MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday May 4
Welcome to the Friday 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.
Thursday’s MLB DFS split slates were ugly on the surface but sometimes those can be the most profitable and for the Picks and Pivots core that was exactly the case on the Early Slate. The all-in Atlanta Braves stack against Mets LHP Jason Vargas went off for a big day and when paired with Julio Teheran at single digit ownership on FantasyDraft as he carried a no-hitter into the 7th inning, it was a really great way to start Thursday.
The Main Slate was much less exciting as scoring was down across the board, only one pitcher (Jake Odorizzi) managed to get in the top 10 performers, and the night was really all about having solid bats. The core we laid out in Picks and Pivots was enough to take home cash games but the negative points from David Price (and the Rangers bats going off) were the difference maker in GPP play.
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:
After a few days of sorting through mediocre pitching options we get two elite strikeout arms to build around tonight in Gerrit Cole ($23.7K) and J.A. Happ ($22.8K), who rank first and sixth in baseball this year in terms of K rate at 39.4% and 34%. Not only do we get two high ceiling strikeout pitchers but we also get Cole and Happ in match-ups against strikeout prone teams which just increased my already high level of interest in locking both arms into my roster build.
Cole will take on an Arizona team that is striking out 24.1% clip against RHP this season which is 9th highest in baseball while the Astros starter has put up double-digit strikeouts in four of his six outings so far this season. Cole is generating a career high 16% swinging strike rate so far this season with a different approach on the mound as he is throwing his sinker a career low 4% of the time (he threw that pitch 16% last year) and is now relying heavily on his slider (24%) and curveball (17%) which are both career highs for that pitch type. This level of success for Cole with his new approach has been legit every start so far and although there is risk with pitching Chase Field, it seems like FantasyDraft has priced that risk in and we can roster Cole for what I consider to be a reasonable price.
As I am writing this it dawns on me that Cole and Happ are now elite K arms and I am doing everything I can to fit them both into my line-ups – could you have ever imagined saying that last season or any year prior? Cole is sporting a K rate of nearly 40% when he had never been at 25% in a major league season previously and Happ meanwhile is a career 20% K arm that is now rocking with the top arms in the entire league.
I do believe that the spike in strikeouts across baseball and the general approach that strikeouts are OK for offenses is contributing to this in some form but we are also seeing two pitchers re-invent themselves and it is paying big time dividends. Happ this season has a 13.4% swinging strike rate which is a significant step up from his 9% mark in each of the last two years and while there is no discernible change in pitch type like we saw with Cole, we are seeing an uptick in velocity across Happ’s arsenal so far this year and he is getting batters to chase like never before.
OContact% is a metric used to measure how often batters make contact with pitches thrown outside the strike zone and in previous years that number has been exceptionally high for Happ at 70-75% but this year it is down drastically to 55% all while he has maintained his elite ground ball rate and soft contact rates.
Today Happ will take on a weak Tampa Bay line-up that strikes out at a 24% clip against left-handed pitchers this season. I believe in the breakouts for both Happ and Cole and my goal is to build around them both on this Main Slate tonight in all formats as I believe the K upside can build a foundation for my line-ups that will set me up for success in both case games and tournaments.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
We have some big time offensive spots to build around tonight as the Yankees, Red Sox and Astros all have 5+ run projections and overall we have five teams as of this writing with that Vegas projection. All three of those offenses are elite but the price points are simply going to be out of our range if we intend to build around Cole AND Happ as we are left with only $6.6K per batter to fill out our line-up. Personally I think there are more than enough spots on this slate to attack in the price range and although it may mean missing out on the top priced bats, there is enough pop against some bad pitchers that make this roster build a path we can dive into.
The Oakland A’s have a 5.1 run projection against RHP Andrew Cashner, a pitcher who throughout his career has struggled with the long ball and so far this season he has given up 7 HR’s already with a .200 ISO to RHB and .269 ISO to left-handed hitters. Matt Joyce ($5.5K) should lead-off here for Oakland as he normally does against a right-hander and with his .241 ISO against RHP the last two years he is one of the first value bats I want to plug into my line-ups tonight. Matt Olson ($7.4K) has an insane .348 ISO against RHP the last two seasons and is a great way to attack this same match-up with a mini-stack of the cost-effective left-handed power in the A’s line-up.
