MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday June 26

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 interesting in the sense that it was seemingly all about getting to Justin Verlander as your SP1 but when the dust settled it was Blake Snell, Kenta Maeda and Jonathan Loaisiga who were 1-2-3 on the leaderboard while Mr. Verlander struggled with 6 K’s and 4 ER in 6.2 IP and those who chose to fade the Astros RHP for any of the pivot options had a massive advantage on the field.

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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 – Starting Pitching Overview:

We have a massive 14 game MLB DFS slate on this Tuesday and with five arms priced at $20K or higher, we have no shortage of high-end arms to pay up for. Luis Severino ($25.7K) is the most expensive arm on the slate but his 32% K rate over the last month which is tops on the slate and 5th in all of baseball certainly warrants the price tag against the Phillies this evening. Corey Kluber, James Paxton, Charlie Morton and Ross Stripling are right behind him and what this slate screams to me is that we have tons of options, with no real obvious chalk, but there is some serious opportunity cost if you miss at pitcher with so many great arms available.

As much as I could argue for any of the arms mentioned above, we live in a salary cap world and tonight there are a slew of bats I want to spend up on so let’s drop down a notch and see if there are any arms in the mid-tier/value range that we can build around.

David Price (15.8K) gets a home start against the Angels as a -190 home favorite and steps into this game in some great recent form. Since May 12, the span of 8 starts, Price has a 25.3% K rate and 9.5% swinging strike rate while surrendering only a 0.89 HR/9 and a miniscule 27.3% hard contact rate. The Angels will be able to load up with their right-handed heavy line-up but Price has actually been quite good against RHB this season with a .148 ISO, 23.4% K rate and will take on an Angels line-up that outside of Mike Trout does not have a single projected starter with an ISO over .150 against LHP this season.

Price faced this Angels team earlier in the year on the road and put up 5 innings of 1 run ball with 6 K’s and over 21 fantasy points and has now put up 20 or more fantasy points in five of his last seven outings. When you consider that Price is the 9th highest priced arm on the slate, he makes for an exceptional cash game play and has some solid K upside to put him in the conversation as an SP1 but will likely be many people’s high-end SP2.

Steven Matz ($12K) gets the “I just pitched in Coors discount” as after giving up 5 ER in Colorado he is priced at a significant discount considering this is a pitcher who has only given up more than 3 ER in one other start this year and now gets to face the Pirates in Citi Field. The Pirates will likely go right-handed heavy tonight which actually boosts Matz’s K upside as he has a 22% K rate against RHB versus a 14% rate against LHB. If you look at the last two home starts for Matz, against the Yankees and Cubs, where he struck out 6-7 batters and gave up 2-3 ER while putting up 14-21 fantasy points, you will see there is a solid floor with a ceiling that far exceeds his price point here tonight.

MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:

One of the reasons I want to save salary tonight at pitcher is that I want to load up on bats as even though we only have three teams with projected run totals of 5+, there are a plethora of gas cans and elite hitting spots to build around with massive upside. The Red Sox lead the slate with a 5.73 run total against LHP John Lamb, a pitcher who over a small sample size (34 PA) has given up a .375 ISO and 46% HC rate to RHB and will have to face off with Mookie Betts ($11.8K) and J.D. Martinez (11K) in Fenway Park. Betts has an elite .373 ISO against LHP this season while Martinez had a .570 ISO mark last season so the pedigree is there for both hitters to have monster nights as a high-priced mini stack of the two best Red Sox hitters.

The Braves will face off with an Atlanta team that all but ended his Mets career as they hung 5 ER on him in only 2 innings of work the last time they met and now in a ballpark built for left-handed power, you are expecting a pitcher with a .268 ISO and 37% HC rate to LHB to make it out of here unscathed? Freddie Freeman ($10.6K) and Ozzie Albies ($10.3K) make for another expensive pairing to build around here but with Harvey’s struggles against lefties, I have a hard time passing on Freeman and a red-hot Albies who is 10 for his last 15 with 2 doubles and an HR.

Forget the high-priced hitters – this slate is all about one thing – BOBBLEHEAD NARRATIVE!

Not only is it Enrique Hernandez ($6.5K) bobble head night in LA but we also get the Dodgers against a pitcher with a .475 xFIP who is giving up just under 37% HC on the season. One more time – back to the stack against Jon Lester spot for me and now I get to do it with the team I like to stack more than any other – I am dying on this hill people and there is nothing you can do to stop me.

I simply do not believe that Jon Lester is a good pitcher – you can throw meaningless stats at me like he has 2.10 ERA and a 9-2 record but let me be clear – HE IS LUCKY! Let me put it to you this way – the league average BABIP is .293 and yet here is Lester at .231 while his hard contact rate is nearly 3% higher than the league average. A league average pitcher this season has a .408 xFIP but here is Lester with his 4.75 xFIP and everyone is ready to pretend like he is good – let me re-iterate – he has been super lucky and every single advanced metric is telling you he is a below league average pitcher.

I know whats coming next – but Brian, Lester just “dominated” this Dodgers team with 7 shutout innings. Yes -total domination – except for the 42% HC rate and .200 BABIP (with only 1 strikeout) – eventually these hard hit balls will not be hit right at the fielder’s and when that happens the luck officially runs out for this fraud. Yeah – fraud. Let’s go Twitter – tell me how your 9-2 pitcher with the tiny ERA (both meaningless stats) is going to “crush it again” – I am dying on this hill so you are all clear.

The one thing I will say in Lester’s favor is he gets Bill Miller as the umpire tonight – Miller is one of the most extreme pitcher’s umpires in baseball with a 20% K boost over the “average” ump so if you wanted to use Lester (or Stripling here) that is a boost for them – but let’s get back to the Dodgers.

The Dodgers just set up perfectly in this spot as they are priced as if they are facing an actual good pitcher and allow you to stack them up while still paying up for multiple high-end bats. Let’s start with Hernandez who is priced far too low considering he has 3 HR’s in his last two games and has a .256 ISO against LHP this season – dude would be an elite play regardless but the bobblehead narrative never lies  – this is an auto play for me tonight. Chris Taylor ($7.5K), Justin Turner (7.2K) and Matt Kemp ($7.2K) all have crushed LHP over the last two seasons with every single one of these hitters sporting a .200 or higher ISO and this stack is priced at a level that makes them easy to fit in within any roster build. The regression begins tonight Lester – the late night hammer is on its way!

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: David Price ($15.8K)

SP: Steven Matz ($12K)

IF: Freddie Freeman ($10.6K)

IF: Ozzie Albies ($10.3K)

IF: Justin Turner ($7.2K)

OF: Enrique Hernandez ($6.5K)

OF: Matt Kemp ($7.2K)

OF: Chris Taylor ($7.5K)

UTIL: Mookie Betts ($11.8K)

UTIL: J.D. Martinez ($11K)

Slate Overview: This slate is so perfect – it has everything I love – the chance to stack the Dodgers, stack against Jon Lester and play a BOBBLEHEAD NARRATIVE all while attacking Matt Harvey with lefties. It is like Christmas came early and I am very VERY excited. Enjoy the day make sure you screenshot that Lester ERA at 2.10 ERA – that baby is about to get fatter than Bartolo Colon after an all you can eat buffet.

Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns

Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!