FanDuel MLB Daily Picks and Pivots – Thursday September 14
Welcome to the Thursday 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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Wednesday’s winning GPP scores were below our season average as it took 228.9 FanDuel points to take down a tournament! Over the first 158 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.1 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 158 slates of the FanDuel MLB season, the average winning score to take down a GPP has been 260.1 points.
Wednesday’s Main Slate was relatively straight forward in terms of finding the winning rosters as if you stacked the Cubs (which we did) you were rewarded with a 17 run beat down of the NY Mets and Matt Harvey! Pitching wise was however was where the difference really stood out as Aaron Nola dominated the Marlins with a 7 innings, 11 K performance that netted 61 FanDuel points and was the key GPP piece at only 6-7% ownership in GPP’s!
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:
Jose Berrios ($8,500): My overall view on this slate is that we could see Tanner Roark ($8,600) as a big favorite against an Atlanta team with a low total be the overwhelming chalk and any slate where Roark is the chalk, I am going to plant my foot and pivot in any other direction than that!
Berrios gets a boom or bust match-up against the Blue Jays but with his elite talent and ability to put up dominant strike-out outings, he is the exact kind of arm I want on a slate without much opportunity cost when selecting your starting pitcher!
Looking over his recent starts, Berrios has flashed that K upside with with 7 or more K’s in four of his last five starts and today gets to toe the rubber at home where his numbers are staggeringly better!
On the season, Berrios has some material home versus road splits:
- 2.54 ERA at home versus 5.14 ERA on the road
- 26.7% K rate at home versus 19.5% K rate on the road
- 22.9% hard contact rate at home versus 31.5% on the road
Look at the recent game logs and the home versus road splits become even more apparent:
- 3 Road Starts – 22, 21 and 34 FanDuel Points
- 2 Home Starts – 52 and 64 FanDuel points
On a slate like this, Berrios is the only arm with the kind of GPP winning upside we need from our starting pitcher so I am willing to roll the dice in this match-up against Toronto as others opt for the safety of 30-35 FanDuel points from guys like Roark or Josh Tomlin and the runaway Indians train!
FanDuel MLB – Top Hitting Stacks:
Indians Bats Just….Keep….Hitting: Another day of baseball, another Indians win and another DFS slate where the Indians offense has the top projected run total at nearly 6 runs! You can play the game theory if you want and fade, but this is the core stack to build around and I am happy to differentiate my teams in other ways!
Jake Junis will have the tall task of slowing down this juggernaut offense and the fact he has given up 1.4 HR/9 to hitters from both sides of the plate and 35% hard contact means we can load up on hitters from both sides of the plate!
The prices on the two middle infielders is approaching fade status but I am willing to eat the chalk one more day the way Jose Ramirez ($4,000) and Francisco Lindor ($4,900) are hitting and the fact we have no top end pitchers to utilize our salary on, it is not overly difficult to afford these top bats. Jay Bruce ($3,100) remains one of the most reasonably priced Indians bats and I would not shy away from Edwin Encarnacion ($3,900) as Junis has given up a 50% fly ball rate to right-handed hitters this season.
Value Mini-Stacks: If you are playing a core four Indians stack with Berrios you will only have $2.7k per player for the last four spots on your roster so finding some value bats will be critical to differentiating your stack!
Royals versus Josh Tomlin: Tomlin may end up a popular option as a large favorite today but with the Royals familiarity with him I actually think we can use some of the value bats here to attack him! Salvador Perez ($2,700) is 18 for 38 in his career against Tomlin with 8 doubles and 1 home run and Mike Moustakas ($2,900) is 8 for 28 with 3 home runs!
Braves versus Tanner Roark: I am always a fan on these smaller slates of attacking the popular chalk pitchers (who I think are overrated) with the opposing bats to double up my attack in large field GPP’s so taking on some cheap Braves exposure today against Roark may be a good way to differentiate your line-up.
Matt Kemp ($2,600) is 5 for 15 in his career against Roark with 2 home runs and is coming off a 35.4 FanDuel point performance on Wednesday night so I think we can go back to the well again here. Lane Adams ($2,400) is filling in for an injured Ender Inciarte and has done nothing but hit for the Braves going 6 for his last 11 and putting up 24+ FanDuel points in his last two starts for the Braves!
FanDuel MLB – Sample 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: Jose Berrios ($8,500)
C: Salvador Perez ($2,700)
1B: Edwin Encarnacion ($3,900)
2B: Jose Ramirez ($4,000)
3B: Mike Moustakas ($2,900)
SS: Francisco Lindor ($4,900)
OF: Jay Bruce ($3,100)
OF: Matt Kemp ($2,600)
OF: Lane Adams ($2,400)
Slate Overview: This is a GPP only slate for me as we essentially are getting our dart board out and taking some shots with our Starting Pitcher but I think making the calculated risk of using Jose Berrios could pay off in a big way and you have the ability to still roster the high octane Indians four man stack. Play smart today but don’t be afraid to take some shots as this is a WIDE open slate perfect for GPP’s!
Best of luck in your FanDuel MLB contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your MLB DFS and Week 2 NFL DFS news and analysis!