MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday April 19
Welcome to the Thursday 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.
What an absolutely crazy ugly Wednesday MLB DFS slate as we had two slates to play and frankly I feel lucky to escape these unscathed. On the early slate Andrew Triggs got knocked out early by the White Sox as they simply refused to bite on his pitches outside the zone, were patient, worked walks and hitters counts and left him with a -13 fantasy point outing. I thought at that point my early teams were sunk but a home run from Eric Thames and some extra-inning magic from the A’s bats pushed me back over the cash line in many of my contests which I am still in awe at considering I would have been 13 points better had I not started an SP2. The Main Slate was dominated by pitching and outside of a big night from Ryan Zimmerman (2 home runs) and some one-off plays, this was a night where if you had Zim and one of the top stud arms you likely cashed across the board – it was almost that simple.
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 – Starting Pitching Overview:
The Main Slate tonight has a solid set of five games and as a side note – can the DFS sites simply move up the main slate 30 minutes to include all these Yankee games that are starting at 6:35PM EST in April? Imagine how the dynamic of a small slate like this would change if we had the Yankee bats at home? Oh well – that is not an option so let’s move on.
Zack Greinke ($20.6K) is the stud I am building around as my SP1 tonight as he takes his slate leading 29.2% K rate to the mound at home versus a Giants team that is striking out at the 9th highest clip against RHP this season at 24.9%.
Greinke had his best game this season in his only other home start on Opening Day against the Rockies, striking out 9 and putting up 25.75 FP and although the K’s have been there the last two starts (12) he has also given up 9 ER in two road starts. The return to Chase Field may be exactly what Greinke needs as he exhibited some serious home/road splits last season with an ERA nearly a full run lower at 2.87 while his K rate was substantially higher (29.2% versus 23.8%).
Historically this Giants team has always been thought of as a pesky contact oriented team but their top 10 K rate against RHP combined with a .108 ISO (26th in MLB) makes them a team that has both run prevention safety for cash games and strikeout upside for tournament play.
Freddie Freeman was hit on the wrist by a pitch and didn't bother to wait for the athletic trainer to come out; he walked off the field, and presumably headed for examination/possible X-rays. He missed 44 games last season after being hit by a pitch in the same general area.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 19, 2018
Finding an SP2 is not easy on this slate as we have more offenses I am wary of going against than looking to pick on but I think looking to the two arms in Atlanta at their cheap price tags may be the way to go here. Initially I will tell you that I was 100% fading Matt Harvey ($13K) as the Braves strike out at one of the lowest rates in all of baseball and with the game being in Atlanta there was more risk than reward facing a left-handed heavy squad in one of the best parks for lefty power. With the news however that Freddie Freeman left the game last night with an injury there is a very real scenario where the Braves could be without their most dangerous hitter which sets Harvey up to face a much weaker Atlanta line-up.
In watching Harvey this year through three starts, I have seen a solid K rate (25% plus in two of his three outings) with some bad luck BABIP wise (.400 in two of his three starts) so there is the potential here for a bounce back at any moment but I have some concerns. The biggest issue I see is the velocity, especially on his fastball which he throws nearly 60% of the time and is down nearly 2 MPH from last year, at only 92.6 MPH and what is interesting is that his change-up velocity is actually slightly up which scares me because as the difference in velocity in those two pitches gets closer it makes the off-speed much less effective to hitters. If Freeman plays this is a total stay away spot for me but if he misses the game and we get a weak-ish line-up then there may be some merit to going here if the game log watchers have soured on the once Dark Knight.
As a Mets fan I recognize I may be holding on to something with Harvey that is long gone and it pains me to say this but is Lucas Sims ($8K) actually a better play on the other side of this game? First is the price – on a short slate like this locking in a pitcher that is substantially cheaper than the elite bats allows you a roster build where fitting in Greinke and all your preferred stud bats is very much doable. Secondly is the stuff – Sims has been a very solid strikeout arm in the minors as he sported a 28% K rate last season in AAA and continued that success in his first that there this season with 7 K’s over 4 innings of work.
The strikeout stuff did not translate to the big leagues last year as he managed only a 17% K rate in 10 starts last season. Fangraphs did a great breakdown of him over the summer last season and broke down his pitch types and why they believe he was struggling at the major league level and the theory was he was relying on his slider (a mediocre pitch) way too much (over 27%) and where that may have been a pitch minor leaguers would chase, it seemed like major league hitters were simply laying off the stuff outside the zone and feasting on the pitches he left in the zone.
