MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday May 24
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 MLB DFS split slate was a mixed bag as the early slate was almost entirely dominated by starting pitching as five of the top six performers on this short slate were arms while picking and choosing the right one-off bat really was the way to separate yourself from the back as home runs from guys like Niko Goodrum, Travis Shaw, Matt Adams, Tyler Saladino and George Springer were the key to pushing past the cash line. On the Main Slate it was Kenta Maeda who dominated with 12 K’s in 6.2 innings as the top performer on the night while an under-owned White Sox stack lead the way offensively with 11 runs scored to back Dylan Covey who came through as a super low owned GPP SP2 with 8 K’s and only 1 ER over 7 IP.
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 – Early Slate Starting Pitching Overview:
Today’s MLB DFS action is cut into two four games with the Early Slate kicking off at 12:35PM EST and before you click on the available pitchers you may want to get some coffee, because my friends it is not pretty. Four game slates in general are always tough to navigate because the margin for error is so low – we saw this on yesterday’s early slate as all it took to cash was really locking in Verlander, avoid the Zack Godley mess and hope you had one of the handful of guys who hit a home run – it was really that simple.
When looking at the pitching options I think the best thing to do is start crossing off guys we have no interest in – starting with Josh Lucas who is not stretched out and expected to be on a 50 pitch count per Jane Lee of MLB.com. Now on to the low K arms in Ivan Nova, Lucas Giolito, Nick Tropeano and Marco Estrada – all fine real life arms but without the K upside I simply see no reason to waste time here.
This really leaves us with three viable options of arms of who have 20% or higher K rate this season in Dylan Bundy ($15.8K), Luis Castillo ($15.3K) and Felix Hernandez ($14.7K). From a pure match-up perspective Bundy against the White Sox and Felix against the A’s look like the best spots to attack as both teams are in the top half of K rates this season against RHP while Castillo’s opponent, the Pirates, strikes out at only a 19.3% rate against RHP which is third lowest in baseball.
Hernandez has actually faced this A’s team twice already this season, going 6+ innings in both starts with 2-3 ER allowed and 7 K’s in each outing and he gets the added benefit of facing an A’s line-up that is now down Khris Davis in the middle of it.
Bundy for many is still blacklisted from his miserable outing against the Rays a few games back but the reality is, outside of that one horrendous outing he has been pretty good this year with 6 games of 2 ER or less and a slate leading 26% K rate on top of that.
Castillo for me is the wild card on this slate as this was a pitcher with a 29% K rate last season now down to just 22% but conversely his swinging strike rate is up to 15% from 12% last year. It also would seem like there is positive regression coming for Castillo has his 5.61 ERA is significantly higher than his .392 xFIP and 4.06 SIERA but the combination of match-up with a low K opponent and the ballpark in Cincinnati makes this a GPP only spot in my opinion.
UPDATE – The Pirates just released their line-up and they have given Bell and Polanco off which is huge because Castillo’s downfall has been left-handed power this season. Instead Castillo will now take on 5 RH bats (including Ivan Nova) and Castillo has a 27% K rate against RHP the last two years which is 4% higher than his mark against lefties. This line-up definetly bumps Castillo’s upside a bit in my mind.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Options – Early Slate:
With no high dollar pitching to pay for on this slate you are going to be able to pick and choose whichever big bats you want and although your line-up may look unstoppable when you are done, just realize that everyone else is going to be similarly stacked on this slate.
The Angels are the team that jumps off the page to me today against RHP Marco Estrada as we get a fly ball pitcher who is struggling with high ISO’s of .260+ to hitters from both sides of the plate and is giving up hard contact rates of 30% or higher to hitters from both sides. Mike Trout, Justin Upton and Shohei Ohtani become the top stack for me on this slate as all three hitters are crushing RHP this season with Upton having the lowest ISO at “only” .230 while Trout and Ohtani are both well over .300 this year.
I think running this back with a game stack of the Blue Jays bats is a viable strategy as well as Nick Tropeano has struggled this year against RHP, sporting a .304 ISO and 47% HC rate and will take on a the heart of the Toronto order with Josh Donaldson, Justin Smoak and Teoscar Hernandez who all have .200+ ISO against RHP this season with Hernandez having a team leading 46% HC rate which sets up nicely when you overlay that with Tropeano’s struggles.
