee Gordon ($3,000) makes for an interesting addition to a mini-stack here as his price point is reasonable and he brings the same splits advantage which the added bonus of speed!
Detroit Tigers versus Jason Vargas: One of the more interesting things about this slate is that we have a game in Kaufman Stadium with a 10 projected run total which is only 1 run behind a game in Coors Field. That likely has more to do with the fact we have Vargas and Jordan Zimmerman pitching thank anything but this could be a sneaky spot to look for offense!
Vargas is an arm who started off the season strong but has faded as the season has progressed, reminding us of the fact he is a mediocre 34-year-old soft tossing lefty. Vargas lives in the 85 MPH range with a fastball he throws 45-50% of the time and relies on a curve ball/change combo to try to finesse his way through line-ups.
The big name Tiger bats are pricey on this slate but there are some interesting value plays you can use to round out your roster including Ian Kinsler ($3,100), Nick Castellanos ($3,100) and lefty masher James McCann ($2,300) behind the plate.
FanDuel MLB – Sample GPP Line-Up and Slate Overview:
Please Note: This is NOT an optimized line-up, it is simply illustrative to show the type of roster build we can have using the logic previously laid out in Picks and Pivots. My actual line-up may differ from the line-up shown here.
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P: Lance McCullers Jr. ($9,100)
C: James McCann ($2,300)
1B: Justin Bour ($3,400)
2B: Ian Kinsler ($3,100)
3B: Nick Castellanos ($3,100)
SS: Carlos Correa ($4,200)
OF: George Springer ($4,300)
OF: Christian Yelich ($3,500)
OF: Brett Phillips ($2,000)
Slate Overview: If Lance McCullers was not on this slate I would tell you that the ideal roster build would be to take a pitcher who won’t kill you and load up on bats. The reality is however McCullers is on this slate and is the kind of arm that could put up double-digit K’s and leave a 50 spot on the board for a price under $10k on FanDuel. I see no reason to fade him here outside of a large field tournament game theory call as you can easily stack high upside bats in the same roster build that you lock him into!
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!