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MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday March 30

By Brian Tulloch

ATLANTA, GA - JULY 15: A. J. Pollock
ATLANTA, GA - JULY 15: A. J. Pollock /
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MLB DFS
ATLANTA, GA – JULY 15: A. J. Pollock MLB DFS /

Welcome to the Friday edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, a fantasy baseball column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for this slate of DFS action!

For those of you finding us for the first time, the concept behind MLB DFS Picks and Pivots is to give you a first look at the day’s MLB DFS slate, including our top picks, plays and pivots, using FantasyDraft pricing as a reference, to help you build your best line-up and win big!

Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate.

The Opening Day MLB DFS Main Slate was a great start for Picks and Pivots as our core build around Chris Sale, Giancarlo Stanton and Lucas Duda although popular ended up being the right chalk to build around and pushed us well over the cash line in all contests. The big GPP difference maker was in the White Sox bats as they simply pounded Danny Duffy and the Royals with a barrage of home runs with huge games from Matt Davidson (50 FP) and Tim Anderson (34 FP) who had 5 home runs between just the two of them!

My biggest takeaway from Opening Day was that sometimes it is OK to eat the chalk when those are the best plays and you find other ways to differentiate. Chris Sale was the best play on the mound and when Max Scherzer was PPD it was clear the ownership on him would be massive (he was 70% owned in the $25 FantasyDraft GPP) but he was also the best SP play and there was really no obvious metric/rationale to fading him. As much as Stanton was popular it was interesting to me to see how most played him as a one-off instead of in a full on stack as the guys like Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez who were batting on either side of him were less than 15% owned where Big Mike was over 40% owned in GPP’s.

Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate. The goal of this article is to dig through the slate, highlight our top plays and  help you identify the best slate strategy across your MLB DFS line-ups.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

Below you will see the scoring for FantasyDraft which is very similar to my experiences on DraftKings with perhaps the biggest difference being the roster build with allows for the most flexible roster construction across the major sites as you are required to roster two SP’s, 3 IF’s, 3 OF’s and 2 UTIL spots.

As always, we will look to update our final lineup thoughts throughout the day 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!

MLB DFS
MILWAUKEE, WI – MAY 25: Robbie Ray /

MLB DFS – Top Starting Pitching Options:

Welcome back Picks and Pivots readers- after a profitable Opening Day I am pumped to jump right back into another MLB DFS slate. We have two afternoon games (Reds/Nats and Tigers/Pirates) which are make-ups of the PPD games from yesterday and on FantasyDraft they have opted to ignore those completely as the Main Slate starts at 7:07PM EST with 9 games to choose from.

The interesting thing about this slate is that with Max Scherzer out of play, we really do not have any must have aces to choose from but rather a grouping of second tier “aces” that we will have to sort through which means we will not have another day where one SP sucks up all the ownership as Chris Sale did yesterday.

Robbie Ray ($18.9K) is one of my favorite MLB DFS pitchers and I was very excited to see that he was the fourth highest priced arm on this slate because frankly he was the first guy I had circled. If you read Picks and Pivots all year you will notice I try and narrow down my SP by a few simple steps with the most basic being I want strikeout upside and there is no pitcher on this Main Slate that brings that more than Ray.

Of all the pitchers in action on the Main Slate, Ray ranks first in K rate at 32.8% which is just a shade behind Max Scherzer’s 34.4% rate from last year and Ray has the second highest swinging strike rate at 14%.

Now unlike Mr. Sale yesterday there is risk with Ray who also has one of the highest walk rates at nearly 11%, pitches in Chase Field and as to take on a potent Rockies line-up. All we need to do is look back to last season where Ray had two home starts in the regular season against the Rockies, striking out 9 batters in both games but also surrendering 7 total runs. 8 walks and 3 home runs.

Sometimes we need to select our pitchers in the context of the slate and realize there is no other pitcher with a strikeout rate within 7% of Ray as Masahiro Tanaka‘s 25.8% rate from last season is a far second place. Ray has the kind of K upside that can win you a slate and the fact he is priced at a “discount” relative to the other top arms makes him someone I want to build around in a big way today.

Masahiro Tanaka ($17.1K) has the metrics to entice us as his K rate is second on the slate and his swinging strike rate of 15% makes him top of all available arms but here is the issue – this game is on the road and the Yankees pitcher was simply brutal away from Yankee Stadium last year. Tanka had a 6.22 ERA on the road versus a 3.48 ERA at home and literally every single one of his metrics plummeted on the road as his K rate dropped 8% to 21%, he gave up 2.1 HR/9 and his hard contact rate jumped to 32%.

Tanaka had two starts in Toronto last year, pitching only 9.2 innings, striking out 8 and surrendering 9 ER and 8 walks which was good for no more than SIX fantasy points in either start. It will be interesting to see if people jump on Tanaka here today after Severino’s gem yesterday but the home/road splits last season make me far less interested in chasing a Yankees hurler today!

