Fansided

MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday April 30

By Brian Tulloch

CHICAGO, IL - APRIL 28: Kris Bryant #17 of the Chicago Cubs warms up before the game against the Milwaukee Brewers, in his first start since being hit by a pitch severeal days ago, at Wrigley Field on April 28, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images)
CHICAGO, IL - APRIL 28: Kris Bryant #17 of the Chicago Cubs warms up before the game against the Milwaukee Brewers, in his first start since being hit by a pitch severeal days ago, at Wrigley Field on April 28, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
MLB DFS
CHICAGO, IL – APRIL 28: Kris Bryant MLB DFS /

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.

If you need a reminder of the variance that exists in MLB DFS let me run down the top five fantasy performers on Sunday’s slate – Ryon Healy, Nick Kingham, Caleb Smith, Ozzie Albies and Chelsor Cuthbert. Yes that was the top five fantasy performers on a double-digit game Main Slate – I love DFS!

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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
MLB DFS /

MLB DFS – Starting Pitcher Overview:

Happy Monday Picks and Pivots readers and let me warn you, you are going to need some coffee before you open up the starting pitcher options on this slate – it ain’t pretty. I am not paying $21.6K for Jake Arrieta against the Marlins with one crazy outlier double-digit K game this season that has propped up his game logs and price point. Sonny Gray and Charlie Morton are talented pitchers but I am not going to actively target arms against the Yankees and Houston offenses at any point this year so will likely stay away from this game entirely. Zack Greinke at home versus a Dodgers team he faced already this season and struck out 7 batter is decent but risky (also gave up 4 ER in that start) and Jeff Samardzija at home versus the Padres will hopefully become chalk again and we can simply let others make that mistake of rushing to roster chalk Shark.

Great – I just listed off half the slate of pitcher’s I have no interest in – but we actually need to roster this position so where we do start? Eduardo Rodriguez ($14.5K) looks like the top option in my mind, especially at this price point, as the largest favorite on the slate at -220 against the Kansas City Royals. Over the last two seasons, E-Rod has a 25.5% K rate which puts him just a step behind guys like Morton/Greinke on this slate but most importantly he has shown a 30%+ K rate against LHB and the Royals projected line-up has four of them slated to start which could be a huge boost to Rodriguez’s K projections today.

The Royals strike out at a 25.4% clip against LHP this season which is the 9th highest mark in baseball and although they do have Salvador Perez back in the heart of this line-up, the match-up here looks to be one that we can attack. E-Rod has the raw K upside I am looking for in my MLB DFS starting pitchers and the lofty Vegas favorite combined with the fact that the Royals have one of the lowest totals on the board makes him a viable cash game play in the context of this slate.

The other major home favorite in this price point is Jon Lester ($14.9K) who is a -170 favorite against the Rockies but there is one major item that scares me initially – the weather in Wrigley. As of this writing the weather is expected to be in the 70’s with winds blowing out to left field at 15-16 MPH which could spell some serious trouble for any pitcher in this park. If it was not for the weather, the match-up would seem solid as the Rockies strike out at the second highest clip against LHP this season at 27.3% so there is some serious K potential with Lester against this line-up.

I think the Lester/Rodriguez combination is a viable strategy that targets strike-out upside with massive Vegas favorites at reasonable price points but I do think there is more risk with Lester as a result of the weather in Wrigley against a dangerous Rockies line-up that makes me interested in a potential pivot.

Aaron Sanchez ($12.9K) gets a road start against the Twins in what Vegas has set as essentially a pick’em game and the more I dig into the more I am intrigued by the upside in this spot. The first place to start is this excellent piece from FanGraphs which breaks down a fundamental difference in Sanchez’s arsenal this year – the introduction and heavy reliance on his change-up.

Sanchez was always a talented arm with a massive ground ball rate and his 56% rate so far this season is exactly in line with his career marks which may led people to think this is the same old pitcher we knew. What is fascinating to me however and that FanGraphs does an exceptional job of breaking down is how he has almost completely overhauled his pitch type as it relates to his change-up which was a pitch he threw only 6% last year and is now throwing a whopping 30% so far this season.

