FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Sunday July 30
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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Over the first 115 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 261.4 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 115 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 261.4 points.
Well it has been a few days off for Picks and Pivots as I took my family on a bucket list trip to Yosemite which was frankly incredible. The minimal cell phone coverage and non-existent WiFi coupled with the picture perfect surroundings made for the perfect opportunity to check out from the day-to-day grind and get some quality family time in! Not playing DFS and writing Picks and Pivots for a few days was actually tough for me as I truly love it, but it was nice to leave technology behind and appreciate a part of the country I am grateful for having the chance to see!
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 Jr. ($8,100): The Main Slate pitching is not overly appealing but there is one arm that stands out to me above the rest as we get a high strikeout arm against a watered down Tigers line-up.
McCullers has a 27% K rate which is the highest of any arm on the slate and couples that with 12.3% swinging strike rate and a massive 63% ground ball rate. The recent returns on McCullers have been poor but that is due in large part to some simple bad luck as he has posted an unsustainable BABIP of .400, .474 and .529 over his past three starts.
What really stands out to me is that in those starts the hard contact has been incredibly low with a 20% or lower hard contact rate in three of his last four starts! The soft contact and high BABIP screams that McCullers is simply hitting a patch of bad luck and this is a spot where I expect a big time bounce back!
The Tigers are trotting out a watered down Sunday line-up with Dixon Machado, Mikie Mahtook, Austin Romine and Jose Iglesias – not exactly a murderer’s row of batters! The Tigers line-up today has a .140 team ISO so this should be a great spot for run prevention with the added K upside with McCullers that no other arm on the main slate has and he will be a core play for me in all formats!
FanDuel MLB – Tpp Hitting Stacks:
Houston Astros versus Justin Verlander: The Astros are ALWAYS going to be a top stack so this pick should not come as a surprise but with a name arm in Verlander on the hill and with George Springer and Carlos Correa on the shelf, the Astros may not be a team that jumps out as an obvious stack.
One of the reasons I am focusing on the Astros today is the position scarcity in the middle of the infield and the fact I can lock in elite plays at 2B/SS with Jose Altuve ($4,500) ad Marwin Gonzalez ($3,700). With so many of the other top 2B/SS options either hurt or not playing, you can get a gigantic advantage over the field by locking in these top Houston bats and with no high-priced arms to pay up for, this is a great way to utilize our salary!
Blue Jays versus Jesse Chavez: Toronto has one of the highest implied team totals on the slate and with Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson getting the day off, the popularity of this stack will likely take a nose dive but this is still one of my favorite spots on the day!
Chavez on the season is giving up 1.4 HR/9 to left-handed batters and 2.54 HR/9 to right-handed batters with 35%+ hard contact so this is an elite stacking environment versus a pitcher who has given up 4 HR’s and 9 ER in his last two starts.
Justin Smoak ($3,900) is the elite bat to target here but it is the value bats from Toronto that make this an intriguing stack to fit around the Astros studs as we can build around the top of the order with lead-off man Ezequiel Carrera ($2,200), Russell Martin ($2,600) and Steve Pearce ($2,700).
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 ($8,100)
C: Russell Martin ($2,600)
1B: Justin Smoak ($3,900)
2B: Jose Altuve ($4,500)
3B: Freddie Freeman ($3,800)
SS: Marwin Gonzalez ($3,700)
OF: Josh Reddick ($3,400)
OF: Ezequiel Carrera ($2,200)
OF: Steve Pearce ($2,700)
Slate Overview: Man that felt good to write after a few days off! This slate is straight forward to me – I am simply locking in McCullers as my pitcher and will build around the Astros and Blue Jays stacks on a day when picking out elite offenses is tough with so many high-end players taking the day off! Good luck today all!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!