MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday June 22
Welcome to the Friday 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.
I went into Thursday’s slate with the mindset that there was no arm remotely close to Max Scherzer and that Madison Bumgarner was not quite yet right and we could stack the Padres against him with their big time power numbers against LHP. Well, Mad-Bum went out and threw 8 shutout innings with 8 K’s and outscored Mad Max by 9 points so you know where my night ended. The slate honestly was very odd the way it unfolded as it felt like not much really happened leading into the late games and when you step back and realize the top offensive performers were Luis Valbuena, Kole Calhoun (nice call by Matt Rogers by the way) and Alex Avila, it was not surprising to see some lower scores across the industry. Oh well, the beauty of MLB DFS is we just move right on to the next one!
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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:
For a loaded Friday MLB DFS slate I have to say – the pitching is brutal – but I will give FantasyDraft credit here as they have ticked up the pricing on even the most mediocre arms which makes it increasingly difficult to find two arms to build around this evening. Within the context of this slate, you will see that offense is going to rule the day here as we lack any real “elite” arms and with a few gas cans, a game in Coors Field and a few potential weather spots that could cross off games, the player pool becomes dicey really quickly.
Whenever I look at a pitching slate that lacks a true stud arm, my gut instinct is to look for a very specific type of arm – someone who is cheap and who has K upside. The logic is simple, I think there is risk inherent in any arm on this slate so if I am going to absorb that risk than I want to offset it with the largest K upside possible while also giving myself ample salary room to stack the bats that I think can carry me. With that said there are two arms that jump to the top of player pool – Jon Gray ($15.7K) and Luis Castillo ($11.1K).
Gray is an interesting case in that he is pitching in the worst ballpark (Coors) but gets arguably the weakest team in baseball (Marlins) as his opponent but this is Coors Field and we have seen it very recently “cure” the hitting woes of a team like the Mets who seemingly couldn’t score for two weeks than found their stroke miraculously in Colorado. Gray has a 27% K rate on the year and that jumps slightly to 28% at home and even though his ERA is sitting near 6, it is interesting that his xFIP and SIERA are just a tad over 3 which means there is the potential for positive regression. At home specifically, Gray as an ERA of 6.45 but a xFIP of 2.77 – something has to give here and the strikeout upside is arguably the highest on the entire slate.
Listen, the reality is Gray is probably going to give up a run or two and I think you need to expect that and hope the K upside more than offsets it. In seven home starts this year, Gray has struck out 8 or more in four of those starts and had double-digit K outings against both the Padres and Brewers and that is exactly the kind of upside you are building around here. Gray is a massive -200 home favorite but that says more about what his offense is expected to do (more on that in a moment) so the extra four points for the win gives you some nice added upside for a guy who has flashed slate winning K upside and the advanced metrics tell you is due for his luck to turn. If this game was in Miami and not in Coors we would all be jumping to roster Gray but I think that risk is priced in here and in the context of this slate he makes for an elite SP option.
Castillo gets a far tougher match-up against the Cubs (although maybe Matt Harvey would disagree after last night) and we still have a hitter’s ballpark in Cincinnati so there is risk involved in this selection as well but at this near punt price he makes for an exceptional high K SP2 choice. Last season Castillo was a strikeout machine, sporting over a 27% K rate but that has fallen back to under 23% this year but interestingly enough his swinging strike rate (14.5%) has actually increased over his 12% mark just a year ago.
Castillo much like Gray is sporting an ERA near 6 but his xFIP and SIERA at 4 suggest that things could get better for the Reds right-hander. Castillo has already faced this Cubs team once this year at home where he went 5 innings, giving up only 1 ER, striking out 4 but walking a season high 5 batters which ultimately led to his short outing. Considering that Castillo has only a 9% walk rate on the year I am willing to chalk that game up to an outlier and look back to 2017 when he faced the Cubs in Wrigley and struck out 7 over 6 shutout innings.
In looking at the previous start against the Cubs the one thing I noticed that Castillo went VERY slider heavy, throwing the pitch 25.5% of the time and relying on his fastball only 56% of the time which are marks that stand as huge outliers when you look at his season long pitch types. Interestingly, since that start he has fallen back in line with his norms, throwing the fastball nearly 66% of the time and relying on his slider only 14% of the time.
