MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday June 10

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 action was a tale of two slates as the early action was dominated by pitching with four SP’s coming in as the top performers on the day with Danny Duffy, Tyler Skaggs, Jon Lester and Mike Fiers as the top fantasy plays. The Main Slate was basically how many Coors Field bats did you fit in as five of the top six fantasy scores came from bats in this game with only Domingo German able to crack the top 5 performers outside of Arizona and Colorado players.

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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.

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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 – Pitching Overview:

Before we get into today’s plays it is worth noting we have a few potential weather issues on this slate today with rain expected for extended periods in the Reds/Cardinals, Brewers/Phillies and Pirates Cubs game. Oh yeah – we also have 90+ degree temperatures with 12 MPH winds blowing OUT at Coors Field. Weather should make this slate that much more challenging so grab your coffee and let’s get to work.

Looking over this Sunday slate we have two arms at the top with Corey Kluber ($26.6K) and James Paxton ($24K) as the premier options in match-ups against the Tigers and Rays and some hefty price tags to go along with them.

The biggest question today on a Coors Field slate is how popular will these arms really be? For context – last night in the $25 Home Run GPP on FantasyDraft (keep in mind it wa s four game slate), the top arm on the night, Charlie Morton, was only 26% owned while the bats in Coors – Goldy (68%), Peralta (43%), Story (40%), Blackmon (62%) etc – sucked up the majority of the ownership. After two big offensive games in Coors and with hot temperatures and the wind blowing out, I wonder how much more concentrated the ownership will get on the bats which could leave guys like Kluber and Paxton under-owned.

Kluber will take on a Tigers team he faced earlier this season, striking out 13 batters in 8 shutout innings for 46 FantasyDraft points and after a slow start to the year, he has a 34% K rate over his last four starts. Paxton will take his 31% K rate to Tropicana Field against arguably the worst offense on this slate and frankly, it should not shock anyone that these two arms are facing the two teams with the lowest projected run totals on the slate. My gut feeling here is that the industry as a whole will say “Yeah I like these guys but I want Coors Field” which means we could get the two best arms on the slate at miniscule ownership.

If you are going to pivot down, be prepared to throw out K upside because frankly I am not sure it exists outside of Paxton and Kluber. The next best option in my mind is Dallas Keuchel ($15.4K) and really this is far less about his strikeout ability and much more about the K ability of the Texas Rangers. Keuchel faced the Rangers back on May 13th and had his best fantasy start of the year with 7 innings of shutout ball with a season high 8 K’s so the match-up is enticing enough to drop down and hope for a repeat performance.

Speaking of repeat performances, Jose Urena ($12K) will take on a Padres team he just dominated to the tune of 6 innings, 1 ER and 6 K’s and makes for the best punt play on this slate. The issue for me with Keuchel and Urena is that you are taking guys with 18%-19% K rates and simply banking on the fact that history will repeat itself in the game logs as the underlying metrics would not ever tell you to play these two. The fact that a Keuchel/Urena path gets you easy access to Coors Field and the game log watchers will see the same thing we did, makes this a spot where I fear they could become the chalky plays and if they are chalk – I want out.

MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:

Coors Field is THE spot to target today with warm temperatures, the wind blowing out at 12 MPH and a slate leading 11.5 total. If you want to go here I am certainly not going to talk you out of it, but after games that totaled 13 and 17 runs the last two nights this spot is going to be so out of control popular – so can you fade it?

I honestly think you can for a few reasons – first off, you have six teams (four outside of Coors) that have 5+ run totals on this slate so Vegas is telling you that you have options if you choose to take them. Secondly, remember that there is no sport in DFS that has more variance than baseball and although it may seem like Paul Goldschmidt or Charlie Blackmon is in a can’t miss spot, there is always the chance this is the day they run into bad luck, hit the ball at some guys and leave you with a chalk 0-4. It’s a scary fade but I think it is a viable one.

What is really interesting to me is when you look at the teams with the high totals, there are some really intriguing viable pivot options. Now the Astros (5.98), Red Sox (5.39) and Indians (5) are certainly not cheap options but they make for viable pivots as if people are paying up for bats it is going to be in Coors meaning you could get an Indians/Astros stack for a fraction of the ownership against Artie Lewicki and Matt Moore (sounds enticing doesn’t it?)

You want to drop down even further? The Blue Jays and Twins are right at 5 projected run totals against Alex Cobb and Nick Tropeano and are loaded with value bats for those looking to pay up for Paxton/Kluber as an example.

Toronto will take on a pitcher in Alex Cobb who is giving up a .220+ ISO to hitters from both sides of the plate with a 34% HC rate and the Blue Jays order bottom of the order is actually loaded with bargain bats with exceptional underlying metrics. Russell Martin, Randall Grichuk and Aledyms Diaz make for an interesting bottom of the order stack as each batter has a .200+ ISO against RHP this season with a 35% or higher HC rate.

The Twins will face off with Nick Tropeano, a pitcher surrendering a 43% HC rate this season and getting slaughtered by RHB with a massive .247 ISO mark. Miguel Sano is sporting a .250 ISO against RHP this season with a 47% HC rate which set up perfectly against Tropeano but do not overlook the cheap left-handed batters here like Logan Morrison ($5.4K) in the middle of this order or cheap OF’s like Max Kepler ($6.4K) or Robbie Grossman ($5.8K) to round out a cheap Twins stack.

The Orioles have been a team that has burned me more often than I like to admit this year but the price points and a match-up with Marco Estrada are simply too good to pass up as fill-in plays on this slate. Estrada is giving up a .240 ISO to hitters from both sides of the slate this season and there are Orioles batters that profile well against Estrada as a pitcher who throws an 89 MPH nearly 50% of the time – pitches that Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo have crushed to the tune of a .300+ ISO since 2016.

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

SP: Corey Kluber ($26.6K)

SP: James Paxton ($24K)

IF: Logan Morrison ($5.4K)

IF: Chris Davis ($5.5K)

IF: Russell Martin ($5.6K)

OF: Max Kepler ($6.4K)

OF: Robbie Grossman ($5.8K)

OF: Miguel Sano ($7.7K)

UTIL: Randal Grichuk ($6.3K)

UTIL: Aledmys Diaz ($6.7K)

Slate Overview: When I opened up this slate initially my gut reaction was to load up on Coors bats – like everyone else’s will likely be – but I took a step back and though, how under-owned will guys like Kluber and Paxton be today? Now they both will likely be lower owned than they should but on two pitcher sites I am sure people will find a way to go up for one of them and punt the other – but how many will pay up for BOTH on this slate? In order to make that work you will need to find some cheap stacks which is where the Twins and Blue Jays come into play – with 5+ projected run totals and tons of cheap bats – is this a way to get a high upside pivot off the more popular builds? Enjoy your day of MLB DFS and see you back here on Monday!

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