MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday May 10
Welcome to the Thursday 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.
Wednesday’s split slate started out with an offensive heavy afternoon slate where it was a tale of two highly projected offenses as both the Cubs and Rockies were projected for 6+ runs and when the dust settled the Cubs put up 13 while the Rockies put up a big fat zero. The main slate was much more pitching heavy as Julio Teheran and Nick Pivetta led the way with dominant outings while a pair of Yankees – Brett Gardner and Aaron Judge – were the top scoring bats ona slate where offensive production was relatively hard to come by,
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:
Remember when Walker Buehler ($20.6K) was punt priced making his first start against the Marlins just a few weeks ago? Well life changes quickly in MLB DFS and he is now the second highest priced arm on the slate behind only Toronto’s J.A. Happ ($21.1K) who takes his 31% K rate, 9th highest in baseball, to the mound at home versus the Mariners.
Happ will be an interesting case tonight as I am a believer in the talent and the new-found strikeout stuff but after he let people down in a great spot against Tampa Bay last time out, will people be so willing to roster him as the most expensive arm on the slate? As much as I believe in the talent of Happ, I think there are better point per dollar plays on this slate that allow me to chase the same K upside while also allocating my salary to the big time bats available to us.
If you look at the top starting pitchers this season with at least 30 innings of work, the top K arms are ones you would likely expect to see when you scroll down the top 11 – Cole, Scherzer, Verlander, deGrom and Sale but it may surprise you to see Caleb Smith ($14.4K) and Garret Richards ($17K) ranked 6th and 11th respectively with their 33.8% and 30% K rates thus far in 2018.
Richards gets a home start against the Twins where he is a -150 favorite where his 32% K rate over the last two years against left-handed batters should serve him well against a Twins line-up that is projected to have seven lefties starting. Outside of a tough start against the Yankees, Richards has given up 2 or fewer ER in five of his last six starts and has struck out an average of 8 batters per game in those contests so this is a spot where you are getting elite strikeout ability with the added run prevention you want from an ace all while paying a mid-tier price.
Smith gets to pitch at home tonight in Miami and that fact is important because with a scary opposition in the Atlanta Braves this would likely be a stay away spot if the game was in Atlanta’s hitter’s park. Smith’s near 34% K rate this season puts him ahead of Chris Sale – just think about that for a second – and it is that kind of K upside when combined with his price at just over $14K which makes him the ideal SP2 on this slate.
Yes there is a risk facing a loaded Braves offense that can not only put up big numbers real fast but they also strike out at only a 17% clip versus left-handed pitchers which is the lowest mark in all of baseball this season. Now for the good news – Smith is proving so far this season that the match-up may not matter as he put up 7, 8 and 10 K’s against the Reds, Cubs and Brewers who all sit at a 21% mark against LHP this season which puts them lumped together in the 20-22 rankings in all of baseball.
I get the risk with Smith but the price more than reflects that risk and with this game being in a spacious ballpark like Miami where Smith has struck out 7 or more batters in every home start this season, I am going right back to him here and using the salary to head to Coors Field for my bats.
MLB DFS – Hitting Overview:
I know the Rockies let us down yesterday on the early slate and hopefully that keeps some of the ownership away but the combination of pitching here in Coors (German Marquez and Jhoulys Chacin) and the price points on the majority of these hitters, makes them my top spot to build around while still being about to lock in high-end strikeout arms.
It should not shock anyone that this game has a slate leading 11.5 total and it may sound crazy but I think there is a bit of Coors fatigue when it comes to MLB DFS as I am finding in talking with players through Twitter/chat groups that their instinct is to always fade because “Coors will be chalk.” If we look back at the last Main Slate where Coors was available (Tuesday) the ownership may have been high on the obvious names like Nolan Arenado (38%) and Trevor Story (29%) but when you compare it to what many considered the pivot stack in the Phillies – how is that much different from Rhys Hoskins (34%) and Aaron Altherr (20%).
My point is this, I think sometimes as DFS players we try to outsmart ourselves – we think we have to fade the chalk – how many times do you read articles where they don’t even talk about Coors because “everyone knows they are great plays”- but why exactly do we need to get cute? We have two pitchers in Chacin and Marquez that have K rates under 20%, that surrender 30% plus hard contact and have xFIP’s this season in the 4-5 range taking the mound in the best hitting environment in baseball – stack it up and let others get cute because you know they will.
The Brewers side of this game when it comes to the pricing makes them just a lock and load stack in my opinion as there is not a single batter priced over $10K with the 1-5 stack all in the same $8-$9K price range. Marquez is an interesting case as last season it was the right-handed bats that destroyed him with a 2 HR/9 rate compared to a .7 HR/9 rate against LHB but this year the lefties have put the hurting on him as he has given up 11 runs in only 18 innings of work.
At home throughout his career, Marquez is a pitcher with a 5 ERA who gives up 1.5 HR/9 and 33% hard contact so a full 1-5 stack is fully in play here with Ryan Braun ($9.1K), Christian Yelich ($8.9K), Travis Shaw ($8.5K), Lorenzo Cain ($8.6K) and Domingo Santana ($8.3K) all priced fairly and easily stackable here.
The Rockies get to face Jhoulys Chacin who is quite familiar with Coors Field having made 62 career starts in the ballpark with only 3 coming as a member of the opposition. I suppose you could say he was effective in his time with the Rockies as he had a 4.3 ERA in Coors which is quite decent considering the park but if you think I am scared of a pitcher with a 13% K rate and 10% walk rate this season, well you my friend are incorrect. Chacin is giving up 40% hard contact so far this year and with the temperatures in the 80+ degree point in Colorado, this is a spot you go back to the stack and let the recency bias of yesterday’s stinker affect everyone but you. Nolan Arenado ($10.6K) and Charlie Blackmon ($10.8K) are the two high dollar investments to start with but the secondary pieces like Carlos Gonzalez ($7.2K) and Gerrardo Parra ($7.5K) are the path in which you can balance out the average salary spent on the Rockies.
The Orioles and Royals have a 9.5 game total, second highest on the slate and with Chris Tillman and Ian Kennedy pitching you can certainly understand why but this feels like a spot where everyone pushes here as the “pivot stack” off Coors and what you may think is sneaky ends up rivaling the ownership level of the Rockies and Brewers bats.
Now I will say this – the pricing on these guys across the industry just screams at you to lock them in as you can get guys like Lucas Duda ($6.3K), Trey Mancini ($6.7K), Jonathan Schoop ($6.6K) and Adam Jones ($6.5K) for a crazy discount so I understand the appeal and I am fine using them as one-off plays to fit in the bigger Coors bats but I am simply going to avoid the stack here one night after it let everyone else down.
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: Garrett Richards ($17.2K)
SP: Caleb Smith ($14.4K)
IF: Lucas Duda ($6.3K)
IF: Travis Shaw ($8.5K)
IF: Nolan Arenado ($10.6K)
OF: Charlie Blackmon ($10.8K)
OF: Gerardo Parra ($7.5K)
OF: Carlos Gonzalez ($7.2K)
UTIL: Christian Yelich ($8.9K)
UTIL: Lorenzo Cain ($8.6K)
Slate Overview: Any time I can stack up the best hitting spot on the board and get two of the top strikeout arms on the slate it becomes my favorite kind of roster build and I think it is a viable strategy for both cash games and tournaments tonight. Even though I am writing this article as a first look at 6AM EST, I could certainly see this strategy holding until lock for me tonight unless we get some funky line-ups but at first glance this line-up construction give me the ability to build my core around the best pure hitting environment with two of the best strikeout pitchers in all of baseball this season.
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to FantasyCPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!