MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday June 3
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 early action was really low scoring as we had minimal offense outside of a few one-off home run plays including Jesus Aguilar as the leading scorer on the slate while the pitching was led by Gio Gonzalez who went 7 innings, giving up 3 ER and striking out 9 batters. On the Main Slate we had fare more firepower as Joc Pederson‘s two HR night led the Dodgers to 12 runs in Coors as the top bat on the slate and Jacob deGrom continued to put up massive numbers (13 K’s and 1 ER in 7 innings) while his Mets teammates continue to provide him no run support.
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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 Pitching Overview:
Happy Sunday all! We get a nice nine game early slate including the game in Coors Field and really only one weather concern in Baltimore and the Yankees/Orioles game looks very risky at first glance with 80-90% chances of rain from 12PM-5PM so keep an eye on the news here as this could be a spot to avoid here entirely on a slate this large if te weather looks that dicey.
NYY@BAL: Heavy downpours will alternate with cloudy skies. Afternoon games always have a lower PPD risk bc of the time they have on their hands and today might be an example of that. I literally have the PPD risk at 50% #MLB #DFS @SiriusXMFantasy
— Mark Paquette; DFS meteorologist (@DFSMLBWeather) June 3, 2018
This is an interesting slate for starting pitching as we do not have any “must have” elite arms that I feel are worth paying up for in the context of this slate. The best play is probably Jon Lester ($20.4K) as we can follow the “play lefties against the Mets” narrative which has been very successful this season especially with Todd Frazier and Yoenis Cespedes still on the DL, but this feels like the chalk safe play that everyone will flock towards and although the match-up is good for run prevention, do you really want to pay top dollar for a chalk arm with a 20.7% K rate on the season? Lester’s ERA may sit at a shiny 2.71 this season but his underlying metrics scream regression with a 4.42 xFIP and 4.37 SIERA so we wary of simply playing the match-up/ERA here as the “bad Lester” outing could rear its head at any moment.
With the idea that Lester is the popular SP1 choice, that leads me towards Steven Matz ($13.9K) as an ideal leverage play with the mindset that if Lester draws the most ownership, by default Matz will go under-owned as players in MLB DFS rarely play the opposing pitcher against their SP1. Matz left his last start with a finger injury on his pitching hand but made it through bullpen sessions with no issues (however this is the Mets so who knows with injuries) and will make his scheduled start against the Cubs.
Matz has a 21% K rate on the year which is a tick higher than his opponent in Lester and it will be interesting to see what kind of line-up the Cubs roll out today, specifically how many left-handed bats the Cubs choose to use. Matz has been stellar in a small sample size this year with a negative soft-hard contact ratio and an absurd 90% plus GB rate so if we get Rizzo, Schwarber, Heyward, Lester in the batter’s box, Matz actually could navigate through the better part of this line-up. If the Cubs go super right-handed heavy, when you consider the .212 ISO and 40% HC rate this season that Matz has surrendered to RHB, it could be a dice roll to play him. The one thing I will say, we have temperatures in the mid to low 60’s with 10+ MPH winds blowing in from right field which would help the pitchers in this game on both sides.
If you read Picks and Pivots with any sort of regularity you will know I tend to make my pitching choices within the context of slates more so than simply picking the best plays. The more I look at this slate the more I am convinced there is not a single pitching capable of setting the cash line so this is setting up to be a slate where I build around bats and simply work backwards into finding my arms.
Daniel Gossett ($10.1K) is not going to be an arm many click on today considering his 6+ ERA on the season especially when they see he just got shelled by the Rays, giving up 3 ER in that game his last time out. Gossett however is an intriguing punt target as this is an arm with a 27% K rate in AAA prior to his call-up who has a strong four pitch repertoire including a mid to high 90’s fast ball that helps support a decent 9% swinging strike rate at the major league level. Gossett showed you what he is capable of when he is missing bats and inducing soft contact in his previous start against the Mariners where he went 7 IP, striking out 5 and giving up only 1 ER so there is some history suggesting his minor league ability can translate. If the Royals opt to give Salvador Perez the day off after a night game, this line-up becomes much less threatening so keep an eye on the line-up here as Gossett could get a watered down line-up in a pitching friendly ballpark.