In his successful outing in Wrigley last year, the pitch type was much more in line with the recent numbers as he threw his fastball 62% of the time and the slider only 12% so you wonder if the Reds will have him revert back to a similar game plan here instead of a slider heavy approach which seemed to get him in trouble with walks.
Rostering both Gray and Castillo carries risk for sure but I don’t think there is a pitcher on this slate that doesn’t carry similar risk – either in low K opponents or opportunity cost of overpaying and missing out on big bats. For my money, I would rather save the salary to pay up with my hitters and hope that positive regression is on my side tonight with two of the slate’s best K arms.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
I apologize for the long-winded pitching overview – if you are reading this on your way to work or sneaking away from “real life” and have limited time, I promise you that this hitting section will more than make up for the time spent dissecting pitchers. Here is the hitting overview – Wei-Yen Chen is pitching in Coors Field. Done.
Chen, the lefty with a .233 ISO, near 50% fly ball rate and 32% HC rate is going into Coors Field and will have to face a bevy of right-handed mashers. Nolan Arenado ($11.7K) could have had any price next to his name today and he still would have been the first guy I clicked in today, I simply do not know how you fade him here. Arenado has a .381 ISO and 46% HC versus LHP this season and has homered in three straight games – dude is on fire and worth every flipping penny of your salary cap tonight.
The approach on this slate is simple – get as much Rockies exposure as you can starting with Arenado but do not overlook Trevor Story ($11.2K), Ian Desmond ($9.1K) and Chris Ianetta ($7.3K). Story and Desmond specifically are each sporting Arenado-ian (I made up a word) ISO’s of .349 and .342 respectively with 48% and 43% hard contact rates and that trio will be in every line-up I make tonight.
The Rockies are the obvious top stack and you could add-on the Blackmons and LeMahieus of the world and get in as many Rockies bats as your DFS site allows but when I saw the Red Sox at home versus LHP Wade LeBlanc, I knew that I needed a mini-stack of Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez to pair with my Coors exposure. This is far less about picking on LeBlanc and much more about the guys in the batters box as Betts has a .415 ISO against LHP this season which is actually dwarfed by the .527 mark that Martinez had last year. LeBlanc relies mostly on his sinker and you want to know which two hitters lead the Red Sox in ISO and exit velocity against that pitch? Yup both Martinez and Betts crush that pitch type to the tune of an AVERAGE distance of 315-320 feet and with all the focus on Coors it is possible that the other high-end bats on this slate like Betts/JD get a bit over-looked.
If we want Coors AND Red Sox tonight we are going to need some value one-offs and there are two bats that caught my eye right away. Justin Smoak ($6.3K) is right back on my radar against LHP Andrew Heaney as Smoak looks to be finally rounding into form, going 4 for his last 11 with 2 doubles with a 34% HC rate and a near 80% fly ball rate so when matched up with Heaney’s 43% FB rate and 38% HC rate, this looks to be a spot where the Smoak Monster could knock one out. Adam Duvall ($6.3K) at the same price point against LHP Jose Quintana will take his .271 ISO and massive 56% HC rate against LHP with him to the plate today in Great American Ballpark and much like Smoak provides you a one-off high upside power bat at a cheap price point that allows you to stack both the Rockies/Red Sox on this Friday Night.
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: Jon Gray ($15.7K)
SP: Luis Castillo ($11.1K)
IF: Nolan Arenado ($11.7K)
IF: Trevor Story ($11.2K)
IF: Chris Ianetta ($7.3K)
OF: Ian Desmond ($9.1K)
OF: Mookie Betts ($11.6K)
OF: J.D. Martinez ($9.7K)
UTIL: Adam Duvall ($6.3K)
UTIL: Justin Smoak ($6.3K)
Slate Overview: Bats and K’s baby – Bats and K’s. That is the name of this slate for me tonight as I want to get as many Rockies hitters alongside Mookie/JD and then grab arms that have K upside – it really is that simple for me. Keep an eye on the weather today as we have a handful of spots with potential rain – but enjoy this slate, it is a great one for tournaments and one I think that will be incredibly high scoring when the dust settles.
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!