FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Friday August 18
Welcome to the Friday 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 Thursday put up scores just above the season average with 267.2 FanDuel points. Over the first 134 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 134 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.9 points.
Friday’s Main Slate was dominated by Luis Severino who put up 56 FanDuel points by striking out 9 batters in 6.1 innings and was the most consistent find across winning rosters. As an aside, I played 100% fade on Severino on this slate for the sole purpose of ownership as he was the obvious top play on a short five game slate with weather concerns for the pitchers in Pittsburgh essentially making it a four game slate when selecting your arms!
Depending on the contest, Severino was anywhere from 35%-50% owned and on a short slate I felt like this was the only real edge I could get in tournaments by fading him and hoping that half the field would get a poor outing. I chose to go to battle with Edwin Jackson who at less than 10% ownership put up 40 FanDuel points of his own and gave me the chance to catch Severino with the right mix of bats. Unfortunately outside of a few spots there was not many stand out bats so those with Severino were able to sustain their lead over the field but it is worth noting how ownership played out in this spot for the winning teams!
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:
When you initially open up this slate, the first thing that jumps out at you is we are going to have two of the best arms in baseball on the mound in Corey Kluber ($11,600) and Max Scherzer ($11,500). I am not going to waste your time telling you they are great plays – they have the highest K rates on the slate by a significant margin and the highest swinging strike rates so the upside is real and they are the top two arms without a doubt.
Here’s my only concern – weather – and it is not just for these arms, looking at the weather up and down the East Coast (NY, Bos, Baltimore) and in Kansas City where Kluber is scheduled to pitch we have steady rain concerns. Now I am not a weather man nor do I play one on T.V. like the legendary Brick Tamland of Anchorman, but weather is going to be a factor on the slate so keep an eye on it throughout the day and leading up to lock!
The reason I bring this up is that if Kluber is taken out of play due to rain in Kansas City this leaves Max Scherzer all alone at the top with a juicy match-up against the Padres in Petco Park. Listen, if Edwin Jackson can drop 40 on this team Max has obvious 50+ FanDuel point upside so a fade here is a scary proposition but it may be warranted. Without Kluber at the same price point to siphon away the ownership on Scherzer we should see Mad Max at 20-25% ownership even on a slate this size so pivoting off him in GPP’s is a route I want to explore.
German Marquez ($6,200) versus Milwaukee in Coors Field: So I just told you how we have two of the best arms in baseball on the slate and one pitching in Petco and I head to Coors Field for my pitcher? Remember guys, I approach this slate with a GPP mindset – you are simply playing Scherzer in cash games but in GPP’s if Kluber is off the slate then you have to find a way to think differently.
The prospect of taking a pitcher in Coors Field is always risky however Marquez has proven successful in this ballpark so far this season averaging 32 FanDuel points per game over nine home starts in Colorado. If you look at his last four games in Coors Field that average spikes to over 41 FanDuel points per game including a 52 FD points performance against the Pirates and a 48 FD point performance against the Padres.
Dig a bit deeper and you will see that in the last three starts he has generated a swinging strike rate of 12% or higher in each outing with a 31% or higher K rate in two of those three starts!
Now take all those data points and overlay it with the fact he takes on a Brewers team with the highest K rate on the slate at 25.7% and over the last month the projected line-up for Milwaukee has taken it up a notch with a 26% K rate against right-handed pitchers!
What this all adds up to for me is a great GPP play as the price point is incredibly low, the match-up has elite strike-out upside and his recent performance reflects the kind of big game upside we are chasing if we decide to go this route!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Spots to Target:
Texas Rangers versus Big Game James Shields: Yes we have a game in Coors Field and the Rockies have a 6.4 projected run total against Matt Garza so the Colorado bats are all in play but the inflated price points are pushing me elsewhere (as they usually do) and instead I think you can start your rosters with a Rangers team that has a 6.3 projected run total, the second highest on the slate and just a fraction behind the more expensive Rockies as they take on James Shields in Texas.
James Shields literally could not ask for a worse match-up as he is giving up 3.82 HR/9 to left-handed hitters on the year with a .350 ISO and now has to face a potent Texas line-up filled with elite left-handed bats? Good luck pal.
Joey Gallo ($4,000) and his .363 season long ISO set up perfectly in this spot and over the last month he has taken his game to another level against RHP with a monster .542 ISO and .452 wOBA. With Shields home run issues against left-handers and Gallo’s monster home run potential on the other side of this match-up, this is an elite GPP spot with the potential to take down a tournament on his own!
A full Rangers stack is in play here with Rougned Odor ($3,200) my next favorite play as over the last month he has put up a .290 ISO and .358 wOBA which are the second best marks on the Rangers squad behind the red-hot Gallo. Ultimately all the bats here are viable with Shin-Soo Choo ($3,000) as a great value play and Nomar Mazara ($3,800) who has 30+ FanDuel points in back to back games!
Los Angeles Dodgers versus Jordan Zimmerman: Speaking of bad pitchers we should attack…..have you met Jordan Zimmerman? Zimmerman has given up 2 HR/9 to LHB and 1.6 HR/9 to RHB with a 41% hard contact rate to left-handers and a 35% rate to righties so all the Dodgers bats are in play today!
Cody Bellinger ($4,400) is clearly in play and if Joey Gallo was not on the slate he would probably be in 100% of my line-ups but at a similar price point I think this will be a position where I mix and match my exposure across multiple line-ups today!
Yasmani Grandal ($2,900) is the lock and load catcher for me on this slate and Corey Seager ($3,800) follows suit as my top SS choice. Both players have ISO’s over .210 over the last month with season long wOBA’s over .330 against RHP and they allow you to fulfill two of the weakest positions on the board with players in elite hitting spots.The one player that may fly under the radar is Chris Taylor ($3,800) who over the last month has an absurd .430 ISO versus RHP with a .560 wOBA!
Ultimately these two line-ups correlate exceptionally well – believe me, I have game stacked this about 40 different ways and it is not even 7AM – so loading up on these two stacks gives you elite upside up and down the line-up with power bats against home run prone arms!
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: German Marquez ($6,200)
C: Yasmani Grandal ($2,900)
1B: Joey Gallo ($4,000)
2B: Rougned Odor ($3,200)
3B: Adrian Beltre ($4,500)
SS: Corey Seager ($3,800)
OF Chris Taylor ($3,800)
OF: Joc Pederson ($2,700)
OF: Nomar Mazara ($3,800)
Slate Overview: My initial take on this slate is that weather is going to be the over-arching theme as we could see 3-4 games rained out based off the initial weather reports. I will share weather updates throughout the day on Twitter @2LockSports so be sure to follow along! If weather washes out Kluber in KC and the ownership rushes to Mad Max then I will play the GPP fade and opt to load up on bats with a risky high K arm like Marquez! This should be a fun slate today with tons of avenues to play and I can’t wait for it to get started!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your DFS news and analysis for MLB, NFL and EPL!