MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday April 16
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Sunday’s MLB DFS slate was littered with weather issues across the board as multiple games were postponed due to rain but we got a whole new level of DFS tilt when the Angels and Royals were postponed as a result of temperatures dropping well below freezing. Now as someone who stacked Shohei Ohtani and the Angels bats due to the “safety” in picking a game without any precipitation in the forecast, you can be sure I donated along with many others on this day. It is frustrating for sure any time we feel like we lose a slate before it begins as even late swap wouldn’t have saved us on a day where every other pivot was PPD as well. The only positive to take from this day is to have it serve as a painful reminder of how weather can impact MLB DFS and sometimes with this much risk on a slate it is simply better to take the day off!
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.
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 – Main Slate Pitching:
Welcome back to another Monday in MLB DFS where we will look to catch our breath and rebound after a Sunday of bad weather ruined many line-ups and bankrolls, especially if you got hit with the Angels-Royals PPD. Today the weather early on in the East Coast especially looks awful as the Red Sox game has already been cancelled and the Yankee game at 6:30PM (not on the main slate) looks like a delay candidate as rain is expected in NYC until 7PM EST or so but is expected to clear by 8PM which should clear the way for both New York teams to play tonight. Even for the games that do play tonight, no single outdoor game is expected to be over 60 degrees but at least we have four dome games to choose from tonight for safety (unless there is a Pelicans style rook leak to tilt us some more).
Jacob deGrom ($21.9K) is the ace to pay up for tonight as he gets a home start against the Nationals and Jeremy Hellickson and will step to the mound as the largest Vegas favorite at -175. deGrom from a pure metrics perspective is the clear top choice as he has the highest K rate (28.6%) and swinging strike rate (13%) of any pitching going tonight and gets the added benefit of pitching at home.
Over the course of his career deGrom has put up incredible numbers pitching at home with an ERA of 2.32 and a K rate of 29.2% which is 5% higher than his rate on the road. deGrom pitched three times at home last season against the Nationals and struck out 10+ batters in two of those three outings so even though the Washington line-up is dangerous, there is strike out upside here that no other arm on this slate has. From an overall slate context, there is no other true ace to pay up for and there is no offense slated to score more than 5 runs so there may not be a real need to pay down at SP, especially on a one pitcher DFS site. There is risk any time you take a pitcher versus the Nationals line-up but from a PvB perspective, deGrom has had incredibly success against this group over 150 at bats, limiting them to a .199 BA and striking out over 32% of hitters and it is that kind of upside I want to lock in at a relative discount at under $22K tonight on FantasyDraft.
The choice for your SP2 is not nearly as cut and dry tonight but there are some intriguing high upside K arms albeit with some risk in the mid-tier that I would be willing to pair with deGrom tonight. Blake Snell ($15.2K) gets a home start against an injury riddled Rangers line-up and after three starts is sporting a 27% K rate which is elevated as a result of his 10K performance last game out against the White Sox.
The match-up with the Rangers presents some interesting K upside as well as the projected line-up has four batters – Profar, Gallo, Rua and Robinson – with 30%+ K rates and it does not hurt that Vegas has the Rangers projected for the lowest run total of any team on the Main Slate.
Over the course of his career Snell has been deadly against LHB, having yet to allow a home run (knock on wood), with a 26% K rate and will likely take on a Texas team with 3-4 lefties and really other than Adrian Beltre all their best healthy hitters hit from the left side. The risk with Snell is the control as he is prone to a high walk rate and even so far this year has had a 16% walk rate which puts him in danger of big innings and high pitch counts which cap your upside from a DFS perspective. There is some big time upside here but also some risk and I wonder how much the game log watchers will drive up the ownership on Snell when they see the 10K’s against the White Sox.
If Snell becomes too chalky, I love the idea in GPP’s of pivoting to James Paxton ($15K) for $200 less. It may seem crazy to see Paxton priced this low when you consider he has the second highest K rate of any arm on this slate at 28.5%, just a few percentage points behind deGrom and is coming off his own 10K performance against the Royals last time out. The issue with Paxton is not the talent but it is the match-up as he faces a loaded right-handed heavy Astros team that I almost never want to use SP’s against.
