MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday April 1
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
Saturday’s MLB DFS slate was a very interesting mixed bag as the Early Slate was dominated by high-priced aces and although Jacob deGrom/Stephen Strasburg had solid days with 24-25 FP each, it was the offenses that drove the cash line as the Nationals and Reds combined for 20 runs, Tyler Austin was the Yankee to own with two home runs and the Astros put up 9 runs of their own.
On the Main Slate, Kenta Maeda was the top performer with 32 FP in a shutout win against the Giants while Charlie Blackmon blasted two home runs as the top hitter on the slate. Perhaps the most interesting thing here is how badly the Yu Darvish chalk busted as his “can’t miss” match-up with the Marlins – well, missed – in a big way as he was only able to get 2.35 FP, giving up 5 ER in only 4 innings of work. Basically if you faded Darvish, you jumped 90% of the field and set the cash line on your own!
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.
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 – Top Starting Pitcher Options:
Happy Easter all! We get an interesting Sunday slate here today where just one day after we seemingly had our pick of aces, we are going to have to make some much tougher decisions when building out our SP’s.
On FantasyDraft we have three pitchers that are priced above $20K – Jose Quintana, Gerrit Cole and Gio Gonzalez – which frankly seems entirely too pricey considering these are arms with mediocre K rates as they all range between 22-26% from a strikeout rate perspective. Quintana is a massive -185 favorite against the Marlins but how has that worked out for Jon Lester and Yu Darvish so far – as neither of those “can’t miss” arms has delivered in the same match-up and in fact combined they could not even reach THREE fantasy points.
Sonny Gray ($18.8K) is the one higher priced arm I have interest in today against the Blue Jays as any time we can get him out of Yankee Stadium, I think you can aggressively target him. Gray had a fantastic year last season although he really struggled in Yankee Stadium, giving up 18 ER in 29 IP there which equated to a 5.65 ERA. Tonight, Gray will pitch in Toronto in a ballpark he has dominated in his career – pitching to a 2.32 ERA over 31 IP, striking out 31 batters and surrendering only 3 home runs.
We have seen so far this season, Luis Severino (28) and Masahiro Tanaka (29) have been able to put up big time fantasy outings against this same Toronto team so this looks to be a match-up we can exploit and Gray becomes a solid anchor for cash games and GPP play.
Finding an SP2 on this slate is difficult but it is tough for me to overlook the price and talent disconnect on Shohei Ohtani ($12.5K) who makes his Major League debut on the mound today in Oakland. The talent level on Ohtani is through the roof but after a disastrous spring where he gave up 8 ER and 3 HR’s in only 2.2 IP there seem to be more questions on Ohtani than answers at this point. On paper, it is hard to argue with targeting a near minimum priced arm pitching in Oakland with the kind of stuff that Ohtani has.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ohtani’s skill set, check out this scouting report from MLB.com.
"On the mound, Ohtani has as good a fastball as anyone in baseball. He’s been up to 102 mph and touches triple digits with some regularity. Ohtani throws a nasty splitter and a slider that’s just as good, and it all comes from a loose, athletic, 6-foot-5 frame and delivery.“He’s every bit of a top-end-of-the-rotation starter,” said another international scouting director who saw Ohtani pitch recently. “He threw well the other day, even if his command was a little off. The stuff is there. He has all the pitches he needs. He’s 23 and everything works."
This is a simple price enforcement play in my opinion on a weak pitching slate where I am willing to roll the dice with the upside of Ohtani’s pure stuff in an elite pitcher’s park. We have been countless times where international pitcher comes to the Major League level and dazzle the first time through the league as hitters see them for the first time and struggle to adjust so I am fine jumping on this spot with the unknown driving his price down entirely too far.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Stacks:
Another slate and another chance to stack up the Astros bats as we get Houston in the top projected run scoring spot on the slate with their 4.96 run total. On paper we have a LHP in Mike Minor who was able to limit hard contact (27%) and HR/FB (6%) so this is not a slam dunk spot on paper but it is hard to pass on the upside the Astros bats provide especially when you consider this seems to be a slate at first glance without any must have high-priced arms so we have the ability to lock in the stud bats of our choosing.
All the usual suspects are in play here today – Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, George Springer and Jose Altuve – and keep an eye on the status of J.D. Davis ($5.8K) who could draw another start here today against the left-handed pitcher and give you a high upside/low salary addition to any Astros stack. Davis had a monster spring training and it is clear the Astros want to find ways to get his bat into the line-up so keep an eye on the line-up news here today as we could easily lock in Davis here in the bottom third of the Astros order.
The other big offense to target today is in Cincinnati as the Washington Nationals will take on Sal Romano in the Great American Ballpark. Romano gave up a 40% hard contact to batters at home last season with a 13% BB rate compared to a mediocre 20% K rate which could spell trouble for this loaded Nats line-up. Bryce Harper and Trea Turner are the high dollar studs to target here and there is merit to pairing both of these studs with an Astros stack today as a result of the salary we save on the pitching side of our roster construction. The Nationals could also be a solid source of value if Matt Adams ($5.9K) draws another start against a RHP, keeping in mind Romano with his 4.72 SIERA is one of the most exploitable arms to stack against on this slate! Do not be afraid to plug-in the RHB on Washington like Anthony Rendon ($8.1K) as Romano gave up a higher HR/FB rate to RHB at home last year with a similarly high 38% hard contact rate and will be lower owned than someone like Harper just because of the R/L splits.
Keep in mind, we typically see some value bats open up on these Sunday day slates so watching the line-ups as they are released could help you uncover 1-2 value bats in favorable line-up positions that allow you to open up more salary elsewhere.
The one big BvP spot that jumps off the page today is Aaron Judge ($9.4K) who has owned Marcus Stroman so far in his career going 6 for 12 with 3 HR’s and with a relatively quiet start to this season, this could be a great time to play him as a one-off and shoot for the multi-HR game at lower ownership. Brett Gardner ($7.2K) is 9 for 34 with 2HR’s and can be paired with Judge as part of a mini-stack against Stroman and the Jays.
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.
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SP: Sonny Gray ($18.8K)
SP: Shohei Ohtani ($12.5K)
IF: Jose Altuve ($10.3K)
IF: Carlos Correa ($9.4K)
IF: Alex Bregman ($8.5K)
OF: George Springer ($9.9K)
OF: Aaron Judge ($9.4K)
OF: Brett Gardner ($7.2K)
Util: Matt Adams ($5.9K)
Util: Anthony Rendon ($8.1K)
Slate Overview: This looks like a solid slate today the more we dig in as without any must have high-priced arms we really can build some high-octane offensive stacks as a result. The Ohtani price play opens up a ton of salary space and honestly, I do not see a reason to fade the upside here – let others get scared away by his spring training – lock him in and stack up the big bats on this Sunday slate. Best of luck all!
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!