The one team that may get a bit over-looked here today is the Baltimore Orioles as a result of being dominated by Dylan Covey of all people last night. Now Lucas Giolito has been bad this year more as a result of his control than anything else (a 15% BB rate versus a 12% K rate) but has done a nice job of limiting the HR ball (under 0.8 HR/9 to hitters from both sides of the plate) so my guess is this will not be the first spot on people’s radar today.
The thing with Giolito is that he is basically a fastball pitcher, throwing it nearly 55% of the time and the way you typically beat the Orioles is with breaking balls, specifically sliders which Giolito throws only 16% of the time. With so much focus on other spots today I wonder if guys like Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop get over-looked in a righty-righty match-up after they were just shut down by Covey last night. This could be a spot where you simply play the talent level of the O’s elite bats and hope these are your low owned one-off home run plays that separate you from the herd on a short slate.
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!
SP: Dylan Bundy ($15.8K)
SP: Felix Hernandez ($14.7K)
IF: Josh Donaldson ($8.9K)
IF: Justin Smoak ($7.3K)
IF: Manny Machado ($10.1K)
OF: Mike Trout ($10.1K)
OF: Justin Upton ($9K)
OF: Shohei Ohtani ($8.7K)
UTIL: Teoscar Hernandez ($7.7K)
UTIL: Jonathan Schoop ($7.7K)
Slate Overview: This short slate seems relatively straight forward in that I am really only considering three arms for my two pitching slots and with the price points on the arms in general, the top dollar bats are going to be easy to fit in and therefore also very popular. With so many bad arms on the slate, I think offense is going to be what carries the cash line on this early slate and keep in mind that the A’s/Mariners game starts at 3:35PM EST which is three hours after lock so there is a very real chance we do not have line-ups for that game before lock which could even further consolidate ownership to the earlier games where we have confirmed batters.
MLB DFS – Main Slate Pitching:
Another four game slate and another set of games where the pitching is less than ideal. Now I know what you are thinking – we actually have some decent arms on the slate but the issue in my mind at least is that two of the top arms in Mike Clevinger and Charlie Morton have brutal match-ups against the Astros and Indians offenses – two teams I just have no interest in using pitchers against.
Now there is upside with Morton obviously as he has put up 30+ FP in three of his last four outings including a 8K outing against this exact same Indians team he faced in his last start so there is upside here no other pitcher has and on a four game slate there is merit into paying up for the one pitcher capable of setting the cash line. Just keep in mind, Morton has also been hit around recently putting up only 6 FP and -1 FP in two of his last five outings so there is more risk with Morton than we usually want when paying this sort of price tag at $22.3K.
So naturally this leads me to Rick Porcello ($21.1K) as my boring, safe, SP1 who gets a road start against the Tampa Bay Rays. Porcello has actually faced Tampa Bay three times already this season and been solid in every single one of those games:
- 5 IP, 4 K’s, 1 ER and 17.8 FP
- 7.1 IP, 7 K’s, 3 ER and 24.9 FP
- 7.2 IP, 6 K’s, 3 ER and 19 FP
Porcello is honestly over-priced as he does not have the upside we typically want if paying over $21K for our pitcher on FantasyDraft, but you are paying for the safety and floor that Porcello brings in this match-up and I believe there is enough value in other spots to fit him in without much difficulty.
One of the reasons I want to anchor to Porcello as my SP1 is I can balance out his floor/safety with the risk in choosing my SP2. Danny Duffy ($8.6K) has been more or leass dreadful each time he has taken the mound this year and his K rate is down into the high teens but all of those factors are baked into this price point today as he takes the mound in Texas against the Rangers.
Duffy has been routinely knocked around this year but when you dig into his game logs you will see he has had success and some big time K games against strikeout heavy teams like the Orioles and Blue Jays. This Rangers projected line-up has a 25% K rate against LHP this season and yes I know they just beat up CC Sabathia in the same match-up last night which is all the more reason I love the spot here tonight – recency bias is very much a thing in MLB DFS.
