FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Sunday July 23
Welcome to the Sunday 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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Saturday’s Main Slate winning GPP scores were well below our season average as it took 247 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 113 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 261.6 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 113 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 261.6 points
Saturday’s Main Slate was relatively lower scoring, interestingly continuing a trend of lower GPP scores we have seen across DFS the last week. The Marlins/Reds game was the most consistent target across winning line-ups specifically with J.T. Realmuto who erupted for 50.4 FanDuel points on the back of two home runs and 4 RBI’s which carried DFS teams well across the cash line!
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 Picks:
I am going to take a bit of a different approach to today’s slate as I am on vacation and am a bit limited on time so in an effort to give you some Picks and Pivots insight AND not have my family leave me behind on our vacation – I am going to give you my slate overview and thoughts in a different quick hitting format!
Starting pitching on the Main Slate is simple for me today – are you paying up for Corey Kluber ($11,300) or dropping down to Lance McCullers ($8,900) as your FanDuel arm? Kluber is the clear top dog on this slate with a 34.5% K rate and 15.8% swinging strike rate but for a 20% premium over McCullers this may be a price point that simply is too rich for my blood. McCullers has an elite 27.6% K rate, 12.4% swinging strike rate and a slate leading 63% ground ball rate of his own and takes on an Orioles team with a 22.4% K rate.
The price point on McCullers is such that he allows you to pick and choose whatever high-end bats you want so I expect the drop down in price will be a popular roster build strategy and one I will look to utilize today.
From a hitting perspective, we have 13 teams with 5+ run projections over the course of Sunday’s game so Vegas expects another high scoring day of DFS. The reality is on the Main Slate there are no real must have spots but rather a plethora of great spots that may make this more of a mini-stack/one-off kind of day.
The Marlins/Reds game is the one that stands out to me with an 11 projected game total ( 1 run behind the Coors Field contest) and with Tom Koehler/Sal Romano on the mound I have no problem building the core of my line-up around this stack!
Kohler on the season is giving up 2.75 HR/9 to left-handed batters with a bonkers 20% walk rate (only 13% K rate) so the Reds stack here is my top target on the day a we can expect walks, hard contact (33%) and home runs – the perfect stack recipe!
Joey Votto ($3,800) and Scott Schebler ($2,700) have the platoon advantage here but its worth noting that Koehler has given up 1.8 HR/9 with a 36.4% hard contact to right-handers as well which puts Zack Cozart ($3,300) and Adam Duvall ($3,300) in play as a full on stack!
On the Marlins side, I am looking to grab some correlation here against a nondescript arm in Sal Romano and will prioritize the top bats here including Giancarlo Stanton ($4,300) and Dee Gordon ($2,900) batting 1-2 in the Marlins order.
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. ($8,900)
C: James McCann ($2,200)
1B: Joey Votto ($3,800)
2B: Dee Gordon ($2,900)
3B: Travis Shaw ($3,600)
SS: Zack Cozart ($3,300)
OF: Adam Duvall ($3,300)
OF: Scott Schebler ($2,700)
OF: Giancarlo Stanton ($4,300)
Slate Overview: The Main Slate is simple for me – it is Kluber or McCullers at pitcher with the Astros right-hander’s salary savings being my preferred route! The hitting choices are how you will differentiate today so outside of a core Reds stack I am going to look to mix and match high-end power bats like Stanton or Travis Shaw to capture GPP upside!
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!