MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday May 31
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 Early MLB DFS slate was dominated by pitching as Corey Kluber and Eduardo Rodriguez put up the top two performances while surprisingly Junior Guerra was not far behind in the #3 spot with a 6 innings, 7K 0 ER outing against the Cardinals. Offensively the Indians were the stack to own as thy scored 9 runs on the White Sox and when paired with the right home run calls from the Arizona line-up in the “late game” it really helped separate people on this short slate.
On the Main Slate, it was interesting to see how low-owned Max Scherzer ended up being in comparison to James Paxton and with Mad Max putting up a slate leading 12K performance, it really set those apart who pivoted off the Paxton chalk. Ross Stripling however ended up being the right chalk to eat as he was second on the slate in fantasy points with another excellent outing (7 IP, 9K) while offensively a game stack of the Royals/Twins (19 runs) was the low owned stacking spot that littered the leaderboard with low owned batters.
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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 Pitcher Overview:
Thursday’s Main Slate is nice sized 9 game MLB DFS slate with some elite pitching names sitting in less than ideal match-ups so it will be interesting to see how the community approaches this slate. First and foremost we get the return of Clayton Kershaw ($22.9K) at home against the Phillies but this is a total stay away spot for me in his first start back.
Clayton Kershaw set to throw 40 pitches/6 innings in a simulated game tomorrow. Rich Hill will throw 2-3 innings. #Dodgers
— AlaNNa Rizzo (@alannarizzo) May 25, 2018
The Dodgers elected to forego any minor league rehab starts for Kershaw who has been on the DL since May 1 with biceps tendonitis and even though Dave Roberts has said there are no restrictions with Kershaw, I cannot pay the full price for him here when his only action prior to this start was a 40 pitch simulated game. Go ahead and roll the dice if you want but Roberts is easily the worst manager in baseball when it comes to yanking his pitchers early and I just can’t see the Dodgers letting Kershaw go long enough here to make it where he pays off this slate high price tag.
Although we have some nice names in Aaron Nola and Lance McCullers Jr. right behind Kershaw, I am not sure I want to take Nola against the Dodgers offense when healthy and McCullers against Boston with Mookie Betts looming – no thank you.
So where does this leave us? I think there are some interesting mid-tier/value arms on this slate we can use to build around tonight with my favorite being LHP Jose Quintana ($14.6K) on the road in Citi Field to take on the Mets. I know in yesterday’s article I talked about how the Mets are one of the hottest offenses in baseball right now but against LHP it is a totally different story as this season they have the second highest K rate in baseball at 27% and will be without their three best RHB tonight as Wilmer Flores, Yoenis Cespedes and Todd Frazier are all on the D.L.
Quintana has put up exceptional numbers this season against LHB with a 27.8% K rate and a 60% GB rate and will likely face a Mets line-up who’s most dangerous bats (Nimmo, Conforto, Bruce) all bat from the left side. Now you can point to Quintana’s struggles against RHB this season (20% K rate with a .215 ISO) and assume the Mets load up with right-handed bats but who exactly are they going to “load up” with? Jose Bautista? Jose Reyes? I respect the hot hitting of Asdrubal Cabrera and Devin Mesoraco but I am not going to avoid an under-priced Quintana here in a pitcher’s park with 60 degree temperatures and 10 MPH winds blowing in just for those bats with the K upside that exists in this spot. There is a reason Quintana is a -150 road favorite and the Mets have the 4th lowest run total on the slate – sorry Amazin’s but I am going against my team tonight and playing the lefties against the Mets narrative that has been successfull all season long.
Wade LeBlanc ($10.8K) is an arm I used as my SP2 the last time out against the Twins and he continued to do what he has seemingly done all season – provide quality starts at near punt prices. LeBlanc has now gone four straight starts with 5+ innings of work, allowing 2 ER or less in every outing while putting up 13+ FP every single time out. Over his last five outings, LeBlanc is giving up only a 25% hard contact rate, and has gotten a 10%+ swinging strike rate in two of his five outings and will now take on a Rangers team with the third highest K rate against LHP (25.7%).
Listen, you are not putting in LeBlanc on one pitcher sites or expecting that this is an arm that is going to win you the slate but you can use him as a top point per dollar SP2 that has proven he can return value while freeing up the salary to pay up for any and all the bats you could possibly want.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Let’s see – we have a pitcher in Andrew Cashner pitching in Baltimore tonight, a pitcher with limited ability to miss bats, who walks hitters over 11% of the time, gives up 37% hard contact and will be pitching in the best park for right-handed power on tonight’s slate – and oh by the way, he has to face the Yankees.
The Yankees have a slate high 5.45 run total and I would argue face the worst pitcher on the entire slate so a full on Yankee stack is a viable route here tonight especially if you are willing to pay down tonight at starting pitching. Let me be clear – this will not be a sneaky stack – the Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Greg Bird heart of the order is going to be popular and you can even extend that to Brett Gardner, Didi Gregorious and Gary Sanchez but how many will be ready to go with a full 6 man stack on a site like FantasyDraft?
I talk about this a lot in Picks and Pivots, where I find that one of the ways to differentiate with a chalk stack is to max out the numbers of batters your DFS site allows. The default strategy that most employ in DFS is roll with a few 2-3 man stacks so you tend to see the ownership concentrated in chalk stacks on the top 2-3 batters but the ownership levels really dissipate when you extend the stack out to the maximum batters allowed.
To me this is a spot to go all in on the Yankees bats and max it out as over the last two season there is no arm on this slate with a higher SIERA (5.34), lower swinging strike rate (6.5%) and higher hard contact rate than Andrew Cashner – literally the worst pitcher in three of the most critical metrics in DFS. Stacking the Yankees will be popular but it is worth it and maxing it out and steering away from the traditional 2-3 man stacks is a great way to differentiate yourself tonight.
If you need a pivot off the Yankees, it is hard to argue with the Astros tonight as they face-off with LHP Drew Pomeranz in Houston. Pomeranz on the season is giving up a .259 ISO to RHB with a 34% HC rate and will have to face a murderer’s row of right-handed bats at the top of this line-up. The top four batters in this line-up in George Springer, Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa all have a .190+ ISO against LHP the last two seasons but you can even extend this stack to guys like Evan Gattis who is 4 for his last 11 with 3 HR’s and 8 RBI’s.
Gattis actually profiles extremely well against Pomeranz’s pitch types (despite his poor BvP history against him), as Pomeranz is a two pitch pitcher with a fastball just above 90 MPH that he throws 53% of the time and a Curve he throws 37%, accounting for 90% of his pitches thrown over the last two years. Gattis since 2016 has a .412 ISO against FB’s in this velocity range with a near 40% hard contact so if Pomeranz leans on that pitch it could be big time trouble and big time opportunity for a red-hot hitter in Gattis. It is interesting to note that this year, Pomeranz has dialed back his fastball usage a bit and is now throwing a sinker nearly 13% of the time but that may actually be a good thing for Gattis here as well as he has a .304 ISO and 41% HC rate against that pitch type since 2016. Needless to say, if Gattis is in the line-up tonight, he will likely be in mine as well!
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: Jose Quintana ($14.6K)
SP: Wade LeBlanc ($10.8K)
IF: Didi Gregorious ($8.2K)
IF: Gary Sanchez ($9.3K)
IF: Greg Bird ($8K)
OF: Aaron Judge ($10.9K)
OF: Giancarlo Stanton ($10.1K)
OF: Brett Gardner ($8.4K)
UTIL: Evan Gattis ($7.7K)
UTIL: Mookie Betts ($11.9K)
Slate Overview: Even though we have name arms on this slate to pay up for, my gut reaction is to pay down at pitching with Jose Quintana being my top target and when I lay out the kind of hitting I can build around him, it makes me even more intrigued by this build. Think about it this way – I can lock in two pitchers who face two of the top three offenses in terms of K rate against LHP while stacking the best offense on the board against the worst pitcher on the slate and oh by the way, I can easily afford to put the best hitter in baseball this season as my one-off. It all sounds great at 6AM EST but that’s the beauty of a first look that will likely change multiple times during the day! Gotta love MLB DFS!
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 as well as some exciting expanded coverage for you season long fantasy baseball fans.