MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday May 6
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
Saturday’s MLB DFS split slate was a bit of a mix bag for Picks and Pivots as we had some good calls (Caleb Smith) and some not so great ones (game stacking the Rockies/Mets and playing the chalk Charlie Morton apparently). The Main Slate was dominated by Trevor Cahill who struck out 12 in 6 innings against the Orioles while the early slate was really all about the pitching as Sonny Gray, Trevor Bauer and Jordan Zimmermann were the top 3 performers with nearly identical fantasy outputs.
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:
Aces Everywhere. This slate looks like it will be dominated by pitching and with Max Scherzer ($25.4K), Justin Verlander ($25.4K), Chris Sale ($25K) and Noah Syndergaard ($22K) all sitting at the top of the pitching options we can essentially pick and choose which high-end strikeout arm we want to build around. Scherzer (37.4%), Verlander (35.2%), Sale (30.5%) and Syndergaard (29%) all rank within the top 13 in baseball this season in strikeout rate so anchoring to any one or two of these arms today makes all the sense in the world.
As much as I love these arms and would not talk you off either of them – there are two arms, priced at a $10K discount that really interest me as a pivot on this slate in Shohei Ohtani ($16.4K) and Chris Archer ($15.8K).
Let’s start with Archer who gets maybe the best possible match-up as he will be pitching at home in Tampa Bay versus the Blue Jays. At first glance you may see Archer’s 6+ ERA and move on but his 3.61 xFIP and 3.69 SIERA tell me there is some positive regression coming and although his K rate of 24% is 5% down from last year, this is the match-up I think we could see a big time bounce back.
The Blue Jays over the last two seasons have struggled mightily against the slider ranking as the second worst team last season against that pitch with a -3.57 wSL ranking (meaning they score roughly 35 runs less than the average team on that pitch) and although not as bad this year they are still well below average against the pitch. Why does this matter? Archer relies heavily on his slider, throwing it 43-44% over the last two seasons and so when you overlay his reliance on that pitch with the Blue Jays struggles it is not shocking to see the success Archer has had against the Blue Jays.
In five starts last season versus Toronto, Archer went 34 innings, striking out 44 batters with a 2.65 ERA, 0.85 WHIP and .180 BAA. At home, where Archer’s number have historically been better, Archer faced them three times, striking out 8, 10 and 11 batters which is the kind of upside you are looking at here today.
The .373 BABIP this season tells me there is some significant bad luck for Archer but the one red flag is his 40% hard contact rate which in theory should be protected a bit by this ballpark in Tampa today. Everything in the underlying metrics – velocity, pitch type etc look similar to his numbers in recent years and his 14% swinging strike rate tells me the upside is still there so I have a ton of interest in Archer at home today.
As much as I love Sale, Verlander or Scherzer this becomes a price play for me as I can grab Archer at a 40% discount and chase the same double-digit K upside while having a totally different hitter build due to the salary savings I get!
Remember Shohei Ohtani? The guy who set the world on fire in his first two starts then got roughed up by the Red Sox and Astros (like every pitcher seems to)? The buzz has seemingly worn off on Ohtani but this is still a guy with a 32% K rate this season and his lack of recent success combined with the aces available above him may lead to him being overlooked on this slate.
After his first two starts against the A’s where he struck out 18 batters in 13 innings he came back to Earth with only one strikeout in 2 innings against the Red Sox and although he had 7 punchouts against the Astros he struggled with walks (5) and have up 4 ER. What is interesting to me is how the BABIP game log is so wildly different with a .100 BABIP in his first two games then .375 and .455 against the Red Sox and Astros. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle here for Ohtani who through all the ups and down still has a high K rate with a low HC rate (28%) so there remains significant upside at this price point.
Listen if you want to roll with any of the four aces on this slate I am not going to talk you out of it and maybe your preferred route is to lock in one of them with either Archer/Ohtani which feels like a great route as well. The biggest benefit of going with both Archer and Ohtani is that you can chase similar K upside with any of the elite arms for a significant price discount which leaves you with $8.5K per batter to fill our the rest of your line-up.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Happy James Shields Day everyone! Every MLB DFS players favorite whipping boy is back on the slate and with the Minnesota Twins (outside of Brian Dozier) being priced cheap across the industry, I would assume this is the chalk stack to pair with your high-end pitchers today. Although stacking against Shields feels like fun, the truth is he tends to troll us more often than not as through six starts he really only has had on true blow-up outing (7 runs against the Astros). The thing with Shields too this season is he is limiting the home run ball with only 3 HR’s allowed thus far so this could be a stack where if it becomes the chalk build, you let others go all in against a guy who has given up 4 or fewer runs in 5 of his 6 starts.
Although the Yankees and Red Sox have the highest Vegas totals today, I think the team I have the most interest in stacking is the Atlanta Braves as we get a loaded line-up in warm temperatures with 12 MPH winds blowing straight out against a mediocre LHP in Andrew Suarez. The sample size is small but Suarez so far has given up a .370 ISO to RHB in two starts and is going to face hitters that are all punishing LHP this season.
Ozzie Albies ($10.1K) and Ronald Acuna Jr. ($9.5K) have .500+ ISO’s against LHP this season while Freddie Freeman ($10.2K) has a .310 ISO and these price points are high enough where they may get over-looked on a slate with so much high-end pitching and the Yankees/Red Sox bats taking up the high dollar investments. Keep an eye on the catcher position as well as with this being a day game after a night game we could get some nice value with Tyler Flowers ($4.7K) if he draws the starts
The other stack I have interest in here is in Oakland as the A’s take on Alex Cobb who has been flat our brutal to start the year. Take a look at his game logs where he has given up 10 or more hits and 5 or more ER in three of his four starts while sporting a SIX percent K rate – seriously six. The sheer volume of hits/base runners sets this up to me a great stack spot and Cobb has been equally awful to both sides of the plate this season (.304 ISO to RH and .268 ISO to LH) so you can really build this stack all-in if you want. The middle of the order in Jed Lowrie, Khris Davis, Matt Olson and Matt Chapman are all sporting .200+ ISO’s against RHP this season and this team has a 41.4% hard contact rate on the year versus RHP so I love this spot as a full on stack this afternoon.
If you need a one-off or a mini-stack, lock in Travis Shaw and/or Christian Yelich against Chad Kuhl today, a pitcher who simply cannot get lefties out. On the season, left-handed batters are sporting a .400 ISO against Kuhl with 5 HR’s in only 13 innings of work.
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: Shohei Ohtani ($16.4K)
SP: Chris Archer ($15.8K)
IF: Travis Shaw ($8.2K)
IF: Ozzie Albies ($10.1K)
IF: Jed Lowrie ($8.3K)
OF: Khris Davis ($9.4K)
OF: Ronald Acuna Jr. ($9.5K)
OF: Matt Olson ($7.5K)
UTIL: Matt Chapman ($7.3K)
UTIL: Marcus Semien ($7.2K)
Slate Overview: Pitching is going to be what sets the cash line today but with so many elite pitchers I think it’s the bats that really separate you today. Paying up for SP is fine but you are going to have to make it work with some value bats where as if you go with both Ohtani and Archer as we laid out, you get a totally different roster build with more elite high dollar hitters than those who roster Max, Sale or Verlander can afford. Enjoy your Sunday all!
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!