MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday June 4
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Go away Yasmani Grandal. Yes, I am still tilting. Sunday’s MLB DFS slate was going quite well for me and the Picks and Pivots core, including our strategic Dodgers fade until a final inning Yasmani Grandal homerun pushed the chalk to big wins and knocked me and many others who faded the Dodgers down a peg or two. In all seriousness, having any sort of reaction to an otherwise meaningless 2 run HR in a regular season game between the Dodgers and Rockies in June is what makes MLB DFS so fun but Mr. Grandal is now on my list of players who owes me one!
We have some BIG news at Fantasy CPR as we are now looking for PAID writers to join our team to write about fantasy sports. Seasonal or DFS, any sport you want – get your voice heard and get paid for talking fantasy sports. Apply today HERE!
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:
We have a short four game slate on this Monday with a relatively clear pitching slate that features four arms I want to use and four I intend to pick on with batters. The one key note today is that the Yankees and Tigers are playing a double-header with a game at 1PM EST and then another at 7:10PM EST as the lone “early” game on this Main Slate. The key thing here to watch is how the line-ups look for the Yankees as we cannot simply assume the usual starting 9 will be on the field for the nightcap if Aaron Boone chooses to rest some of the guys who play during the day so keep an eye on the line-up news here prior to lock once the early game is finished and we get a Yankee line-up.
For every reason the double-header is important for the Yankees line-up, I also think it is going to be a valuable tie-breaker for my pitching choices as Domingo German ($17K) will get to face the Tigers in the nightcap after an afternoon tangle with Luis Severino. This could be a case where the heart of the order for Detroit with Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez play the day game and then sit out the nightcap and if that is the case it will only strengthen the case for German in this spot.
From a pure strike-out perspective, German has the best K rate of any pitcher in action tonight at 27.5% on the season and if you look at his splits the last two seasons you will notice a lofty 32.5% K rate against right-handed batters which could pay huge dividends here against a potentially right-handed heavy Tigers line-up. German in my mind has the K ability and swing and miss stuff you want to target on a slate like this as his 14% swining strike rate gives him the ability to rack up points in ways the other arms in action do not have a path towards and considering he is the third most expensive arm on the slate, he could end up with the best point per dollar value of the night as well.
Nick Tropeano ($16.3K) is coming off a string of starts where he has a 23% or higher K rate in five of six outings and has a double-digit swinging strike rate in 7 of his 8 starts this season. Tropeano will actually take on a Royals team he faced once already this season in his opening start, going 6.2 innings, striking out 6 and allowing 0 ER while scattering 6 totals hits on his way to 26 FantasyDraft points. In that game Tropeano had a 23% K rate, 11% swinging strike rate 8% walk rate – all numbers that seem to align with his season long marks in what has been a pretty consistent first 8 games for the Angels right-hander.
German and Tropeano are both -180 Vegas favorites which will likely draw cash game players to move towards their “safety” but I would argue they are also the two arms with the highest upside on the slate. As much as I like Zack Godley and Julio Teheran tonight in road match-ups in massive pitcher’s ballparks in San Francisco and San Diego, the truth of the matter is that you are paying premiums for the match-up when they have strikeout metrics that actually trail guys like Tropeano and German specifically. The pitcher pool is pretty clearly limited to these four arms in my mind and if you find your way to Godley or Teheran on the road here, I would certainly not fault you, but dropping down to German and Tropeano allows you critical salary room on a night where bats are going to come at an inflated price point.
MLB DFS – Main Slate Hitting:
As simple as the pitching appears – the top spots for offense seem that much easier to find as the Yankees and Angels bats stand out as the top places to look for offense on this slate. As I mentioned with the Yankees, we will need to wait and see how the line-up is constructed after the day game but considering the opponent in Mike Fiers, any and all Yankees that crack the line-up will be in play.
Fiers over the last two seasons is giving up a .258 ISO and .362 xWOBA to left-handed batters and when you layer on that Comerica Park is the best park for left-handed power on the slate, it sets up perfectly for the cheap(er) Yankee left-handed bats in this line-up. Aaron Hicks ($8.6K), Didi Gregorious ($8.4K) and Greg Bird ($7.5K) allow you to make a relatively inexpensive power stack here comprised of bats with .200+ ISO’s against RHP and 40% HC rates. If someone like Neil Walker ($6.3K) were to crack the line-up here he makes for a great punt option and I wonder if the Yankees opt to let Gary Sanchez ($9.1K) play the night game and catch German as he has done for all of his starts so far in 2018 and let Austin Romine catch Severino in the day game.
Basically as long as you are OK keeping Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton out of your stack on this slate you can pretty much afford to stack up the Yankees any way you like and with the doubleheader bringing some value into these line-ups, it may make things even easier when building your Monday MLB DFS line-ups.
I am not sure Danny Duffy could have a worse match-up today as this is a pitcher who struggles with right-handed batters to the tune of a .256 ISO and 40% HC rate and will take on an Angels team that is almost entirely right-handed. Good luck kid. Mike Trout ($11.2K) is the clear top dog here but much like the Yankees stack once you get past the big bat in the OF, the Angels stack becomes very affordable to build around. Justin Upton ($7.2K) and Ian Kinsler ($7.4K) make for a nice 1-3 stack in the Angels line-up and all three of these hitters have a .200+ ISO over the last two seasons against LHP.
If you need a one-off play on this slate, especially on a site like FantasyDraft where you need to roster batters from three teams, I love the idea of using Paul Goldschmidt ($8.4K) here around a Yankees/Angels core. Goldy gets to face LHP Derek Holland, who has surrendered a .263 ISO and 40% HC rate to RHB this season and after a slow start to the year, the Arizona slugger has a five game hitting streak going with home runs in 2 of his last 3 games.
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: Domingo German ($17K)
SP: Nick Tropeano ($16.3K)
IF: Paul Goldschmidt ($8.5K)
IF: Neil Walker ($6.3K)
IF: Ian Kinsler ($7.4K)
OF: Mike Trout ($11.2K)
OF: Justin Upton ($7.2K)
OF: Aaron Hicks ($8.6K)
UTIL: Didi Gregorious ($8.4K)
UTIL: Gary Sanchez ($9.1K)
Slate Overview: This slate seems pretty simple to me – stack up the Yankees and Angels bats and then work in 2 of the 4 top arms in Godley, Teheran, German and Tropeano. The key is really watching what the Yankees do in the second game of the double-header as if we get some value plays like Neil Walker in the starting line-up it opens up a ton of salary room for us to pay up and get 1-2 big bats along with the top end arms. Good luck all!
Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS and fantasy news and analysis.