MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday May 22
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s MLB DFS slate was dominated by pitching as four of the top six scoring options on the night were SP’s including the top performance from Miles Mikolas who threw a complete shutout gem, striking out 9 Royals batters in the process. Jose Berrios put up another dominant performance at home with 9 K’s in 7 IP for his second straight strong start at the core of our build (but we ready to jump off with his next start on the road) and the chalk Yankee core delivered with 10 runs against Bartolo and the Rangers for a solid night above the cash line for Picks and Pivots core build.
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:
Let’s start at the top where we have Chris Sale ($25.6K) and Gerrit Cole ($24.6K) as the clear top two options on a full Tuesday MLB DFS slate. Sale gets a road start against Tampa Bay, a spot he has already dominated this season in his Opening Day start where he went 6 innings, striking out 9 and giving up only one hit. Sale is third in all of baseball with a 35% K rate and seems to be finding his stride with three massive games in a row, striking out 9, 12 and 15 batters in his three most recent games and will step to the mound as a huge -180 road favorite in one of the best pitcher’s park in all of baseball.
Cole is the obvious pivot and one could argue he is the better point per dollar play as we get a pitcher with a 40.8% K rate on the season pitching at home where he is a massive -280 favorite against a Giants team that is striking out at the fifth highest mark in baseball against right-handed pitching (25.1%).
The question that will likely dominate this slate tonight is whether you pay up for Sale OR Cole in what I expect will be an either/or discussion across the DFS landscape but is there a path tonight where we can look to roster both? In order to do this we will need to make some sacrifices with our offense and I do believe there is a path to that on this slate but before we get there we should ask ourselves if this is really a path we want to go down?
What stood out to me on this slate is the lack of mid-tier options in viable spots as the next best strikeout options are guys like J.A. Happ against a loaded right-handed Angels offense or Vincent Velasquez at home versus a similarly loaded Braves line-up. Seriously take a spin around the pivot options – do you want Trevor Bauer in Wrigley against the Cubs or Cole Hamels against the Yankees or maybe Matt Harvey against the Pirates if you are feeling squirrely.
The reality is the SP2 options are just generally awful tonight in that even the arms with strikeout upside have difficult match-ups so where everyone else is deciding which of Sale or Cole to roster, we can make the decision to lock in both and build a roster around two of the top three strikeout arms in the entire league.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
If you go the route of paying up at both SP’s tonight then that is going to leave you with only $6.2K per hitter on FantasyDraft so do not even click on the Yankees or Red Sox tonight – you are making the decision to fade those high-priced spots and look elsewhere – to the bargain bin we go.
When you are limited to a certain price range right off the bat it makes finding stacks that much more difficult so the best path could be to target one-off plays or mini-stacks with power upside. The first player that jumped out to me today was Justin Bour ($6.4K) who will get a match-up in Citi Field with RHP Zack Wheeler and when you consider Wheeler is giving up a .213 ISO to left-handed batters this year, this would seem like an elite spot for an under-priced power hitter of Bour’s caliber.
Everyone’s favorite MLB DFS stacking spot is available to us tonight with James Shields on the board and although the Manny Machado‘s of the world would be the top plays, there are some cheaper Orioles batters we could look to target in the same match-up with elite power upside. Mark Trumbo ($6.4K) and Chris Davis ($5.9K) are the definition of boom or bust plays but they make for a nice little 5-6 stack in the Orioles order against Shields who has burned many stacks lately however his 5+ xFIP is screaming for regression and after he gave up a .200+ ISO to hitters from both sides of the plate last year, any and all Orioles are candidates to start that regression tonight.
If you want a stack that will likely be completely ignored tonight but has some interesting point per dollar upside, look no further than the Diamondbacks against RHP Jhoulys Chacin. Now I know what you are thinking – Chacin just faced this team his last time out in Arizona, striking out 7 batters in 7 innings of work giving up only 1 ER so why would we use this Arizona squad? Guess what readers, I am going to let you in on a little secret – you know that game log button you can click on in your favorite DFS site? Everyone else has the same thing and it will likely be the first button the average player clicks on so just wait as Chacin becomes a trendy SP2 pick as game log watchers flock to him and leave Arizona over-looked.
The reality here is that Chacin’s tidy little 3.62 ERA is due for some serious regression as his 5 xFIP and SIERA would suggest and the fact he is giving up 40% plus hard contact in one of the best power parks for lefties, sets up nicely for a low owned Arizona stack tonight.
Chacin is not a strikeout arm (only 16%) and gets only an 8% swinging strike rate so when you take the hard contact rate and overlay it with a double-digit walk rate, you can see why the regression metrics are screaming at you to jump on.
Thankfully for us, tonight is a night we need value and Arizona is priced down across the board because well, they have stunk it up recently and therein lies the rub. Look past the recent struggles and start to stack up the value here with Jake Lamb ($7.5K), David Peralta ($6.9K), Chris Owings ($6.4K), Daniel Descalco ($5.7K) and Alex Avila ($4.5K) and attack the ballpark upgrade to Miller Park with a pitcher who has regression staring him in the face.
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: Chris Sale ($25.6K)
SP: Gerrit Cole ($24.6K)
IF: Justin Bour ($6.4K)
IF: Mark Trumbo ($6.4K)
IF: Jake Lamb ($7.5K)
OF: David Peralta ($6.9K)
OF: Chris Owings ($6.4K)
OF: Chris Davis ($5.9K)
UTIL: Daniel Descalso ($5.7K)
UTIL: Alex Avila ($4.5K)
Slate Overview: The path to paying up for both Sale and Cole tonight is one littered with bargain bin hitters but as I step back and look at it – I think the path is viable. Ultimately we have elite power one-offs with guys like Justin Bour and are stacking against James Shields and Jhouylis Chacin, two pitchers with some of the highest SIERA marks on the entire slate that also will be taking the mound in two of the best parks for left-handed power in all of baseball. The reality is the high/low path at pitcher is going to be the more traditional one tonight so you can fit some sexier bats but remember, everyone else is going to go that route too so can you deviate from the masses by paying up for both and letting your cheaper stacks be the difference maker?
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!