FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Saturday September 2
Welcome to the Saturday 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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Friday’s winning GPP scores were right below our season average as it took 220.5 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 146 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.2 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 146 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.2 points.
Well, that slate was awful. I am all about transparency here at Picks and Pivots and last night was one of the uglier nights I can remember. My overall feel on the slate was to pay up for offenses (specifically Miami and Baltimore) and grab some punt pitchers at low ownership on a night I felt that pitching was generally weak. First off, I was shocked to see Luke Flaherty come in at over 12% owned in tournaments but I was really more surprised that the Orioles and Marlins offenses fell completely flat. My two lineups on the night score 51 and 63 FanDuel points – to put that in perspective, Jimmy Nelson by himself last night put up 64 FanDuel points as the winning GPP arm on the slate. The beauty of DFS is we move on to the next day and boy am I ready!
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:
After a night where I felt like we could take come chances with our pitchers, this slate shows up chock full of aces and gives you a handful of top end arms to choose from. There is a very clear top-tier here with Max Scherzer, Chris Archer and Yu Darvish available and I would be happy to play any of those three as they face off with Milwaukee, White Sox and San Diego – realistically you could not hand-pick three better match-ups for these top arms.
Because of the talent and the match-ups they have, you simply cannot get cute at pitcher when building your roster tonight so you will need to ensure you lock in an arm with high strikeout ability. Rather than delve into the top three arms, I think there are two intriguing mid-tier arms that not only give you that same GPP upside but allow you the salary savings to pay up for some top-tier bats tonight!
Brad Peacock ($8,700) will get a home start on the back-end of a double-header as the Astros take on the Mets. One of the benefits of taking a pitcher against a team in a double-header is you often get a watered down line-up but considering the Mets are already putting out their AAA affiliate, I am not sure this team could get MORE watered down.
Peacock has a massive 31.4% K rate on the season which is second highest on the slate behind Max Scherzer and sports a 12.4% swinging strike rate which is the third highest mark behind Scherzer and Archer. There is no question Peacock has the sheer strikeout ability to match these top arms for $2-3K less and facing a weakened Mets lineup only adds to his appeal. The Mets come into this game with one of the lowest run totals on the board (3.6) and Peacock a massive 221 favorite so dropping down to the mid-tier with Peacock is a viable strategy tonight.
Dan Straily ($8,300) I expect that Peacock will gain popularity as the top mid-tier arm which makes Straily an intriguing pivot that I expect most will gloss over. Looking at the swinging strike rates of the pitchers on this slate, Straily comes in at 12.1% which is a top 5 mark on this slate and gets to take on a Phillies team he has put up big time numbers against this season.
In three starts this season against the Phillies, Straily has struck out double-digit batters twice with 49 and 57 FanDuel points in those outings which is indicative of the upside we are chasing here! Over the last month the Phillies have been striking out at a 24.4% clip so this is a sneaky good spot for Straily to attack and considering his success against them this season he makes for a great low owned pivot off the likely more popular Peacock!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Rangers versus Angels in Texas: We obviously have a game in Coors Field so that will always be in play and outside of the marquee names, the secondary pieces are all priced reasonably enough where I think you can make the case for them on this slate. I typically avoid the Coors hype and tonight will be no different as the game in Arlington has a run total only a half run behind the more popular Coors Field!
The reality is, with A.J. Griffin and Ricky Nolasco on the mound, this could turn into an all out slug fest and now add in 90 degree temperatures and this is the spot I will be targeting as the core of my roster build tonight.
Griffin is simply a dreadful pitcher, giving up over 2 HR/9 to hitters from both sides of the plate with a near 60% fly ball rate and over 35% hard contact. Literally every metric here screams to stack the Angels and with the new and improved line-up, we should be aggressive in our Angels exposure.
Mike Trout ($4,800) is the clear premier play and as a baseball fan I am thrilled to see the Angels commit to building talent around him. Justin Upton ($3,500), Brandon Phillips ($3,300) and Albert Pujols ($3,100) are priced incredibly reasonably as secondary parts of this stack but it is Luis Valbuena ($3,000) that caught my eye the most during my research.
On the season, Griffin relies on his curve ball nearly 30% of the time, and Valbuena hits the curve ball at a rate nearly 50% higher than the league average! Valbuena has a .227 ISO against RHP this season, a mark in line with Justin Upton‘s numbers, and his price point is reasonable enough to fit into a stack or use as a one-off play!
Nolasco is an extreme reverse splits arm giving up 2.55 HR/9 and a 41% hard contact rate to right-handed batters this season so targeting the right-handed batters like Elvis Andrus ($3,700) and Carlos Gomez ($3,200) become great starting points in your roster build and you can mix and match your first base spot with Texas slugger Mike Napoli ($3,000) at the same price point as Angels 1B Albert Pujols.
I would caution against using the left-handed batters from the Rangers (of which there are many) as over the last month Nolasco has held LHB to a paltry .047 ISO and .289 wOBA!
Ultimately I think a full game stack here works well from a roster build perspective as the two teams correlate very well together as you pick and choose each spot on the field! With two of the worst pitchers on the board, I think you can load up here and get the same potential output as the higher priced game in Coors field.
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: Dan Straily ($8,300)
C: Jose Lobaton ($2,100)
1B: Mike Napoli ($3,000)
2B: Brandon Phillips ($3,300)
3B: Luis Valbuena ($3,000)
SS: Elvis Andrus ($3,700)
OF: Mike Trout ($4,800)
OF: Justin Upton ($3,500)
OF: Carlos Gomez ($3,200)
Slate Overview: The name of this slate is pitching so don’t be shy about allocating salary to a top end arm on this slate. From a roster build perspective, dropping down to guys like Brad Peacock and Dan Straily give you similar K upside and allow you the salary savings to load up on bats. With two awful pitchers with home run tendencies facing off in 90 degree heat in Texas, I am all aboard a game stack here and will utilize the Angels and Rangers as the core of my roster build tonight!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your DFS content across MLB, NFL and EPL!