His swinging strike rate has doubled while his hard contact rate has dropped to 24% all while keeping his massive ground ball rate which is really why he has been able to navigate some early season difficult match-ups against the Yankees (twice), the Red Sox, Orioles and White Sox. We have already seen flashes of the hidden K potential here with 7 and 8 K’s in two of his five outings, relying more and more on his change which he has thrown 30% or more in each of his last four outings.

This looks like a pitch that is going to generate more swings and misses which is valuable for a guy like Sanchez who has always been a mediocre K arm but his price point today really still views him as this pitch to contact ground ball arm and I think digging deeper we could be getting some sneaky K potential here with his new approach using a sinking change-up nearly a third of the time.

MLB DFS
NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 01: (L-R) Brock Holt /

MLB DFS – Hitting Overview:

At first glance on this slate, the beauty of paying down for both arms is that we can essentially load up on any and all bats we want and with some less than stellar arms opposing them today, bats could be the path to winning this slate.

The Red Sox have the highest implied team total on the slate at 5.19 which considering Jason Hammel is on the other side of the match-up should not shock anyone. Hammel has a xFIP and a SIERA in line with his 5 ERA over the last two years so I think its safe to say we know what we are getting with the Royals RHP who is a mediocre K arm who gives up hard contact (32%) to hitters from both sides of the plate. I think a 1-4 stack with Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Hanley Ramirez and J.D. Martinez is where you start as all four players have a .180 ISO against RHP the last two seasons and you can expand a stack to include Mitch Moreland and/or the recently activeated Xander Boegarts.

The Reds/Brewers game has the highest total on the board at 9.5 runs and with LHP Brandon Finnegan on the hill for the Reds in Great American Park, I know the right-handed batters on the Brew Crew are going to be stop #2 in my roster build. Ryan Braun and Lorenzo Cain both have exceptional numbers against LHP the last two seasons as each are sporting ISO’s of .220+ and I love the idea of running this mini-stack back with Joey Votto ($9.4K) on the other side of this game.

Votto started slow out of the gate but has now homered in four of his last six games and will take on a RHP in Jhoulys Chacin who he has had significant success against, going 6 for 18 with 2 HR’s against him. There is no better park for left-handed power on this slate and Votto excels against the majority of the pitch types that Chacin throws with a 91 MPH fast and a sinker he throws over 50% of the time.

Assuming the wind holds in Wrigley today, this a spot I think we can target with some one-off power bats as we get a handful of elite right-handed power bats against left-handed arms in Lester and Freeland. I am not sure I want to stack against either of these two but I do love the idea of using guys like Nolan Arenado, Kris Bryant and/or Javier Baez as all three hitters have ISO’s over .230 against left-handed pitching over the last two seasons.

MLB DFS
MLB DFS /

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!  

More from FanSided

SP: Eduardo Rodriguez ($14.5K)

SP: Aaron Sanchez ($12.9K)

IF: Hanley Ramirez ($8.5K)

IF: Joey Votto ($9.4K)

IF: Kris Bryant ($9.1K)

OF: Mookie Betts ($11K)

OF: J.D. Martinez ($10K)

OF: Andrew Benintendi ($8.4K)

UTIL: Ryan Braun ($8.2K)

UTIL: Lorenzo Cain ($8K)

Slate Overview: Listen if you want to pay up for Jake Arrieta or Zack Greinke today I certainly would understand it but I don’t see any of the high-priced arms on this slate being absolute must haves with crazy strikeout ceilings that make building around pitching the optimal route. There are lesser priced arms like Rodriguez, Lester and Sanchez that have similar potential and the salary savings are substantial to the point where your line-up becomes a who’s who of All-Star caliber bats. Good luck today all and we will see you back here tomorrow for more Picks and Pivots.

Next: DraftKings MLB Picks

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.