FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Sunday August 20
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 well above the season average with 285.3 FanDuel points. Over the first 136 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 136 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 261.4 points.
Saturday’s Picks and Pivots line delivered in a big way with 213.6 FanDuel points, easily cashing across all formats! Normally I write these “sample” line-ups very early in the day as a first look to give readers an idea for roster construction while highlighting top plays in the process and on Saturday we had a unique scenario unfold as every player in the shell line-up was starting so we could actually roll with it “as-is.” The Reds and Rangers were my top targets all day long and I felt they correlated extremely well when trying to stack and thanks to big nights from Mike Napoli (41.9 FD points) and Scooter Gennett (41.9 FD points) we were able to overcome a shaky outing from Zack Greinke (10 points!) and still keep ourselves in the green!
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:
A first look at the pitching this slate and you will see two aces priced reasonably at the top with Jacob deGrom ($10,400) and Danny Salazar ($9,800) and a decision to make! deGrom at home during the day is almost always a lock for me as his career numbers in that scenario are flat-out dominant and even with a skeleton crew behind him for the Mets he is the top arm on the slate in my opinion. Salazar has a dominant 32.7% K rate and 16.6% swinging strike rate, the top marks on the slate, and gives you the kind of K upside you are looking for in tournaments although a match-up with the Royals is not one that screams K upside.
Brad Peacock ($8,400): Both deGrom and Salazar are in play today due to their elite strikeout skills as they rank 1-2 in swinging strike rate and are top 3 in K rate but the one arm that I feel gives me the same strikeout upside for a better price is Brad Peacock who gets a home start with Oakland.
Peacock on the season has the second highest K rate on the slate behind Salazar at 30.3% and a 12.3% swinging strike rate but what sets him apart here is the match-up as he gets an A’s team with a 25% team K rate on the season which is 5% higher than the opponents for deGrom and Salazar!
At home this season, Peacock has a 32% K rate and is giving up only a 28% hard contact rate with his Achilles heel being a 12% walk rate that has increased his pitch count and derailed multiple outings. Over his last four starts however the K rate has been materially better at just over 5% which gives me significantly more confidence that he is starting to figure out how to “pitch” instead of simply throw while maintaining his strikeout ability.
Ultimately this is a slate where I think you need to play for K upside as the top end arms like deGrom and Salazar have the ability to drop 40-50 FanDuel points on any given slate so if you are fading them then I would lock in an arm who has similar potential. Peacock has the elite strikeout ability to match these arms and as a massive -210 favorite today we can look to capture the valuable win/QS bonus on FanDuel as well!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Angels versus Chris Tillman: I am not sure the Angels are a team I ever consider stacking as they are always viewed as a one-off Mike Trout squad that largely gets over-looked! In fact even the last two nights we have seen the GPP ownership on Trout land between 5-8% which is low considering there were many sharp DFS touts promoting the Angels bats.
This team is red-hot right now having put up 9 home runs in the first two games against the Orioles and normally the game theory would say to jump off but when you are facing Chris Tillman, the pitcher with the highest SIERA on the slate, you simply need to keep riding this train!
Tillman on the season is giving up 2.8 HR/9 ti right-handed batters with 38% hard contact and is only getting a spot start today after being demoted to the bullpen! Over the last month, Tillman is giving up a .436 ISO to right-handed bats and a .476 wOBA to hitters from both sides of the plate so this is one of those rare instances where an Angels stack is firmly in play!
Mike Trout ($4,800) has a .302 ISO and .484 wOBA over the last month against RHP and is the obvious core play here but do not overlook Albert Pujols ($3,000) due to Tillman’s reverse splits and the fact that Tillman relies heavily on his slider which is a pitch that Pujols hits at almost twice the league average this season! Luis Valbuena ($2,400) remains insanely cheap and the last month of output screams GPP play as he has a .319 ISO with a 32% K rate – basically it is home run or bust – but at $2.4K the upside is more than worth the price of admission!
Mariners versus Blake Snell: If Chris Tillman is not the worst pitcher on this slate it is only because Blake Snell is in the conversation as he has the second highest SIERA and a slate leading 12.5% walk rate! Let’s not beat around the bush here – Snell is brutal against right-handed hitters with a 35% hard contact rate and inflated fly ball rate which puts Nelson Cruz ($4,600) at the top of my wish list today!
You can certainly play Cruz as a one-off but the one correlation play that I really like is Jean Segura ($3,500) who gets the benefit of facing a pitcher with a high walk rate and his pitch repertoire of fastball,change-up, slider fits in perfectly with Segura’s hitting profile as he hammers off-speed pitches at marks above the league average!
Wilmer Flores versus a Lefty Day! As a Mets fan it is tough watching them trade away/give away all their assets post trade deadline but ultimately the moves make sense and although I would like them to have obtained more prospects instead of salary relief, I get the business side of the deals. What it is leaving Mets fan with however is essentially Yoenis Cespedes, Michael Conforto and a bunch of kids so this is not a team that I would fully stack and could see Adam Conley gaining some DFS GPP traction today due to their weakened line-up.
I will take the opposite approach and utilize two bats in the Mets line-up that seem under-priced relative to the match-up and lock in 2B Wilmer Flores ($3,000) and Yoenis Cespedes ($3,300) against a lefty! Can I just point out that Cespedes costs the same today as Byron Buxton?
Ultimately this is a day where I think you can utilize 3+ mini-team stacks and focus more on finding the best complete roster than going all in on two teams like we did yesterday with the Reds and Rangers!
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: Brad Peacock ($8,400)
C: Travis d’Arnaud ($2,100)
1B: Albert Pujols ($3,000)
2B: Wilmer Flores ($3,000)
3B: Luis Valbuena ($2,400)
SS: Jean Segura ($3,500)
OF: Nelson Cruz ($4,600)
OF: Yoenis Cespedes ($3,300)
OF: Mike Trout ($4,800)
Slate Overview: As you can see by the sample roster build, dropping down at starting pitcher to a high K arm like Peacock allows you to load up on some high-priced bats in elite hitting spots today. Although I can certainly see the merit in paying up for deGrom and Salazar, my core build today will be to utilize Peacock in GPP formats and take my shots on hitters against the worst pitchers on the slate!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis for MLB, NFL and EPL!