Duffy is a heavy slider arm, throwing it nearly 25% of the time and the current Rangers roster outside of Joey Gallo does not have a single hitter with an ISO of .150 or higher against that pitch since 2016.
There is risk here for sure – but there is risk with essentially every arm on this slate other than Porcello really, so I am going to drop down to Duffy and look to capture the K upside here which is something that really none of the other SP2 punt arms have to offer us tonight.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots for Main Slate:
The Red Sox offense against a lefty on a four game slate needs to be your first stop – seriously, stop reading, go click in Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and Hanley Ramirez and I will be here when you get back.
Ok all good? Let’s keep moving.
Now here comes the – but wait Brian, this left-hander is Blake Snell, a pitcher who has shut out the Red Sox once and then struck out 9 batters and gave up only 2 ER in that start so why exactly is this a must play? To me it all comes down to slate context and on these four game slates I want to find the players/teams that have the ability to set the cash line on their own and the Red Sox line-up has that ability more so than any other team on this slate.
Go ahead and side with Blake Snell and I will happily lock in the best hitter in baseball right now and is .512 ISO versus LHP and pair him with his teammate who had a similar .500+ ISO mark versus LHP last season. Betts and JD can win you this slate with just a few Blake Snell mistakes – I do not care that Snell has pitched well against them this year and I do not care this game is in Tampa – there is too much upside here to fade and my hope is the game log watchers and the Vegas total people will see the 3.9 Red Sox total and look elsewhere – these are the best bats on the slate and I do not want to get cute on a four game slate. Got it?
I have been happy with how Steven Matz has looked so far for the Mets but I must say – pitching against a right-handed heavy Brewers line-up in Miller Park has all the making of a Matz disaster and although the Mets fan in me hopes Im wrong, the DFS player is telling me to stack it up.
The Brewers already have some big right-handed power in Lorenzo Cain, Domingo Santana and Jesus Aguilar and now will have Ryan Braun fresh off the D.L. for this start. Matz on the season has good overall numbers but his numbers against right-handed bats are downright bad as he has given up a .257 ISO and 41% HC rate so far this season. I expect the Brewers to load up on any and all right-handed bats they can find today which means we could see Yelich/Shaw get a day off as Milwaukee goes with as many righties as they can.
Over the last two seasons, Braun, Aguilar and Cain all have .200+ ISO’s against left-handed pitching and when these teams faced off a few weeks back in New York, the Brewers hit two HR’s off the Mets LHP with one by Braun and one by Hernan Perez. The prices for these Milwaukee bats are relatively cheap and can be paired easily with the elite Red Sox power on this slate which gives you significant upside in any and all formats.
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!
More from FanSided
- Cardinals Rumors: Surprise extension, Dylan Carlson-Yankees link, Rays trade idea
- USWNT vs. Vietnam: Key takeaways before they take on the Dutch
- NFL rumors: 49ers trending toward contract drama with defensive star
- Steelers avoid any camp drama with latest roster move
- MLB Rumors: Potential Braves reunion, Lance Lynn no-trade clause and Orioles deadline intentions
SP: Charlie Morton ($22.3K)
SP: Danny Duffy ($8.6K)
IF: Alex Bregman ($7.4K)
IF: Jesus Aguilar ($8.5K)
IF: Hanley Ramirez ($7.6K)
OF: Mookie Betts ($11.8K)
OF: J.D. Martinez ($9.9K)
OF: Lorenzo Cain ($9K)
UTIL: Ryan Braun ($7.3K)
UTIL: Domingo Santana ($7.4K)
Slate Overview: At first pass, this looks to be a slate where we go high/low at pitcher and we can still stack up the Red Sox and Brewers as my two favorite offenses to build around tonight. Both Morton and Porcello are top options to anchor to tonight with Morton having the GPP upside and Porcello being the steady cash game play but in either case you can pair them with the strikeout upside of Duffy against the Rangers and have enough salary to spend for whichever bats you want. One key-note – this slate locks an hour earlier tonight so do not forget that come 6PM EST – be ready!
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings.