MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday May 13
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 slates were very similar in terms of outcome as the top priced arms on each slate (Stephen Strasburg and Charlie Morton) both ended up as the top scoring arms which may be the first time in weeks we have actually seen that play out. Offensively it was really all about home run hunting as we saw multiple home run days from Francisco Lindor on the Early Slate and Freddie Freeman and Trevor Story on the Main Slate which were the key players to have paired with the stud arms on the day.
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
First off – Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms and wives who rock DFS each and every day and if you are like me, the ones who support and simply tolerate our wonderful passion. Enjoy your day and I hope all the Mom’s out there win all the money!
Let’s start first with the weather on this slate as it looks like the Yankees/A’s game could be a complete wash out while the Mets and Phillies look to have significant rain concerns that could at least cause a delay which is a shame as these two games have some of the best arms on the slate in Luis Severino, Jacob deGrom and Aaron Nola. Really if you look across this Early Slate of 11 games on FantasyDraft you have 3 games (including Pittsburgh/San Francisco) that have rain concerns while the temperatures of every single outdoor game are expected to be in the 50’s and 60’s which sounds like the first few weeks of MLB all over again.
Thankfully we have no shortage of elite pitching on this slate which is headlined by Corey Kluber ($25.4K) and the recent no-hit king James Paxton ($24K). As great as both of these arms are and I certainly won’t talk you off playing either/both, it is worth noting that the projected line-ups of their opponents in the Royals and Tigers strike out at a 16% clip this season which on paper could limit the upside of both these high-priced investments.
In the context of this slate however, I think there are two arms in the mid-tier I would rather build around as can take shots on two top 20 strike out arms at price points that allow us to still go after the days biggest bats. Sean Newcomb ($18.8K) and Blake Snell ($18.5K) get road starts in Miami and Baltimore and currently rank as the 13th and 19th highest K arms in baseball wither their 28.7% and 26.7% strikeout rates respectively. Newcomb certainly has the better run prevention spot and ballpark in Miami but the Marlins are a team with a meager 20% K rate against LHP so far this season. Snell on the other hand gets a higher strikeout opponent in the Orioles who wiff at a 23% rate on the season but with Jonathan Schoop and Mark Trumbo back in the line-up this is a GPP boom or bust kind of match-up.
If you drop down a bit I think you can even make the case today for guys like Jon Gray ($16.9K) and Dallas Keuchel ($15.2K) in essentially polar opposite situations. Gray has to pitch in Coors Field, a spot we normally avoid looking for pitchers but Gray is the rare dominant strikeout arm that has succeeded in this park including his last two outings against the Angels and Padres where he hurled a pair of shutouts while striking out 8 and 11 batters in those games. Keuchel on the other hand is the low K, high ground ball arm who steps into this game as a massive -280 favorite against one of the highest strikeout teams in baseball, the Texas Rangers.
So where does this leave us? We have a TON of options on this slate and every single one of them has pros and cons that leads me to believe this is a slate where there is not a must have option and you can simply look to mix and match your choices based on the tiers you find yourself in.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
It is no surprise that the highest projected scoring game on the slate is in Coors Field with an 11.5 game total but this may be the day I simply find other spots to attack. I have already mentioned my interest in using Jon Gray but the real intrigue here may lie with 21-year-old right-hander Freddy Peralta who makes his Major League debut in Coors field. Now normally the words MLB debut and Coors Field would have DFS players salivating but Peralta is a pitcher I might want to avoid as this is a pitcher with exceptional strikeout numbers throughout his minor league career (30% plus at each of his last three levels) who has only given up 9 total HR’s in 153 innings over the last two seasons and his funky delivery per Fangraphs.com could make things interesting.
"Simply looking at Freddy Peralta’s numbers would lead you to believe that he’s some sort of arm-strength goof with little control of huge stuff. He struck out 34% of the hitters he faced in 2017 — only three starters (Kluber, Sale, and Scherzer) with 100 innings or more did that in 2017 — but had a 12% walk rate. In reality, Peralta is a 5-foot-11 righty who sits 89-92 and is able to thwart hitters with help from what might be one of baseball’s most unique release points.Peralta generates seven feet of extension, which is up in Tim Lincecumterritory, and does so with a cross-body delivery that begins on the third-base side of the rubber. He also has a low arm slot and loose, whippy arm action that further adds to hitters’ confusion. The result is death to right-handed hitters, who have to deal not only with Peralta’s delivery but also an above-average slider that he locates away from them. It has enough depth and length to it that some scouts think it’s a curveball, and its shape varies often enough that some think he throws both, but it’s just a slider and it misses bats."
Now if you want to attack Peralta the one metric to hang your hat on is his double-double walk rate throughout the minors and hope that the Brewers bats are able to stay disciplined and make the rookie come in the zone but the minor league track record, strikeout ability and deceptive delivery may make this a spot where we fade Coors and let everyone who just sees “Rookie in Coors Field” take the plunge without doing any research.
If you are pivoting away from Coors, then the Astros bats against LHP Matt Moore like the logical spot even without OF George Springer who will miss another game on Sunday due to injury. Moore is arguably the worst arm on this slate with an absurd 50% hard contact rate on the year who over his last two starts has given up 20 hits and 15 ER in only 9.2 innings of work – stack it up kids.
Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve are the obvious high dollar targets here at over $10K per player but the rest of this stack is much more cost-effective as you can lock someone like Alex Bregman ($8.4K) who has a .240 ISO versus LHP over the last two seasons and do no overlook the wrap-around stack with Jake Marisnick ($5.8K) who if he is in the 9 hole makes for a sneaky way to stack with a punt power bat.
The Blue Jays are not a team I expect to draw a ton of ownership today but with LHP Drew Pomeranz on the hill, this could be a solid cost-effective stack with some serious power potential. Pomeranz on the year is giving up over 37% hard contact and will take on a top of the Blue Jays order stacked with hitters that crush LHP. Over the last two seasons, four of the top five projected hitters in Toronto’s line-up have a .200+ ISO against LHP with Teoscar Hernandez, Josh Donaldson, Justin Smoak and Kevin Pillar all sporting such metrics with 32% hard contact rates or higher. Pomeranz is only generating 11% soft contact this season with a 22% K rate so the majority of balls are being put in play with some authority which makes this a stack that is capable of putting up big numbers in a hurry.
With the roof being open in Toronto and two bad pitchers in this game, I think this is probably my favorite game stack on the slate as you can easily stack the Blue Jays at their price points and sprinkle in the more expensive Red Sox bats like Mookie Betts ($10.7K) and J.D. Martinez ($10.3K) as interesting pivots off the more popular duo of Altuve/Correa.
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: Jon Gray ($16.9K)
SP: Dallas Keuchel ($15.2K)
IF: Jose Altuve ($10.3K)
IF: Carlos Correa ($10.2K)
IF: Josh Donaldson ($9K)
OF: Teoscar Hernandez ($7.2K)
OF: Kevin Pillar ($7.2K)
OF: Jake Marisnick ($5.8K)
UTIL: Justin Smoak ($7.5K)
UTIL: Mookie Betts ($10.2K)
Slate Overview: With so many pitching options on this slate, my perspective is you build around the bats you want and then work in the pitchers from a short list of options. Personally this looks like a great day to fade Coors and load up on the big bats elsewhere with the Astros against Matt Moore being my favorite spot. Enjoy your Mother’s Day and see you back here Monday for more Picks and Pivots.
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!