FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Sunday August 13
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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The winning GPP line-up on Saturday put up scores just below the season average with 251.1 FanDuel points. Over the first 129 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.9 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 129 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.9 points.
What an ugly and bizarre Saturday night DFS slate! Leading up to lock we had weather concerns, Aaron Nola “maybe” pitching in relief and confusion over which pitcher would be starting for the SF Giants! Ultimately the winning GPP rosters had some unlikely heroes as Patrick Corbin dominated the Cubs in Chase Field at 1% ownership with 8 K’s and 54 FanDuel points and the Orioles exploded for 12 runs as the best pure “team stack” of the night!
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 Pitching Picks:
Before we get into today’s Main Slate, I wanted to touch on last night’s Picks and Pivots pitcher Sean Manaea. I liked the match-up yesterday and understood the boom or bust nature of facing the Orioles but I moved forward and looked at the sneaky K upside and recommended him to my readers.
Manaea got one out, gave up 6 runs and put up NEGATIVE SEVENTEEN POINTS. I have never had a pitcher in DFS put up a score like that and I watched my night end before it really ever began.
I want to apologize to my readers and those in the DFS community who take my advice and trust me to give them the best chance to win. I understand it is baseball and anything can happen but I legitimately feel bad when I know there are readers who play my picks with a level of trust and lose their hard-earned money when I steer them in the wrong direction. In a DFS industry that is crawling with screenshot grabbing “touts” who promise to make you millions with their picks, I think it is important to recognize when we mis-step and if you played Manaea last night – MY BAD – let’s pretend it never happened like that bad decision at the bar at 3AM and move on with our lives!
Corey Kluber ($11,800): OK Main Slate, this is absurd. The pitching on this slate is so straight forward that unless you are simply paying large field tournaments and going with game theory there is almost no reason to have anything other than 100% Kluber on this slate.
Let’s break it down:
- Kluber has a 36% K rate this season – no other pitcher on the slate is within 10% of that mark
- Kluber has a massive 16.2% swinging strike rate – Chris Flexen is next on the list on this slate at 10.5%
- Kluber faces a Rays team with a massive 25% K rate and he comes in as a -180 road favorite.
If FanDuel wanted to make you think twice about this they needed to price him near $17k on this slate so you would be forced to play a roster of $2k hitters. At only $11.8K you can still afford $2.9k per batter so simply lock Kluber in and move on – but also realize today may be a day to focus on cash games/multipliers/smaller GPP’s as a result of the massive ownership on Kluber and similar roster builds.
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
New York Mets versus Zach Eflin: Let’s be clear, hitting is what is going to make our break your team today as the masses utilize Kluber at starting pitcher which leaves you with the same general roster constructs when picking your bats today!
Looking over the slate we have five teams with 5+ run projections with the Royals taking the top spot at 5.4 so we have no shortage of offense, the issue really comes down to price as locking in Kluber leaves you with only $2.9K per batter so value is the name of the game today!
The Mets are a team that has a unique blend of elite hitters with some sneaky value plays due to recent trades and facing off against Zach Eflin in Philadelphia gives us the chance to attack from both angles.
Eflin on the season has a 40% hard contact rate to left-handed batters with 2.4 HR/9 so we can easily look to Michael Conforto ($4,200) here and balance out his salary with Curtis Granderson at only $2,700 within our roster build. Jose Reyes ($2,200), Asdrubal Cabrera ($2,900) and Dominic Smith ($2,000) are all great value plays and you can include Yoenis Cespedes ($3,700) as well for a full on stack here as Eflin has a nearly 3 HR/9 mark at home versus right-handers and with only a 9% K rate we can expect contact in bunches! This is a line-up I will be watching today as we could uncover some great value wrapped around the elite bats of Conforto/Cespedes.
Should we stack or play one-offs? As I mentioned, we have a handful of spots with 5+ run totals but when those options are Kansas City, White Sox, Philadelphia etc, we may be better off playing one-offs than full on stacking around a Mets core today due both to the teams we mentioned and the value constraints we need to find behind Kluber.
Eric Thames ($2,900): If there is one thing I have learned from having Eric Thames on my season-long teams is that when he gets hot, you simply play him every single day and after back to back days with home runs and facing Sal Romano today, he is simply priced too cheap for this match-up and I want to have heavy exposure to him. With Travis Shaw in a walking boot there is not an obvious correlation play although if newly acquired Neil Walker ($2,900) is in the line-up we could utilize him here. With Shaw likely it will be interesting to see how the Brew Crew constructs their infield with Walker, Eric Sogard and Jonathan Villar all in the fold.
The Twins take on LHP Matt Boyd and obviously we have guys like Brian Dozier and Miguel Sano on our radar but we need value so take a look at the C/SS combination of Chris Gimenez ($2,000) and Eduardo Escobar ($2,500) as they provide value at two tough to fill spots and Boyd gives up 40% hard contact!
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: Corey Kluber ($11,800)
C: Chris Gimenez ($2,000)
1B: Eric Thames ($2,900)
2BL Eric Sogard ($2,300)
3B: Asdrubal Cabrera ($2,900)
SS: Eduardo Escobar ($2,500)
OF: Michael Conforto ($4,200)
OF: Yoenis Cespedes ($3,700)
OF: Curtis Granderson ($2,700)
Slate Overview: Kluber and move on – that is the Main Slate pitching summary. Hitting is where you need to find your edge and Sunday’s are always the toughest days to write-up as many regulars get the day off and leave us with some unorthodox line-ups. This could actually work to our advantage today as we may get some sneaky value plays when line-ups are announced which would perfectly with Kluber today!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the late breaking line-up news and roster updates on Twitter!