Dylan Covey ($9K) much like Gossett is a name that people just simply will not look to roster today but honestly, I am not sure there is reason to be afraid. Covey is pitching to a 3.63 ERA this season which is right in line with his xFIP of 3.75 and 3.99 SIERA and although he is giving up over 40% HC, he has yet to allow a HR so far this season. We saw this exact same spot yesterday with James Shields against a K happy Brewers team and Shields delivered with a solid 7 IP, 3 ER and 6 K’s which at this price point I would sign up for that right now with Covey.
The reality is, in the context of this slate I just find it hard to convince myself to pay up for the “top arms” on this slate with guys like Lester or Mike Clevinger who are pitchers with K rates just barely above 20%. This feels like a slate where the top arms are the ones who give you 6-7 innings, striking out 5-6 batters and giving up 2-3 ER and if that is the going to be the case, why bother paying up when you can get that same “ceiling” with punt plays and let your bats when you the slate?
MLB DFS – Top Spots for Bats:
After making you suffer through write-ups on less than desirable options at pitcher, I promise this section will be much more fun to sort through. If you go the route for example of playing Gossett and Covey on FantasyDraft, you will have $10.1K per batter to fill out your roster so head over to the hitters and frankly do not even bother scrolling down – you are shopping in the big boy section for hitters.
Let’s start with the obvious – Coors Field, where we have a slate high 11 run total with LHP Alex Wood and RHP Chad Bettis on the mound. My gut instinct here – the “name” value of Alex Wood combined with the recency bias of the Dodgers will likely lead to LA being the more popular side of this stack which makes me more apt to side with the Rockies bats as my core stacking option from this game. Alex Wood is a pitching who relies heavily on his curveball (nearly 30% of the time) and we know that pitchers who ned breaking balls in Coors Field tend to get taken advantage of – in fact, Wood has only made one start in Coors the last 3 seasons and it was a 5 inning, 5 ER beat down.
What is interesting to me is that this Rockies team actually has good BvP against Wood (going 14 for 43) the last two seasons (.333 AVG) with those games being solely in LA so the fact that they seem to see him well and now they get the massive ballpark boost would make this a great spot to go all in on the big bats like Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado, DJ LeMahieu and Trevor Story. The three right-handed bats here have each put up a .280+ ISO with a 37% or higher hard contact rate against LHP this season and considering Wood struggled his last time out, giving up 3 HR’s and 5 ER to the Padres in LA, I think this is a great spot to load up on the Rockies bats.
After a 14 innings game yesterday where 12 relief pitchers were used between the Braves and Nationals we get Anibal Sanchez versus Jeremy Hellickson and tired bullpens in a hitter’s park with 90 degree temperatures and winds blowing out 7 MPH to left field. How is this total only 9 runs?
Anibal Sanchez is giving up a .200+ ISO to hitters from both sides of the plate and a 35% hard contact rate over the last two seasons while Jeremy Hellickson is giving up nearly the same exact metrics with a .210+ ISO and 33% HC rate. With tired bullpens behind them we could get two of the worst arms on this slate pushed into extra work which screams game stack to me. Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Ozzie Albies and Freddie Freeman are the obvious big dollar plays here but with the underlying metrics pointing to this being a great spot for hitters on both sides of the plate, you can make the case to pick and choose any of the cheaper bats here 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: Daniel Gossett )$10.1K)
SP: Dylan Covey ($9K)
IF: Nolan Arenado ($11.1K)
IF: DJ LeMahieu ($9K)
IF: Trevor Story ($9.2K)
OF: Charlie Blackmon ($10.7K)
OF: Bryce Harper ($10.6K)
OF: Trea Turner ($8.4K)
UTIL: Freddie Freeman ($11K)
UTIL: Ozzie Albies ($10.9K)
Slate Overview: All the hitting – none of the pitching. That is basically my gut take at first look as I cannot convince myself to pay up for arms without the K upside to make them must play. I understand the logic and safety of paying up for Jon Lester as an example but without the ceiling to set the cash line in my opinion, I would rather anchor my team to the bats I want and simply work backwards into finding arms I believe have sneaky upside and the ability to give me top point per dollar outputs. It’s risky for sure but so is chalk Jon Lester. Enjoy your Sunday all!
Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns
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