FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Tuesday August 29
Welcome to the Tuesday 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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Tuesday’s winning GPP scores were right at our season average as it took 259.3 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 142 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 142 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.3 points.
Tuesday’s winning GPP scores were dominated by starting pitching as aces like Max Scherzer put up 58 FanDuel points on the back of 10 K’s while budget plays like Andrew Heaney were able to match that output with double-digit strikeouts and 55 points of his own! Offensively Coors Field was a flop and the post lock scratch of Carlos Gonzalez at 20% ownership left goose eggs across many DFS rosters! The most common offensive player on the winning roster was Logan Morrison who was featured in Picks and Pivots and delivered with 41.4 FanDuel points due to a 4 RBI, 1 home run performance!
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 Pitcher Plays:
Chris Sale ($10,900): There are a few things that stand out as over arching themes on this Tuesday slate – we have rain/weather concerns that will impact the games on the East Coast, we have some key players returning from the D.L. including Trea Turner and Joey Gallo and the pitching is about as cut and dry as any large slate could be.
Sale steps onto the mound tonight in Toronto with the highest swinging strike rate and a K rate that is over 7% higher than the next closest arm (Rich Hill/Luke Weaver) making him the pitcher with the highest ceiling on this slate and it is not particularly close.
Sale was roughed up in his last outing which has driven the price down to a reasonable $10.9k but this is the same pitcher who has put up the following performances against Toronto this year:
- 11 K’s and 64 FanDuel Points
- 13 K’s and 67 FanDuel Points
Toronto is one of the worst teams in baseball against the slider, a pitch that Sale features nearly 33% of the time which just reinforces the success he has already had against them this season!
You do not need me to tell you how good Chris Sale is and recommending him as the top pitching play frankly feels like a cop-out but the reality is we are getting the best pitcher on the slate (maybe in baseball this year) for a salary that allows us to spend over $3k per hitter making fitting him into our rosters entirely too easy!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Reds at home versus Chris Flexen: The fact that the Mets continue to throw Chris Flexen, a Double A arm, each fifth day just speaks to the kind of season New York has had to endure and we get arguably the worst pitcher on the slate taking on a potent Reds offense in Great American Ballpark!
Flexen on the season is giving up 2 HR/9, a 34% hard contact rate and a massive 15% walk rate which is higher than his 14% K rate! Add that all up and you are going to get base runners on top of base runners with hard contact/home runs allowed and the perfect stack spot with the Reds offense!
The high walk rate from Flexen and the fact that Rene Rivera is no longer behind the plate makes this a spot to load up on Billy Hamilton ($2,800) who should absolutely wreak havoc against the Mets battery on the bath paths! Joey Votto ($4,200) is the premier play here but do not overlook Eugenio Suarez ($3,900) and Scott Schebler ($3,000) who each have over .340 ISO’s and .450 wOBA’s over the last month which are the highest marks on the team against right-handed pitching! Suarez and Schebler also profile extremely well against Flexen who throws his slider nearly 30% of the time and both hitters are crushing that pitch at twice the league average over the last month!
This is one of the few spots on the board where I could make the case for stacking the entire line-up and the price points are reasonable enough (Zack Cozart at $3,200 and Adam Duvall ($3,300) where any combination should be easy to fit with Chris Sale as your starting pitcher!
Mix and Match Mini-Stacks: Once you lock in Chris Sale and a core Reds Stack you will only have roughly $2.5k per player remaining so finding value one-off plays and mini-stacks will be the key to rounding out this line-up.
Boston Red Sox versus Brett Anderson: The Red Sox bats present one of the better value spots against soft tossing LHP Brett Anderson, a career ground ball pitcher who limits hard contact but has struggled with control over the last two seasons. Against RHB this season, Anderson has struggled with a 13% walk rate which is nearly the same as his 14% K rate and will face a right-handed heavy Boston line-up tonight. Chris Young ($2,300) is always the default popular punt play in the OF in these scenarios as he will likely bat fifth for Boston at near minimum price. Eduardo Nunez ($2,900) in the lead-off spot is priced perfectly for this roster build and allows us to fill a tough 2B slot!
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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- Yankees: Luis Severino has blunt assessment of another miserable outing
P: Chris Sale ($10,900)
C: Travis d’Arnaud ($2,000)
1B: Joey Votto ($4,200)
2B: Eduardo Nunez ($2,900)
3B: Eugenio Suarez ($3,900)
SS: Marwin Gonzalez ($3,000)
OF: Chris Young ($2,300)
OF: Billy Hamilton ($2,800)
OF: Scott Schebler ($3,000)
Slate Overview: At the very core of this slate it simply breaks down to Chris Sale and a core four of Reds bats against Chris Flexen. I expect most who stack the Reds will look to the top four bats with Cozart/Duvall so pivoting off that with Schebler/Suarez is an interesting way to differentiate yourself with two of the hottest bats in the Reds line-up. Outside of that build it will become all about value mini-stacks and one-offs with the Red Sox bats being a great way to complete this build in a favorable hitting match-up!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the late breaking line-up new, DFS analysis and season long Fantasy Football coverage!