The Twins have a 5.2 run projection which is above the Astros and just a shade behind the Red Sox tonight and with Carson Fulmer on the mound for the White Sox, we can understand why. Fulmer is the perfect candidate to stack against as he has a high walk rate over the last two years (12.2%) with minimal strike-out ability and a fly ball pitcher to boot – this is typically a recipe for success in stacks and the Twins are relatively inexpensive up and down the line-up when you compare this stack to any of the other teams projected to score 5+ runs today.
Brian Dozier ($9K) is the really only pricey option for Minnesota and it doesn’t hurt that he has gone 2 for 3 with both hits being home runs against Fulmer in his brief career in the majors. The guy that really stands out to me is Logan Morrison ($5.9K) who has a .270 ISO against RHP the last two seasons (is also 1 for 1 with an HR against Fulmer) and the price point is such that it fits within our Cole/Happ roster construction.
Now just because we are not going to be able to pay up for the big name bats in the Astros, Yankees or Red Sox line-ups does not mean we should just gloss over those teams entirely as we can get exposure to these line-ups in some relatively inexpensive ways.
The Astros will take on Kris Medlen, who has not pitched in the bigs since 2016 and has pitched to a 5.5+ ERA over the last two years in AAA and although the Springer/Altuve/Correa stack may be out of our price range we can still build around this spot with the middle-bottom of the order as you can build a stack here with guys like Josh Reddick ($7.2K), Brian McCann ($6.5K), Yuli Gurriel ($6.3K) and Marwin Gonzalez ($6.6K) and get the same upside against a beatable pitcher for a reasonable average cost per player.
The Red Sox are priced through the nose so there may be no way to get real cheap exposure to them but outside of the big four Yankees, the prices here remain reasonable and become an interesting way to attack the team with the highest run projection on the slate. Josh Tomlin has made four starts this season and has been absolutely lit up in three of those to the tune of 19 ER and 10 HR’s IN THREE STARTS!
I am writing this article just a short drive from Yankee Stadium and it is HOT in New York today (although there is thunderstorm risk later in the day) and any time you can get a pitcher in this form who is giving up a 50% fly ball rate and over a 45% hard contact rate in Yankee Stadium – well buckle up kids. If you want to stack up the big four go for it, but I want Cole and Happ so instead Ill fade those guys and instead lock in on the bats around them – Brett Gardner ($6.5K), Aaron Hicks ($7.2K) and Miguel Andujar ($7.2K).
One thing I really took away from yesterday’s early slate was how concentrated the ownership can get on the key guys in a desirable stack and how low the secondary pieces tend to be. Take the Braves as an example yesterday – the core guys of Freeman (38%), Albies (42%) and Acuna (44%) were major chalk but it was the guys batting right around them -4th and 5th to be exact – that really made that stack work as Kurt Suzuki (9%) and Nick Markakis (5%) got every bit the same match-up at a fraction of the ownership. With everyone SO focused on the Stanton/Judge/Didi/Sanchez core we can simply stack around them at a fraction of the ownership and attack the same great spot.
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: Gerrit Cole ($23.7K)
SP: J.A. Happ ($22.8K)
IF: Logan Morrison ($5.9K)
IF:Miguel Andujar ($7.2K)
IF: Brian McCann ($6.5K)
OF: Josh Reddick ($7.2K)
OF: Matt Joyce ($5.5K)
OF: Matt Olson ($7.4K)
UTIL: Brett Gardner ($6.5K)
UTIL: Aaron Hicks ($7.2K)
Slate Overview: This slate starts with pitching and my goal/intent is to lock in the two best arms with the elite K upside I covet with Cole and Happ and simply find the bats to make it work. As I mentioned, we may not be able to attack the big Vegas totals with the core bats but we can get all the same high upside exposure by building more cost-effective secondary Yankee/Astros stacks and build in some of the Twins/A’s value. Enjoy the night of MLB DFS and we will see you back here on Saturday!
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!