FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Wednesday September 6
Welcome to the Wednesday 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 just above our season average as it took 274.1 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 150 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.6 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 150 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.6 points.
Tuesday’s Main Slate winning line-ups were filled with well-balanced rosters that avoided a chalk Jacob deGrom bust (8 FD points) and instead utilized Picks and Pivots coverboy Justin Verlander who delivered with 46 FanDuel points in his Astros debut! Offensively the red-hot Jose Ramirez knocked another two home runs and racked up 37.4 FanDuel points, the game in Coors Field delivered 15 total runs and Picks and Pivots was able to deliver across the cash line as a result. The one key differentiator between our line-up and the winning line-up was the inclusion of Jose Martinez who at $2.2K delivered a monster night with 2 home runs and 53.1 FanDuel points as a 2% gem that delivered a big time pay-day for his owners!
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:
Looking over the Main Slate there is one painfully obvious choice at starting pitcher as Carlos Carrasco ($10,100) gets a juicy match-up against the White Sox and even in Chicago is still a massive -244 road favorite! From a pure metrics perspective, Carrasco has the highest swinging strike rate (13.1%) of any pitcher in action today and has a 27.7% K rate which is the second highest mark of any pitcher with enough innings to qualify this season. Carrasco is the clear best arm on the slate and a cash game anchor but we saw this story with Jacob deGrom last night and countless other times this season, that paying up for the “can’t miss ace” can backfire and give those who played the fade a massive advantage.
Last night for example, in the GPP’s I had entered, Jacob deGrom was over 40% owned, and when he left the game with only 8 FanDuel points I knew I was set up perfectly for a night well above the cash line as a result! Now I am not saying Carrasco will have a similar bust outing but anytime there is such a clear pitching choice on a one pitcher site like FanDuel, I am going to play the game theory and fade!
Jack Flaherty ($5,900) at San Diego: Flaherty will be making his second career big league start after an uneven outing in San Francisco his first time through but this time gets about as good a match-up as a pitcher could ask for against the Padres in San Diego.
Game log watchers and the roughly 20% who rostered Flaherty in his debut (still can’t believe that number was so high) will see 15 FanDuel point outing and the 5 ER’s and simply move away which should drastically lower ownership on Flaherty in this dream spot. The reality is if you dig a bit deeper Flaherty was everything we wanted from a strike-out perspective and was the victim of some severe bad luck!
Flaherty is a pitcher who had a 25%+ K rate throughout his last two minor league seasons and flashed his K upside against a tough to strikeout Giants offense with 6 punch-outs which resulted in a 28.6% K rate. Today, Flaherty will face a San Diego team with the highest K rate on the slate at 25.1% on the season only adding to his upside here!
In his first game Flaherty was the victim of some very clear bad luck as he gave up 8 hits, 5 of which were singles for an absurd .538 BABIP. To put that in perspective, the league average BABIP for pitcher’s this season is .297, so to say that Flaherty was the victim of simple “they hit ’em where they ain’t” bad luck would be an understatement and some positive regression should follow suit! Further supporting that theory is that the Giants only managed a 28.6% hard contact rate and a 51% ground ball rate so I will side with the idea that Flaherty simply got unlucky and head right back to the well here tonight while game log watchers see the first game dud and simply refuse to dig deeper!
Outside of Carrasco I think the opportunity cost at Starting Pitcher on this slate is relatively low as we do not have many other high strikeout arms capable of winning us a slate. Flaherty’s price point allows you to load up on bats and take advantage of a Padres team with a low 3.9 projected run total in one of the best pitcher’s parks in baseball against one of the highest strikeout teams in the majors – the perfect recipe for a GPP arm!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
More Coors Field Please: It is not often that I lean on Coors Field for my stacks, in fact last night was one of the first night’s I can recall that I went that route with my stacks and it is clear that the “luster” of Coors Field may have worn on savvy DFS players as I was able to roster Charlie Blackmon for 8% in GPP’s!
Tonight the Rockies not shockingly have the highest team total, approaching near seven runs again, and now take on Johnny Cueto, a pitcher giving up nearly 2 HR/9 on the road this season with a 33% hard contact rate!
Cueto pitched earlier this season in Coors Field and gave up 6 ER and 2 home runs and with his reduced K rate and high hard contact rate to hitter’s from both sides of the plate, I am ready to go all in on a Rockies stack tonight!
Charlie Blackmon ($4,900) is the top play on the board for me with a season long ISO of .302 and a .434 wOBA versus right-handed pitching who over the last month has seen those numbers spike to a .378 ISO and .517 wOBA – yes please!
Carlos Gonzalez ($3,200) and Gerrardo Parra ($3,500) are the likely next most popular choices due to their platoon advantage and the fact that both have significant BvP success in their careers against Cueto as Parra is 15 for 41 with 2 home runs and a .244 ISO while CarGo is 12 for 35 with one home run to his name!
Last night we say Blackmon at low ownership on the wrong side of the platoon advantage so part of me wonders if we see the same thing for Nolan Arenado ($4,600) tonight! The fact that Cueto has no real discernible splits to me means we can stack the lower owned right-handed bats to differentiate our Rockies stacks! Arenado has a .225 ISO and .349 wOBA versus RHP this season so paying up for him at third base with someone like Trevor Story ($3,400) at shortstop may be a way to attack the same match-up while others choose to load up on the left-handed batters!
One Day Later – Rangers LHB versus Julio Teheran: Gee thanks Atlanta – you pushed back Teheran one day and FanDuel raised the prices on the Rangers hitters! No worries, I am simply going right back to the well here on my favorite stack of the day as the Rangers should absolutely tee off on Teheran in Sun Trust Park!
Teheran on the season is giving up 2.5 HR/9 to left-handed batters at home with an absurd 40.2% hard contact rate and will face off with a loaded left-handed Rangers line-up in one of the best parks for left-handed power! Giddy up!
Joey Gallo ($4,200) and his .363 ISO versus RHP this season make him the perfect player to build around in GPP’s due to his massive home run upside. Rougned Odor ($3,300) and Nomar Mazara ($3,500) both have ISO’s over .200 this season against right-handed pitching and make for elite complimentary pieces to a Gallo led Rangers stack! One thing to keep in mind, due to a rain-out on Tuesday this game will be the back-end of a double-header so paying attention to the line-up will be critical!
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: Jack Flaherty ($5,900)
C: $2K Punt Option
1B: Joey Gallo ($4,200)
2B: Rougned Odor ($3,300)
3B: Nolan Arenado ($4,600)
SS: Trevor Story ($3,400)
OF: Charlie Blackmon ($4,900)
OF: Carlos Gonzalez ($3,200)
OF: Nomar Mazara ($3,500)
Slate Overview: For cash games this slate is all about Carlos Carrasco but for GPP’s there is significant merit in playing the fade here on a pitcher who should be 25%-30% owned! By dropping down to Luke Flaherty in the dream spot against the Padres in Petco we not only can attack K upside but we get the salary savings to load up on bats in Coors Field and Atlanta!
For those of you ready for Week 1 of the NFL DFS Season – check out our first first FanDuel NFL Picks article of the season HERE!
Next: FanDuel NFL Picks - Week 1
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis across MLB, NFL and EPL!