Jhoulys Chacin ($12.7K): REVENGE NARRATIVE ALERT. If you read my NBA DFS articles you know I love me some revenge narratives (and really any narrative) and today we get Chacin back in Petco Park against the Padres now pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Chacin was absolutely dominant as a member of the Padres last season pitching in Petco as he sported a 1.79 ERA and 0.98 WHIP over 16 starts their last season. The underlying metrics support the steller ERA/WHIP as his 21% K rate and miniscule 26% HC rate at home combined with a .7 HR/9 rate at home show that Chacin has figured out just how to pitch in this park. Personally I love the idea here at first glance of pairing Ray with Chacin which leaves you $8.5K per batter on FantasyDraft to build out the rest of your roster!

MLB DFS
TORONTO, ON – MARCH 29: Giancarlo Stanton /

MLB DFS – Build your bats:

The Astros (5.16) and Cubs (4.77) may have the highest run projections today but I am finding myself ready to go right back to the Yankees bats here today (4.71) as I was honestly a bit shocked at how low the ownership was on this stack against a LHP. If the ownership was that low (outside of Stanton) then I wonder how much it will be suppressed today with RHP Aaron Sanchez on the mound.

Giancarlo Stanton ($10.9K) is the highest priced bat on the slate and after a 2 HR day yesterday, we all saw what kind of damage he can do while single handedly carrying you over the cash line. Sanchez is an interesting pitcher to attack as his career numbers have shown his flashes of upside but last year in an injury plagued season he was downright dreadful with a 14% K rate, 12% walk rate (yeah that is not good to have those metrics that close) and a 1.5 HR/9 rate which were all sharp drops off his 2016 numbers.

Sanchez was working gradually on building up his stamina in Spring Training, pitching only one time more than 5 innings which was his last start of the spring when he went 6 innings and overall he had decent numbers over 17 spring training innings with 6 ER (3.06 ERA) and 16 K’s.

Here is the thing with Sanchez, this is a pitcher who has not shown the consistent ability to get batters out and pitch deep into games and Toronto yesterday needed 4+ innings from their bullpen as JA Happ was unable to get out of the 5th inning. These are scenarios I love to attack early in the season as if the Yankees can get to Sanchez early, you are getting a bullpen on back to back days when the arms aren’t fully ready to go that route.

Where yesterday was Stanton’s day, I think today is the Aaron Judge ($9.6K) bombs away game as he saw his reverse splits power last season with 44 HR’s coming against RHP versus only 8 versus LHP. Judge had a Major League leading .360 ISO versus RHP last season (PS. Stanton was 6th with a .326 ISO) and he led the league with a 38% HR/FB rate versus RHP – also Stanton was second there too.

So yeah, right back to the Judge/Stanton stack for me today.

If you are looking for a full on stack it is once again super cost-effective on FantasyDraft, especially if you are willing to drop down at SP with someone like Chacin, as you can get Stanton/Judge and pair them with lead-off man Brett Gardner ($7.3K), Didi Gregorious ($7.2K) and Aaron Hicks ($7.7K).

As much as I love Robbie Ray, I also intend to have some Arizona hitting exposure as they face off with Tyler Anderson, a LHP in Chase Field who was flat-out bad last year on the road versus RH hitting. Anderson had a 1.87 HR/9 rate to RH bats on the road versus 1 HR/9 in Coors Field and saw his hard contact rate jump 3% to 34% on the road versus RH bats and will have to pitch in a ballpark in Arizona that last year was not kind to him – to the tune of 12 ER in 13 IP with 3 HR’s allowed.

Paul Goldschmidt ($9.5K) and A.J. Pollock ($9.2K) make for a nice two-man stack here in this match-up and I always love the idea of including someone like Jake Lamb especially on a site like FanDuel where you have more strict roster positions and slide him into your 3B role.

MLB DFS
MLB DFS /

MLB DFS – Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview:

Below please find a sample FantasyDraft MLB line-up that is used for illustrative purposes only to emphasize the logic laid out in this article. This is not meant to be an optimized line-up and may differ from the roster construction I personally use. 

More from FanSided

FantasyDraft MLB DFS Sample Line-Up:

SP: Robbie Ray ($18.9K)

SP: Jhoulys Chacin ($12.7K)

IF: Paul Goldschmidt ($9.5K)

IF: Didi Gregorious ($7.2K)

IF: Odubel Herrera ($7K)

OF: A.J. Pollock ($9.2K)

OF: Brett Gardner ($7.3K)

OF: AaronHicks ($7.7K)

Util: Aaron Judge ($9.6K)

Util: Giancarlo Stanton ($10.9K)

Slate Overview: Without any true must have ace on this slate I think we should see ownership a bit spread on this slate. Personally I love the idea of locking in Chacin which not only allows you to still pay up for one arm of your choice but you can stack a full line-up of power bats with ease. Enjoy your second day of MLB DFS and let’s hope it goes as well as Opening Day!

Next: DraftKings MLB Picks

Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!