FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Thursday July 20 Main Slate
"SAN DIEGO, CA – JULY 15: Madison Bumgarner #40 of the San Francisco Giants pitches during the first inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at PETCO Park on July 15, 2017 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Getty Images) FanDuel MLB"
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 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!
PLAY FANDUEL: New users win first contest or get credited up to $120!
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.
If you missed the Early Slate breakdown you can find it here!
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 (MAIN SLATE):
Madison Bumgarner ($11,200): MadBum returned from the DL in his last start in San Diego and was solid over 7 innings giving up 3 ER and striking out 5 for 31 FanDuel points. Today he gets to face that same San Diego team in his own ball park and frankly we could not ask for a better match-up or a better pitcher to anchor our teams to on a short slate.
The Padres have the highest K rate on the slate, MadBum is a massive -200 home favorite and will take on a Padres line-up that is batting .174 in their careers against the Giants ace. Now that Bumgarner has gotten that first start out-of-the-way, throwing 102 pitches, we should feel confident deploying him in all formats tonight!
The only question is whether or not you can/should pay up for him on this slate with other legit pivots available to us including Luis Severino, Michael Fulmer, Cole Hamels and Felix Hernandez.
Where some may look at those names and take the perspective that we do not need to pay up for Bumgarner because we have legit pivot options with upside, I take the opposite approach and think that because players actually have options it should steal ownership away from the pitcher I really want to roster on this slate!
As with any slate we need to take the pitchers within the context of what the slate overs us and I believe there is enough high upside value on the offensive side to make paying up for Bumgarner a no-brainer and will let the rest of the field try to get cute here!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
One of the reasons I think we can pay up for Madison Bumgarner on this slate is that we have incredibly soft pricing on the best offensive spot on the Main Slate – Texas and Baltimore. Yes, I know the Rangers have burned me two days in a row but I am going right back to the well here as the Rangers take on LHP Wade Miley.
This game has a projected game total of 10 runs, the highest on the main slate, and the Rangers bats will take on a pitcher who has given up 1.64 HR/9 and 33% hard contact to right-handed hitters this season in Wade Miley.
The Rangers will be the core of my line-up today and my intention is to stay on the four key right-handed batters in the line-up in Mike Napoli ($2,900), Adrian Beltre ($3,500), Elvis Andrus ($3,000) and Carlos Gomez ($2,900).
On the other side of this game the Orioles take on Cole Hamels and I was a bit shocked to see that Baltimore has the highest projected run total on the slate considering their struggles this season versus LHP.
Although Hamels is not a pitcher we typically want to pick on, he does give up 36% hard contact to right-handed batters this season so we could look to deploy mini-stacks with some of the Orioles right-handed bats. With the Rangers core stack already in place I will look to fill in the roster spots that remain open including Jonathan Schoop ($3,200) at 2B, Mark Trumbo ($3,400) in the OF and Wellington Castillo ($2,500) at C.
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.
More from FanSided
- USMNT news: Turner to Forest, Trusty to Sheffield, Reynolds to Westerlo
- Inside the Clubhouse: What I’m hearing as the MLB Trade Deadline nears
- Yankees: Luis Severino has blunt assessment of another miserable outing
- Bills: 3 2023 roster holes that could cost Josh Allen a Super Bowl and why
- Colts RB Jonathan Taylor shoots down rumors of troubling injury
P: Madison Bumgarner ($11,200)
C: Wellington Castillo ($2,500)
1B: Mike Napoli ($2,900)
2B: Jonathan Schoop ($3,200)
3B: Adrian Beltre ($3,500)
SS: Elvis Andrus ($3,000)
OF: Carlos Gomez ($2,900)
OF: Mark Trumbo ($3,400)
OF: Yasiel Puig ($2,400)
Slate Overview: I have to admit, normally I HATE these split slates but I love both of today’s slates! We have a ton of options to choose from in some great spots and the pricing on FanDuel is such that we can really get the roster builds we want without too much difficulty including pairing Bumgarner with Texas/Baltimore bats. On slates like this I will stick ti single entry tournaments and multipliers and avoid large field multi-entry tournaments but there enough options today that we can get some interesting roster builds that should set us apart from the field!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR and @2lockSports on Twitter for the latest player updates and roster news!