MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday April 4
Welcome to the Wednesday 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.
Tuesday’s MLB DFS slate was a crazy one as who would have though that Christian Villaneuva would have been the top fantasy producer with a massive 50 fantasy point outing on the back of 3 HR’s as the Giants took down the Padres. Overall it was a night dominated by individual hitting performances as Josh Reddick (36), Tim Anderson (34) and Freddie Freeman (31) were four of the top five fantasy producers with Cole Hamels being the only SP in the top 5.
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 – Early Slate Overview:
Today’s MLB DFS slate is split into two five game slates on FantasyDraft with the early slate looking like it could be a mess due to weather issues up and down the East Coast. Normally I do not focus much on weather, but this early slate could become a slate to stay away from if the weather holds in the New York area which could wash out both the Mets and Yankees and turn this into an unplayable three game slate.
The forecast for New York right now is calling for rain and heavy winds (25-30MPH) around and during the expected game time with thunderstorms that could cause delays if the games even play. Let’s assume the games play but weighing in the weather risk of a delay that could take Luis Severino or Noah Syndergaard off the mound, it will likely lead to massive ownership on Max Scherzer ($24.3K) in Atlanta. Now there are no rain concerns in Atlanta but there are strong winds expected there as well (15-20 MPH) blowing out which could help the batters in this one!
If you are going to play the early slate then I simply think you find a way to lock in Scherzer who has a slate leading 34.4% K rate, dominating his first start with 10K’s and 33 FP in his opening day gig. On a short slate like this, anytime we have a true elite SP option I tend to find a way to pay up for him, lock in those points and differentiate elsewhere.
If you are locking in Max as your SP1 then I think heading to the Royals/Tigers game for your SP2 with Danny Duffy or Daniel Norris makes a ton of sense. Both arms are priced in a similar range just above $11K with Duffy having the bigger K upside as he had a 3% higher K rate last season than his counterpart in Norris. The biggest red flag with Duffy is that he had shoulder tightness at the end of Spring Training and was then hit hard in his opening day start against the White Sox. Historically Duffy has been a much better strikeout arm against LHB with a 25% K rate last year versus lefties versus a 20% rate versus RHB and against a Royals team whos two big bats are LH (Moustakas/Duda) this could be a sneaky spot to go back to Duffy here today.
From a hitting perspective, with the wind blowing out in Atlanta I think the Nationals could be poised for a big time outing against Mike Foltynewicz, a pitcher who gave up 1.42 HR/9 and a 33% HC rate last season to LHB. All the usual suspects are in play here – Bryce Harper and Adam Eaton being the top dollar targets from the left side but do not over-look Brian Goodwin ($6.1K) as a cheap punt play who has owned Folty in his career, going 5 for 8 with 2 HR’s against the Braves right-hander. With this being a day game after a night game, this seems like the perfect spot for the Nationals to rest some guys so we may see someone like Matt Adams ($6.5K) draw a spot start for the Nats.
The best pure hitting spot may be in Houston with 60 degree temperatures and the roof open in Minute Maid Park and with Dylan Bundy on the hill and his 1.3 HR/9 and 33% HC rate to hitters from both sides of the plate, I have no issue going right back to the Astros bats here as the top stack. Obviously the big bats of Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve and George Springer are all in play but with the salary allocated to Mad Max tonight it may be a better use of our money to build around the secondary plays like Josh Reddick, Alex Bregman and Marwin Gonzalez who are all priced reasonably across the industry and give you exposure to the same match-up.
MLB DFS – Early Slate Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview:
The line-up below is meant to be illustrative only to further back-up the logic laid out in previous slides and is not meant to be an optimal line-up or a roster you simply plug and play on your own!
SP: Max Scherzer ($24.5K)
SP: Danny Duffy ($11.8K)
IF: Matt Adams ($6.5K)
IF: Alex Bregman ($8.6K)
IF: Marwin Gonzalez ($8.1K)
OF: Bryce Harper ($10.3K)
OF: Adam Eaton ($8.4K)
OF: Brian Goodwin ($6.1K)
Util: Josh Reddick ($7.3K)
Util: Yoenis Cespedes ($8.4K)
Slate Overview: As much as I love Severino and Syndergaard as pitchers, I just do no want to build around them today with the weather risk in the NY area as this could be a spot where we see a delay in-game with pop up storms that could send the NY aces to the showers early. Building around Max/Duffy and going high/low at SP will still allow you to stack up some big time offenses and with the day game after a night game we may get some value bats (like Matt Adams) in the line-up that could open up even more value for us on this slate.
MLB DFS – Main Slate Overview:
The Main Slate pitching is much less interesting from a SP perspective but there are some high strikeout arms we can target including Jon Gray ($16.4K) who has a 5% higher K rate (26%) on the road than he did at home last season and with a match-up in San Diego, this is a great spot to build around tonight. Gray has had some monster numbers in Petco as well, pitching 28 innings in his career there, striking out 40 batters with a 3.21 ERA.
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Carlos Martinez ($19.4K) has a slate high 25.3% K rate based off the 2017 numbers and will pitch in Miller Park where he has struck out 81 batters in 60 career IP with only a 2.25 ERA. Martinez is too erratic with his control to lock him in for cash games but he may have the highest GPP upside of any arm on this Main Slate.
From a hitting perspective, I am all in on the Rangers RHB who will take on Sean Manaea, a pitcher who has given up 1.2 HR/9 and 37% hard contact rate to right-handed bats so building around bats like Adrian Beltre and Elvis Andrus is a great way to attack the splits here. There is some potential for a game stack here as Doug Fister on the other side of this game 1.3 HR/9 and a 40% hard contaxt rate to LHB last season so you can lock in Oakland bats like Matt Olson and run a mini game stack here.
Slate Overview: Honestly there is not a ton to like on the Main Slate as we lack the “must have” stud arms and top end offenses to stack. Rather than go with a full offensive stack, I would rather build a set of mini-stacks around Texas/Oakland and then pick and choose some one-off big bats like Nolan Arenado against a LHP or Justin Smoak at home against Carson Fulmer.
Next: FanDuel MLB Picks and Plays
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!