Now it is worth noting that Sims did make one start against the Mets last year in New York and struck out 6 in 6 innings of work with only 2 ER allowed and in his four starts at home last season he pitched quite well:
- Washington – 5 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 6 K’s – 18.25 FP
- Seattle – 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 4K’s – 22.5 FP
- Miami – 6 IP, 6H, 4 ER (2HR’s), 3K’s – 6 FP
- LAD – 6 IP, 6H, 3ER and 3K’s – 9 FP
So at home last season in four starts he averaged 14 FantasyDraft points which when you consider his price point at $8K tonight would make him an unbelievable value. The sample size is small for sure but the minor league strikeout rates plus the fact he limited hitters to a 25% hard contact rate in Sun Trust Park last year during the summer months gives me some interest based on what it does for the rest of my roster build.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots
If you opt to go high-low at starting pitcher with Greinke-Sims you basically have the opportunity to stack up the best of the best hitting spots and there are some really nice places to attack across this five game slate.
In Arizona with the roof scheduled to be open at Chase Field and temperatures in the 80’s by mid-afternoon I am locking in both Paul Goldschmidt ($9.3K) and A.J. Pollock ($9.1K) against LHP Ty Blach. Blach is simply not a good pitcher against RHB and even worse when you take him out of AT&T Park as his shown by his 2HR/9 and 35% hard contact rates from last season. Blach made one start in Chase Field last year and the results went about as expected – 5 innings, 4 ER and a home run to Goldy. The rest of the Arizona line-up is relatively unappealing so I would limit by exposure here to the 3-4 hitters on the heart of the line-up and attack one of the worst pitchers on the entire slate.
The two best offenses on this slate take the field against each other as the Red Sox and Angels play the final game of their series and with both teams averaging over 6 runs per game, this is a nice game stack with Nick Tropeano and Eduardo Rodriguez facing off against each other. Eduardo Rodriguez is not a bad pitcher by any means but last year he did surrender 1.2 HR/9 and a 31% hard contact rate to RHB and will face a stacked Angels line-up that is loaded with elite right-handed bats. Mike Trout ($10.3K), Justin Upton ($9K), Ian Kinsler ($8.2K) and Zack Cozart ($8.5K) make for an elite stack on this slate at the top of the Angels order and with back to back games where this line-up has only been able to muster 1 total run the ownership could be lower than expected as the late night hammer!
The Red Sox offense just continues to pound opposing pitchers as they have put up 19 runs in the first two games against the Angels and will now take on Nick Tropeano who made his first start since 2016 when he took the mound against the Royals and went 6.2 IP with 6K’s and 0 ER. Looking back to 2016, Tropeano gave up 36%+ hard contact to hitters from both sides of the plate and his pitch arsenal depends almost entirely on a fastball that sits in the low 90’s with a slider he throws 27% of the time.
If you dig into these pitch types (fastball/slider) you will see that J.D. Martinez ($9K) profiles extremely well against Tropeano as he has a .257 ISO and .326 wOBA versus the slider since 2016 and a massive .370 ISO and .425 wOBA against fastballs in the 90-92 MPH range per RotoGrinders Plate IQ. Andrew Benintendi ($8K) profiles similarly against these pitch types with a .268 ISO versus the fastball and .228 ISO versus the slider so a 1-2 mini-stack is certainly in play here tonight.
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: Zack Greinke ($20.6K)
SP: Lucas Sims ($8K)
IF: Paul Goldschmidt ($9.3K)
IF: Zack Cozart ($8.5K)
IF: Ian Kinsler ($8.2K)
OF: Mike Trout ($10.3K)
OF: Justin Upton ($9K)
OF: A.J. Pollock ($9.1K)
Util: Andrew Benintendi ($8K)
Util: J.D. Martinez ($9K)
Slate Overview: For me the decision to lock in Zack Greinke tonight is a lock but the SP2 is where it gets interesting and I the price point on Sims, a solid strikeout arm in the minors, allows me a roster build with massive offensive upside. This is definitely a slate where because it is only five games we can dig in more as the day goes on so for the latest thoughts on the slate as we get closer to lock please give me a follow @2LockSports.
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!