MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday April 24
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s MLB DFS slate was incredibly high scoring as we had offensive explosions across the league with the White Sox pounding out 10 runs against the Mariners, the Yankees racking up 14 runs with some late inning offense and the game in Coors combining for 18 total runs which drove the cash line to one of its highest nights I can recall so far this season. Bats were really the story here as we had 8 hitters put up 25+ FantasyDraft points including a pair of White Sox bats, Jose Abreu and Yoan Moncada who were the two top scoring options on the slate.
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 Pitcher Overview:
Welcome to a Tuesday MLB DFS that could prove to be a bit tricky as rainy weather up and down the East Coast puts three games at risk on an eleven game slate with the Tigers/Pirates, Rays/Phillies and Rays/Orioles all looking like delay/PPD risks at first glance. The weather risk could take one of the aces out of play as Robbie Ray ($21.5K) toes the rubber in Philadelphia with rain expected to start an hour into the game with the really heavy stuff expected to come in around 10PM EST so there may be a window for them to play here but there is also substantial risk.
We may be able to dodge the weather risk with the other two top-tier arms on the slate in Charlie Morton ($21.5K) and Shohei Ohtani ($17.8K) but we get risk of a whole new kind as these two arms will face off each other and two of the most dangerous offenses in all of baseball. I look at Morton/Ohtani much in the same way I did Carrasco/Cole last night as I am not willing to pay the freight to roster these arms with the risk involved facing elite offenses when you factor in all the top end bats I am looking to fit in. My hope is that we see a result much like last night where Carrasco (27.7) and Cole (24.1) both had solid but not slate winning games but we could have easily dropped down to someone like Masahiro Tanaka (23.4) who was able to match/come close to their production while opening up the salary for the bats that pushed you over the cash line.
Kenta Maeda ($18.1K) may be the best combination of safety and upside as he gets a home start as a -250 favorite against a Marlins team projected to score the fewest runs on the slate. Maeda has struck out 10 batters in two of his three starts so far this season so the upside is apparent but there is also some risk here as we know that Maeda rarely goes deep into games. Maeda at home was simply tremendous last year with a 2.88 ERA, a 24.3% hard contact rate and a K rate of 26.4% which is 2.5% higher than his road mark in 2017. Within the context of this slate Maeda looks like my favorite SP1 as I can capture elite K upside (10K’s in 2 of 3 starts this year) I want for tournaments but he also looks to be the safest cash game play based off his match-up and when you factor in his reduced salary that allows me to pay up for all my must have bats – then he is the easy first choice for me at pitcher.
At my SP2 there are two arms priced at the same price point that I have varying degrees of interest in depending on the format. Zach Davies ($14.1K) gets a great run prevention spot against the Royals in KC as we are anchoring ourselves to his 50%+ ground ball rate last season and 28% hard contact rate and looking for a quality start at a reasonable price point. There is some risk here with Davies especially when you consider he gave up 1.24 HR/9 to LHB and will have to take on the Moustakas/Duda combo so this is not a completely safe play but rather you are hoping for a performance in the realm of 6 innings, 2-3 ER with 5-6K’s and a win. Basically he is the “just don’t hurt me” SP2 choice.
Assuming the Philly/Arizona game is able to play through the weather risks I think we can make the case for Vince Velasquez ($14.1K) who will take on Arizona and is coming off a string of three great starts where he went 6+ innings in each start, striking out 6-7 batters per game and gave up 1 ER in 2 of those 3 starts. This Arizona line-up is basically Goldschmidt/Pollock at this point and when you take them out of Arizona they become far less intimidating and their team K rate of 26.1% against RHP this season is 4th in all of baseball. Velasquez has a 25% K rate this season and has been able to limit hard contact to 27% with a 10.3% swinging strike rate and with so much focus on Ray on the other side of this game my hope is Velasquez gets over-looked. Assuming this game is able to play, I love the idea of using Velasquez in this spot as his K upside and price point are exactly what I want to utilize in tournaments to help me pay up for the big bats.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots
Much like last night’s slate I plan on letting the bats determine my roster build and with another game in Coors Field one night after 18 runs were scored, this becomes the key reason we are willing to drop down at SP to guys like Maeda, Davies and Velasquez.
It looks like the Padres will be calling up Eric Lauer, a left-handed pitcher, from AAA to make his major league debut in Coors Field – good luck kid. Lauer based on everything I have read about him is viewed by scouts as a “solid innings eater” and his FanGraphs scouting report might as well say “well, he is a nice guy who throws a baseball” because there is nothing I can find that makes me wary of stacking the Rockies at all tonight.
"Scouting ReportIf certainty and stability appeal to you as an evaluator, then Lauer would be much higher on your list, as he’s been as reliable as German automobile since his sophomore year at Kent State. He has an effortless delivery that produces a low-90s fastball. It lacks movement but Lauer still has some room for mass on his frame and might add a bit more velocity into his mid-20s. While it lacks life, Lauer works the bottom of the strike zone with his fastball consistently and garners plenty of ground balls when he’s not carving hitters up with a robust array of secondary pitches."
We get a lefty in Coors so go ahead and just lock in the Rockies stack now with all the right-handed bats including Nolan Arenado, Trevor Story, DJ LeMahieu, Chris Ianetta and Ian Desmond and I would not leave Charlie Blackmon out of those stacks especially at $11K on FantasyDraft where people may balk at the lefty/lefty match-up. Arenado and Story both have insane numbers against LHP with with a .406 and .343 ISO over the last two years so they would be my top two plays here but Blackmon, Ianetta and DJ all have .200+ ISO’s as well so really you can make the case to stack up 1-6 in this line-up tonight. Also keep an eye on the Rockies line-up as they could slot in Noel Cuevas ($4.8K) into the OF with a left-hander on the mound as he got the start Sunday against Jose Quintana and if I am getting any Rockies bat at this cheap a price – I want in!
The other stack that really stands out to me today is in LA as the Dodgers take on Dillon Peters, a LHP who has given up 15 ER in 19 IP so far this season with the majority of those hits coming from right-handed batters including 4 HR’s so far. With a 2.4 HR/9 rate to RHB and a 43% hard contact rate, all the right-handed bats are in play including Enrique Hernandez who has a .298 ISO versus LHP over the last two seasons and Chris Taylor who has a .199 ISO and .390 wOBA. Do not overlook Cody Bellinger here either as he actually has a .265 ISO and .357 wOBA versus LHP and could be over looked with the lefty-lefty matchup.
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: Kenta Maeda ($18.1K)
SP: Vince Velasquez ($14.1K)
IF: Nolan Arenado ($10.7K)
IF: DJ LeMahieu ($9.3K)
IF: Trevor Story ($8.3K)
OF: Charlie Blackmon ($11K)
OF: Noel Cuevas ($4.8K)
OF: Kike’ Hernanded ($6.8K)
Util: Chris Taylor ($7.7K)
Util: Wil Myers ($9.4K)
Slate Overview: With my focus on getting as many Coors bats and Dodgers hitters into my line-up today it means that I am going to drop down at SP and frankly I am perfectly fine with that. I think there is too much risk in paying up for Ray/Morton/Ohtani and there is similar K upside with guys like Maeda and Velasquez that also give me the salary relief to stack up the big bats. Good luck tonight all!
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings.