FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Friday August 25
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 well below our season average with tournament scores BELOW 200 FanDuel points. Over the first 141 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.3 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 141 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.3 points.
Thursday’s Main Slate ended up being filled with mostly low scoring games which with so many aces on the hill made sense, but when you factor in the highest scoring team was the Indians (13 runs) and the fact they left Chris Sale with a ZERO on the night (6 ER in 3 IP), it was one of the weirder DFS GPP nights I can recall! Essentially the winning rosters across the board avoided Chris Sale, grabbed a few solo blasts from guys like Byron Buxton or Mike Napoli and eeked out a profitable MLB 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 Starting Pitcher Pick:
At first glance we have a top-heavy pitching slate with arms like Jacob deGrom, Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander, Kenta Maeda and Jose Quintana all taking the rubber on a large Friday night slate. Even with these top end arms I think there is better value to be had dropping down to the mid-tier with Michael Wacha ($7,400) in a perfect spot pitching at home against the strikeout heavy Rays team that will lose their DH!
The Rays have a 25% team K rate, one of the largest on the slate and over the last month there projected starting line-up has a massive 27.1% K rate which gives Wacha significant upside at this value price point.
It is worth noting that Wacha is a significantly better pitcher at home this season with a 2.99 ERA at home and 5.57 on the road with a 25% hard contact rate in St. Louis versus a 31% rate away from home. Looking at Wacha’s last five home starts he has put up four big games and one clunker with 40, 55, 44 and 43 FanDuel points which would return exceptional value at this price point.
If you are looking for a cheap pivot play A.J. Cole ($6,800) is an intriguing option at low ownership as his match-up against a deplete Mets team that has now lost Michael Conforto puts him in a great position for sneaky upside. The projected Mets line-up without Conforto has a 24% K rate over the last month and a minuscule .160 ISO so the spot could return both great run prevention with K upside!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks and Spots to Target:
Arizona at home versus LHP Ty Blach: On the road this season Blach is giving up 1.8 HR/9 to right-handed batters with a 34% hard contact rate and will have to pitch in Chase Field tonight against a powerful Arizona core! The Diamondbacks have the second highest projected team total with 5.3 runs and on a night with some elite offensive spots, I think this is the core stack to build around!
Paul Goldschmidt ($4,300), J.D. Martinez ($4,100) and A.J. Pollock ($3,400) represent the top plays here with Martinez standing out as a near must play as he has a monster .518 ISO and .564 wOBA versus LHP this season!
Seattle Mariners versus C.C. Sabathia: With this game in NY we can easily target hitters against Sabathia who has an ERA of 5.8 at home this season versus 2.6 on the road with a home run rate nearly twice as high and a 36% hard contact rate!
Nelson Cruz ($4,200) is absolutely mashing the baseball over the last month with a .350 ISO against LHP during the last 30 days and steps into an ideal spot against Sabathia tonight. Sabathia relies heavily on his slider to RHB, throwing it at nearly a 32% clip which sets up perfectly for both Cruz and Jean Segura ($3,300) who hit the slider at nearly 5-6% above the league average this season!
Great one-off value plays: On a large slate like this I like to build 1-2 core mini stacks and look for elite one-off plays to round out my line-up and with the core I have in place it leaves 2B and 3B open to find these bats. There are two hitters that jumped out to me as severely under-priced considering their talent and match-up with Jose Ramirez ($2,700) who is 2B eligible on FanDuel and Rafael Devers ($3,300) at third base!
Ramirez is my favorite play of the two as he gets to take on LH Jason Vargas who over the last month is surrendering a .233 ISO to right-handed batters and considering he throws his change-up nearly 40% of the time and Ramirez hits the change at twice the league average, this is an elite spot at a cheap price point!
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: Michael Wacha ($7,400)
C: Chris Gimenez ($2,300)
1B: Paul Goldschmidt ($4,300)
2B: Jose Ramirez ($2,700)
3B: Rafael Devers ($3,300)
SS: Jean Segura ($3,300)
OF: Nelson Cruz ($4,200)
OF: A.J. Pollock ($3,400)
OF: J.D. Martinez ($4,100)
Slate Overview: The more I look at this slate the more I love the roster build you can get by dropping down at starting pitcher and this looks like a strategy that is safe for both cash games and has GPP upside. Wacha’s price point feels about $1,000 too low and allows you to load up on elite bats in high scoring spots on this large Friday Night slate!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the late breaking DFS news and analysis for MLB, NFL and EPL!