FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Thursday July 20 Early Slate
Welcome to the Thursday FanDuel MLB edition of Picks and Pivots, a fantasy baseball column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for today’s Early 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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Wednesday’s Main Slate winning GPP scores were well below our season average as it took 210 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 110 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 263.2 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 110 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 263.2 points.
Wednesday’s Main Slate was one of the lower scoring Main Slates we have had in a while and the “winning” players that were most commonly found on tournament winning rosters were Gerrit Cole (52 FD points) with a smattering of Dodgers/Baltimore bats which scored a combined 19 runs between them!
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 (Early Slate):
Jameson Taillon ($8,600): Looking over this four game slate the overall breakdown looks relatively simple – we have two games with 10+ totals and one game with an 8.5 total in a pitcher’s park so my guess is we see the roster build tend to gravitate towards the spots that Vegas as laid out.
The Brewers/Pirates game has an 8.5 game total and the two highest priced arms on the slate in Jimmy Nelson ($9,300) and Jameson Taillon ($8,600). I expect this to be the popular spot to find pitching as the Brewers have the lowest implied team total (3.8) on the slate and after watching Gerrit Cole strike out double-digits on Wednesday Night, we will likely see Taillon get a ton of ownership and buzz thrown his way.
The Brewers projected line-up strikes out at nearly a 26% clip versus right-handers and their projected line-up has a K rate 5% higher than any other team on the early slate so there is clearly some K upside here for Taillon.
Taillon’s splits seem to match-up well against Milwaukee as well as he has the ability to limit damage against left-handed hitters with a near 60% ground ball rate and a 22% hard contact rate which could neutralize the Shaw/Thames power combo in this spot! The Brewers will likely roll out 5-6 right-handed batters in this spot which is perfect for Taillon as he has a K rate of 27.3% against RH which is over 11% higher than his mark against LH hitters!
Taillon will likely be the chalk on this Early Slate so there is merit in tournaments to fading him because he simply does not have the kind of upside that will set him apart by a material amount over the next highest scoring arm.
If you are looking for a pivot, Lance Lynn ($8,400) is an arm that interests me versus the Mets in the one game on this slate that has a very “blah” appeal and will likely be over-looked. Lynn is a solid pitcher, having put up 37+ FanDuel points in three of his last four starts including a 37 FD point outing against this very same Mets team last week in St. Louis.
Outside of Jay Bruce ($2,400), the rest of these Mets are a mere 8 for 51 in their career (.156 average) against Lynn. With all the ownership going to Taillon at this price point, Lynn offers a similar 35-40 FanDuel point score at a fraction of the ownership and will be an arm I utilize in the same roster build to differentiate from the likely overwhelming Taillon popularity!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks (Early Slate)
On the Early Slate we have four offenses in great spots, Arizona, Cincinnati, Boston and Toronto, so this may be a spot where you build more mini-stacks and spread out your offensive exposure rather than full on stack:
Arizona versus Cincinnati: With Taijuan Walker and Luis Castillo on the mound here we get two talented pitchers going against two elite offenses in a great hitting environment so this has significant boom or bust potential.
Walker on the season is giving up 1.8 HR/9 and 33% hard contact to left-handed hitters and in his last start against this Reds team gave up home runs to Joey Votto ($3,800) and Scooter Gennett ($3,100) who remain firmly in play today!
Zack Cozart ($3,300) will likely be the most popular shortstop on this slate as the combination of underwhelming pivots and the recent red-hot play (30+ FD points in two straight games) will lead ownership to congregate here! I have no issue using Cozart here as part of a Reds stack and you can add in Scott Schebler ($2,800) if you are looking for a full on Reds stack in this spot!
Arizona was the MASSIVE chalk on Wednesday – I mean 40-50% ownership in tournaments which is crazy for a larger slate. For the most part they let everyone down and with big totals in Boston/Toronto we could see people jump off which means I will be right back on this spot again today.
I also think the fact that they face Luis Castillo again today, just a few days after he dominated them in Chase Field for 54 FD points on the back of 8 K’s will further dilute the ownership of the key bats. Castillo is talented but he also a pitching giving up 2 HR/9 with a 30%+ hard contact rate so he is not someone we need to avoid!
Jake Lamb ($3,500) will be my go to again at third base today and you can pair him with David Peralta ($3,300) who is 6 for his last 10 with a home run and 3 RBI’s. A.J. Pollock ($3,300) has been quiet so far in this series and with the recency bias against Arizona that I expect tonight, I love the idea of putting him into an Arizona stack!
Boston/Toronto: The clear pivot off Great American Ball Park will be Fenway Park where we get the Red Sox against Francisco Liriano in the ULTIMATE boom or bust spot! Liriano has faced Boston twice this season, giving up 5 ER in one start and 0 ER in the first so the range out outcomes here will likely determine the slate.
I expect the Red Sox to be the buzz team on the day but even in the game where they scored 5 ER off Liriano, they did not hit a single home run and that has been the Red Sox in a nutshell this season – they are a team that will string together hits which is great in real life but leaves you lacking the upside for DFS GPP’s. I do think you will want some exposure to this game as the “late hammer” so I plan to have Mookie Betts ($4,100) in my line-ups today and you can even go to Sandy Leon ($2,200) as your punt catcher!
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: Jameson Taillon ($8,600)
C: Tucker Barnhart ($2,000)
1B: Joey Votto ($3,800)
2B: Scooter Gennett ($3,100)
3B: Jake Lamb ($3,500)
SS: Zack Cozart ($3,300)
OF: Mookie Betts ($4,100)
OF: David Peralta ($3,300)
OF: A.J. Pollock ($3,300)
Slate Overview: The layout of this slate seems very straight forward – find a pitcher who can give you 35-40 FanDuel points and then load up on the bats that can win you this slate. On smaller slates like this where the roster build approach and spots to target is so concentrated I will likely avoid large field multi-entry tournaments entirely and look to play more high dollar single entry and multipliers as getting any real differentiation can be nearly impossible. This is a pretty fun slate to play though and I expect some high scores for a four game slate so definitely jump in and get some exposure before we hit the Main Slate!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR and @2LockSports on Twitter for all the late breaking lineup news and roster updates!