As scary as the Astros line-up is, they did almost get give up a perfect game to Bartolo Colon last night and it is worth noting that Paxton dominated this team last season over 4 starts, pitching to a 1.69 ERA with 20K’s over 21 innings of work. Paxton is also pitching at home where he was an elite pitcher last season, sporting a 2.5 ERA and a 29% K rate while limiting batters to a 25% hard contact rate and 0.7 HR/9.
If forced to choose, it seems like Snell is the safer option which seems crazy considering his elevated walk rate but I have a gut feeling he becomes the defacto SP2 and people chase his game log and avoid the pivot in Paxton just because it is against Houston. Keep an eye on the buzz today to see what others are saying and do not be afraid to mix and match these two arms as they sit at the same price point and can be used within the same exact roster construction.
MLB DFS – Top Spots for Offense:
Not only can we look to Citi Field tonight for our top arm but it is hard to overlook the Mets offense considering they will take on Jeremy Hellickson in his first start of the season. Take a stroll through Hellickson’s numbers last year where he gave up 2 HR/9 to LHB, 1.8 HR/9 to RHB and 30%+ hard contact rates to hitters on both sides and you will very quickly realize this is one of the best spots to attack with hitters on this slate.
The top of this Mets line-up matches up perfectly against Hellickson as Michael Conforto ($8.5K), Asdrubal Cabrera ($6.6K), Yoenis Cespedes ($9K) and Jay Bruce ($8.4K) are all sporting wOBA’s of .310 or higher and other than Cabrera, each of these big bats has a .210 or higher ISO. As of now there is no Vegas total for the Mets as I suppose Vegas is waiting for Hellickson to be officially called up before releasing the total but assuming he does get the start as reported, this could be a spot where the Mets bats go off and the price points are reasonable enough where you can easily stack the 1-4 here with deGrom and still have enough salary left for other big bats.
The A’s have one of the highest run projections on the slate as of this writing with 4.48 which trails only the Blue Jays on the Main Slate and against Reynaldo Lopez, a pitcher who has given up 1.72 HR/9 to LHB in his career with a 32% HC rate, this looks like a great spot to load up on the Oakland lefty power bats.
Matt Olson ($7.7K) is my favorite play from the A’s as his .365 ISO and .426 wOBA versus RHP lead all Oakland batters and he can be easily paired with Matt Joyce ($5.7K) who has a .248 ISO and .345 wOBA against RHP and makes for a cheap lead-off option.
If you are looking for one-off power plays there are two bats in the $8.5K price range that have multiple home run upside in Justin Smoak ($8.4K) and Nelson Cruz ($8.5K). Smoak and the Blue Jays have the highest team total on the Main Slate as of this writing against LHP Eric Skoglund and his .211 ISO and .400+ wOBA against LHP make him an intriguing one off candidate. Cruz against a lefty is always one of my go to plays as his .255 ISO and .390 wOBA against LHP in his career would support and even though Dallas Keuchel is not a pitcher we want to stack against, there is some BvP success here as Cruz is 10 for 30 with 3HR’s in his career against the Astros LHP.
MLB DFS 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!
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SP: Jacob deGrom ($21.9K)
SP: Blake Snell ($15.2K) or James Paxton ($15K)
IF: Asdrubal Cabrera ($6.6K)
IF: Matt Olson ($7.7K)
IF: Justin Smoak ($8.4K)
OF: Yoenis Cespedes ($9K)
OF: Jay Bruce ($8.4K)
OF: Michael Conforto ($8.5K)
Util: Nelson Cruz ($8.5K)
Util: Matt Joyce ($5.7K)
Slate Overview: Without any major weather issues on this slate (although it will be interesting to see how the field conditions are at Citi Field since it has been pouring buckets for the last 10 straight hours in the NYC area), I think we are safe from any PPD on the Main Slate today but the temperatures are still cool/cold in most spots. The pricing looks to be soft enough where you can pair deGrom with a mid-tier arm and load up on bats and without any “must have” spots on this slate hitting wise I think you can mix and match rather than go full on stack today. Best of luck today all – let’s hope we void any weather related whammies!
Best of luck today in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis.