MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday April 28
Welcome to the Saturday 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.
After getting burned by expensive starting pitching the last few days we returned to normalcy last night as Corey Kluber and Jacob deGrom delivered two of the top four scoring nights on the slate with impressive strikeout performances against the Mariners and Padres. Offensively it was the Reds who went off for 15 runs with a low owned Jose Peraza topping all scorers with 36 FantasyDraft points on the back of a 2-3 night including a HR, 2 RBI and 3 runs scores.
Personally I stuck to my plan of paying up for deGrom (good) and Strasburg (not so good) and rolled out what I expected would be a low-owned game stack with the Royals and White Sox and I sure got the ownership right there as every single player was single digit owned and when I got 2 HR’s from Matt Davidson and another from Mike Moustakas that was good enough to push my team over the cash line in most contests.
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 – Early Slate Pitching:
At first glance the early slate pitching at the top looks over-priced as Carlos Carrasco ($24K), Patrick Corbin ($22K) and David Price ($21.1K) all sit over $20K while no other starter is priced above $15K so there is a very clear tier set in FantasyDraft pricing today that optically may drive more ownership to these due to the price/name value – but is this the right place to spend up?
Price has done absolutely nothing to warrant this price tag this season with a 20.7% K rate so far this season and 4.70 xFIP and although he put up a solid outing against this Tampa Bay team earlier with 7 innings of shut out ball and 5 K’s, that 22 FP outing is not nearly enough in my opinion to pay this freight.
Carrasco with a 21.5% K rate against a good Mariners line-up is just not a risk I am willing to take – as even last night we saw Kluber give up 3 ER but he had the K upside (10 punch outs) to offset that and pay off the price tag. Carrasco has not shown that kind of K upside this season so we are simply looking at a solid run prevention spot as a -215 home favorite and I think paying $24K for that is just a bit too much.
Corbin is where it gets interesting as we may not think of him as a player that should be priced this high but with an absurd 39.3% K rate that leads all starters this season, this price may actually be a bargain! Corbin has put up 8 or more K’s in each of his first five starts now it is fair to point out that he has faced the Giants twice and the Padres once but he also took on the Dodgers/Rockies in that span so it is not completely match-up driven K upside. The Nationals strike out over 25% of the time against LHP this season which is the 7th highest mark in baseball so the match-up looks like one Corbin can exploit and I wonder if the DFS masses will be shy to pay this price for him today which could lead to him being a bit under-owned.
For my SP2 there are two arms right at the same price point I have interest in with Walker Buehler ($14.9K) and Jose Quintana ($14.7K) and this may be a spot where I let ownership drive my decision more than anything. Buehler, one of the top prospects in all of baseball, went 5 scoreless innings in his first start against the Marlins and struck out 5 batters over 89 pitches and has the talent to far exceed his price point here today against the Giants in the first game of their doubleheader.
Quintana has more name recognition so my gut says he will be the more popular play but there is risk here as his game logs will show you as he has given up 4, 6 and 7 ER in three of his four outings this season. The one game he pitched well? That was against the same Brewers team he will face today where he struck out 6 batters in 6 shutout innings and this is a Milwaukee team he has dominated the last two season, holding them to a .134 average with 0 HR and a 25%K rate over 70 plate appearances. It is also worth noting that it is expected there will be 18MPH wins blowing in at Wrigley today which could further help Quintana’s case as an SP2.
With the price difference being only $200 different, I will likely keep my options open leading up to lock as if I get the sense that either arm is going to be a chalk SP2 than I will likely pivot to the other to help differentiate myself in GPP’s.
MLB DFS – Early Slate Hitting:
After seeing the ownership on the Royals and White Sox bats last night and then looking at a game where Carson Fulmer takes on Trevor Oaks in his MLB debut, I am thinking this may be another perfect game stack opportunity at low ownership. Fulmer over the last two seasons has an 18% K rate with a 12% walk rate giving up 1.4 HR/9 to hitters from both sides of the plate and with a SIERA and xFIP over 5, there is no positive regression in sight for his 5+ ERA. Mike Moustakas ($8.4K) and Lucas Duda ($7.3K) make for a nice mini-stack that both profile extremely well against a pitcher who throws a fastball/cutter over 75% of the time.
The White Sox will take on a pitcher in Trevor Oaks who is a low strikeout arm that relies on his sinker to generate over 50%+ ground balls as the perfect example of a pitch to contact back of the rotation arm. The heart of this White Sox batting order has some insanely high ISO numbers against RHP this season with Yoan Moncada (.381), Jose Abreu (.246) and Matt Davidson (.360) all with exceptional power and with Davidson hitting four home runs in the last two games I am not sure I am willing to fade one of the hottest hitters in baseball tonight.
Even though I think Jose Quintana is a viable GPP arm, I also think you can make the case for a Milwaukee stack here today with the right-handed power bats as Quintana surrendered a 2.14 HR/9 rate to RHB in Wrigley last season and with Ryan Braun and Lorenzo Cain both sporting ISO’s over .215+ over the last two seasons against LHP, this could be a sneaky leverage spot if Quintana gains popularity as an SP2.
Vegas has installed the Blue Jays (5.16) and Twins (5) as the only two early slate teams with 5+ run projections and with other high-octane offenses like the Indians and Red Sox not far behind them, my guess is these become the popular industry stacks to target on the early slate. Personally I am not in love with any of those options and think this is the perfect slate to focus on going with contrarian stacks or leverage stacks for popular arms like Quintana and you could even make the case for stacking the Mariners against Carrasco as they have strong BvP data against them.
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!
SP: Patrick Corbin ($22K)
SP: Walker Buehler ($14.9K)
IF: Mike Moustakas ($8.4K)
IF: Lucas Duda ($7.3K)
IF: Yoan Moncada ($8.1K)
OF: Lorenzo Cain ($8.1K)
OF: Ryan Braun ($8.1K)
OF: Jorge Soler ($6.7K)
UTIL: Jose Abreu ($8.4K)
UTIL: Matt Davidson ($7.7K)
Slate Overview: This is looking like a nice tournament slate where the chalky option like Carrasco and/or Quintana could easily put up underwhelming numbers and we have seen the chalk offenses (Tigers last night?) put up duds so I am more than willing to play the ownership angle here and attack the White Sox and Royals against two of the worst pitchers on the slate at low ownership.
MLB DFS Main Slate Overview:
We have two games on the Main Slate with are the tail ends of double-header (Dodgers/Giants and KC/White Sox) so keep an eye on the line-up news here as we could get some watered down line-ups either early or late that could really change how we attack this slate.
For every reason I like Walker Buehler early, I like Alex Wood ($17K) against a Giants team he already pitched an 8 inning, 1 hit, 5K gem against earlier this season and it is certainly possible we get the Giants JV squad in the nightcap which could raise Wood’s ceiling even higher. The Giants are striking out at a 25.4% clip on the season against LHP which is the 7th highest mark in all of baseball so Wood makes for one of the best plays on the board and pending line-ups for the nightcap of the double-header could enter must play territory with a watered down SF line-up.
Lance McCullers has the highest K upside (31.6% K rate this season) on the slate but he is also a highly volatile DFS arm and will face a powerful A’s line-up that honestly I am not overly interested in picking on tonight. Instead I will look to pay down to Jack Flaherty ($14.5K) a pitcher with exceptional K upside (25% at the ML level) who struck out 9 batters against Milwaukee in his only other start this season. Now this Pirates team is not a high K squad (only 20% against RHP this season) but in rostering Flaherty you get massive salary savings to pay up for the big bats on this slate with the K upside I want in GPP’s for my SP2.
I know I have been on the Mets bats lately, but this is a spot I actually think you can roll out a pitcher against them as LHP Joey Lucchesi (15.3K) has shown exceptional K upside so far (27%) and will take on a Mets team ranked dead last in ISO versus LHP and strikes out at a 26% clip with is 6th highest against LHP this season.
One of the reasons I want to pay down for Flaherty is that I want to stack the high-octane offenses here tonight including the Astros and Yankees. The Astros bats have the highest implied total (5.1) on the Main Slate and will take onm Daniel Mengden, a pitch to contact arm who is giving up over 38% hard contact this season. So far this season, Mengden is giving up a .217 ISO to RHB with a 42% hard contact rate so there is merit to stacking up all the Houston studs here including Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, George Springer and Josh Reddick.
The Yankees bats on the surface may not have the best match-up against Garrett Richards who has limited hard contact and HR’s to RHB over the last two seasons and the fact they have a 3.9 run total may keep the ownership down to levels we do not normally see on Yankee stacks so this is a spot where I would bet on the talent of Didi Gregorious, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and hope the Vegas total keeps them off people’s radar for what may be the first time this season.
And lastly, my man Matt Davidson faces LHP Eric Skoglund in the night-cap of the White sox double-header. How much Matty Davidson is too much today? Giddy up.
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: Joey Lucchesi ($15.3K)
SP: Jack Flaherty ($14.5K)
IF: Matt Davidson ($7.7K)
IF: Jose Altuve ($9.3K)
IF: Carlos Correa ($9K)
OF: Aaron Judge ($10.7K)
OF: Josh Reddick ($7.7K)
OF: George Springer ($8.9K)
UTIL: Didi Gregorious ($10.3K)
UTIL: Brett Gardner ($6.3K)
Slate Overview: Although I understand the merit of using McCullers and/or Wood, I must say I like the roster build that dropping down to Lucchesi and Flaherty provides. Not only can we still target high K arms but we can stack arguably the two most talented offenses in baseball in the Astros and the Yankees tonight. Remember to keep an eye on the double-header line-ups tonight and enjoy your Saturday of MLB DFS!
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!