MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday June 12
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s MLB DFS slate was a great study in how ownership can over concentrate on one spot and leave other good spots largely ignored. The Indians bats were the darling of the industry and once lock hit, it was fascinating to see how guys like Francisco Lindor, Michael Brantley and Jose Ramirez were all over 50% in the $25 FantasyDraft Home Run GPP. Personally I opted to fade the Indians and instead spent my money on pitching (Carlos Carrasco) and pivoted to another high-end bat in Mike Trout who rewarded me with 2 home runs on the night. The interesting takeaway for me was that Trout was only 20% owned in tournaments, not a sneaky play by any means, but if you think about the game theory aspect in that you could get one of the best players in baseball for half the ownership against a mediocre lefty, it ended up being something as subtle as this pivot that gave you a massive edge over the field. Listen, if the Indians go off, I am left for dead and cursing Lucas Giolito, but it is worth noting the strategy as on this night it paid off for me and hopefully for many of you.
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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:
Welcome to a loaded Tuesday MLB DFS slate with 15 games to run through with an interesting set-up from a player pool perspective. At first glance we have no true “aces” to pay up for with Mike Foltynewicz and Aaron Nola as the highest priced arms available to us and we also do not have a single game total with double-digits which means there is really no “obvious” play at first glance. Before we get into our slate overview, on slates like this I highly recommend diving into the game by game details and we have one of the best breakdowns at Fantasy CPR with Adam Strangis who breaks down every single game on the slate – give it a read.
If you read Picks and Pivots with any regularity you will know that strikeouts drive my pitching decisions as K’s are King in MLB DFS. We have four pitcher’s on today’s slate that rank within the top 30 strikeout arms in MLB this season with Mike Foltynewicz (28.7%), Jon Gray (25.7%), Aaron Nola (24.8%) and Lance McCullers Jr. (24.7%) leading the charge for me as my initial targets at pitcher.
Folty and Nola are both priced at a premiums on this slate at $23.2K and $22.9K respectively and although I certainly like the picks, the fact that I can get similar K upside with cheaper arms like Jon Gray ($15K) and Lance McCullers Jr. ($17.5K) is leaning more towards that build which gives me additional salary room for the big bats I want to build around.
Gray gets arguably the best match-up on the board opposing Nola as the Phillies have the second highest K rate in all of baseball the last 14 days (28%) and strike out at the highest rate in baseball against RHP this season. Gray has an elite 12.8% swinging strike rate which is 16th in all of baseball this season and the highest on the slate and the fact he opposes the “best arm” on the slate means this becomes a fascinating leverage play – although I could argue you could use both pitchers from this game tonight.
McCullers has a swinging strike rate of 12.1% which is second on the slate, justa tick behind Gray and gets a really intriguing boom or bust match-up against the A’s in Oakland. The Astros right-hander not only has elite K ability but his 55% ground balll is 4th in all of baseball and the highest such mark of any pitcher on this slate including Mr. Nola at 53% this season. McCullers has actually faced this Oakland team twice already this season – showing the boom or bust range of outcomes in the process:
- At Oakland: 5 IP, 2 ER, 4 BB, 3 K’s and 11.85 FantasyDraft points
- In Houston: 7 IP, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K’s and 32.55 FantasyDraft points.
These two starts came 10 days apart so there is nothing fundamentally different in McCullers approach and that 7 K shutout is the kind of proof I need that the upside exists here. The fact that I can roster McCullers and Gray for a combined salary of $32.5K on FantasyDraft is over $13K of savings off the duo of Nola and Folty as an example and I would argue they have every bit the K upside tonight. K’s are King in MLB DFS and I have two of the top arms in baseball this season with the two highest swinging strike rates on the slate so this seems like a SP duo that has all the upside I want to build around.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
We built around the Cardinals bats last night at home in elite hitting weather and tonight they get another night of 90+ degree heat with 8-10 MPH winds blowing out and the Padres throwing a bullpen game with MHP Matt Strahm expected to “start.” The Cardinals got home runs last night from Jose Martinez, Marcell Ozuna and Jedd Gyorko and tonight, I could see going right back to any and all of them with a similar game environment. Martinez ($9.4K) is just scorching hot right now with a 67% HC rate and 5 HR’s over the last two weeks while Ozuna ($7.7K) is not far behind with a 54% HC rate and 4 HR’s over the same 14 day time period. Matt Carpenter ($7.2K) saw his price “rise” to $7.2K after he was nearly universally owned yesterday but frankly the price remains too cheap and Carpenter is still a cash game staple and a core piece of any Cardinals stack on this night.
I have been beating the Dodgers stack drum quite vigorously over the last week as this team seems to get continuously over-looked and as I have pointed out multiple times on Twitter, the 1-7 batters in the line-up are all boasting a .200+ ISO against RHP – not only this season but extrapolated to 2017 as well. Tonight the Dodgers get to face my man crush, Bartolo Colon, and I am sorry Big Sexy but I simply cannot ignore how good of a spot this is for the Dodgers bats. Over the last two seasons, Colon is giving up a .210+ ISO to hitters from both sides of the plate with a 32% HC rate to RHB and a 40% HC rate to left-handed batters.
If you look at the projected line-up for the Dodgers, they sport a 38% HC rate with no single player lower than 33% on the season against RHP – so this just screams of a spot where the Dodgers can put up massive numbers and they make for my favorite stack on the board.
Cody Bellinger ($8.1K), Yasmani Grandal ($7.3K), Joc Pederson ($8.3K) and Matt Kemp ($8.4K) are my favorite plays from the Dodgers (although I could argue a full 1-7 stack is viable) with Bellinger, Joc and Kemp each sporting 45% plus HC rates over the last 14 days and Joc, Bellinger and Grandal all sporting a 55% or higher fly ball rate which could spell trouble for a fly ball pitcher like Colon, even in this ballpark in LA.
If there is one player I want as a one-off it is Mike Trout ($11.1K) and well touting the best player in baseball isn’t exactly ground breaking but watching the game last night, I was made aware of how much Trout crushes in Safeco Field. In 64 games in Safeco, Trout has an absurd 18 HR’s, the most of any visiting ballpark in his career, while sporting a .329 average and .672 slugging percentage. If you pay attention to DFS MLB you will see that certain players excel in certain ballparks (Rizzo in Pittsburgh, Goldy in Coors as examples) and Trout in Seattle is one that honestly I was not aware of until last night but after 2 dongs on Monday, why not go right back to it again?
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: Lance McCullers Jr. ($17.5K)
SP: Jon Gray ($15K)
IF: Yasmani Grandal ($7.3K)
IF: Cody Bellinger ($8.1K)
IF: Jose Martinez ($9.4K)
OF: Matt Kemp ($8.4K)
OF: Joc Pederson ($8.3K)
OF: Mike Trout ($11.1K)
UTIL: Matt Carpenter ($7.2K)
UTIL: Marcell Ozuna ($7.7K)
Slate Overview: On this slate I think it is critical to focus in on the top 4 K arms available in Folty, Nola, Gray and McCullers as they have the highest upside on the slate with the ability to put up the top raw point performances on the night which is frankly something no other arm has in my mind. With arms like Bartolo Colon, James Shields and Ian Kennedy on the slate, there are going to be some popular stacks available – specifically the Indians against Shields, but on a slate this large I think there are enough viable pivots to pivot to a variety of other spots.
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 news and analysis!