MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday June 29
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 knew Thursday’s split MLB DFS slate was ugly and yet I played it anyways, the draw of playing DFS always wins out! There really was nothing special about these slates and how they played out but they serve as a reminder of how little margin for error you have on these short slates as you simply take a stand and hope your players are the ones who deliver. On the main slate as an example, I took the approach of fading the chalk SP1 in McCullers and game stacked the Red Sox and Angels – ultimately the bats went flat and those who went McCullers just flew past those who opted to pay up for Betts, JD and Trout – it really was that simple and also that frustrating, basically a coin flip – oh well, 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:
Now we are talking – no more ugly split slate nonsense, we get a loaded Friday Night MLB DFS slate with a ton of options and it is worth noting that we are at the start of a heat wave across the East Coast that is going to drive game time temperatures up significantly in many of the ballparks up and down the East Coast this weekend.
The interesting thing about the pitching on this slate at first glance is that all three top arms – Jacob deGrom, Trevor Bauer and Gerrit Cole are all pitching on the road against the Marlins, A’s and Rays respectively so we do not have any massive Vegas favorite among the elite pitchers as Cole tops the list at -165 in Tampa Bay.
As great as deGrom has been this year, my rules for him are very simple – I load up on him at home and let others try to jam him in on the road and at $26.7K on FantasyDraft, this is simply not a spot I am willing to invest. deGrom has exactly one double-digit K game in his last seven starts and faced this same Marlins team earlier in the year in Miami and gave up 4 ER while striking out only 6 batters and for as much as my Mets fandom loves deGrom as a pitcher, I actually would rather go the other side of this game with Marlins rookie RHP Sandy Alcantara ($10.8K).
Sandy Alcantara is making his first major league start for the Marlins on Friday. Interesting to note that in AAA this season, the Marlins have let him run up some pretty high pitch counts. Here are his counts over his last 10 outings:
— Allan Lem (@AllanLemDFS) June 29, 2018
85, 93, 95, 92, 96, 101, 98, 104, 106, 106
Alcantara on the surface may not jump out to MLB DFS players with a 18-19% K rate at the AA and AAA levels over the last two seasons but there are a couple of interesting metrics when you look at his minor league track record. Alcantra has been exceptional at limiting home runs with a .6 HR/9 rate at AAA after a 0.9 HR/9 rate in AA the year before and his ground ball rate has peaked to over 50% at AAA this season and as Allan Lem from RotoGrinders points out, the pitch counts have been exceptionally high for a young arm. His ground ball rate is actually the highest of any pitcher in AAA across MLB so when you consider the ballpark boost and ground ball tendencies, this could be a sneaky spot to attack.
The K rate under 20% and the high GB rate may lead you to believe this is a mediocre pitch to contact arm but make no mistake, Alcantara has electric stuff with a fastball that has reached 102 MPH so the raw talent is cleary there and he gets the added benefit of facing the Mets struggling offense in a massive ballpark in Miami. At this price point there is massive upside and with deGrom on the other side of the game, the ownership should be relatively low.
Felix Pena ($13.2K) has made two starts at the Major League level this season, going 5 innings and striking out 6 Blue Jays in his last start, throwing 85 pitches after a 75 pitch debut that lasted only four innings against Arizona. As the pitch count increases, Pena becomes more and more intriguing for MLB DFS purposes and when you consider he has registered a 12% and 18% swinging strikeout rate in these two starts, the upside relative to his price point is significant.
Pena is a -140 road favorite pitching in Baltimore tonight against an Orioles projected line-up with a 27% K rate against RHP this season. Over the last two seasons, in 109 PA against RHB, Pena has a 29.2% K rate and the Orioles will likely throw 7 RHB at him tonight with the two left-handed bats being Chris Davis and Colby Rasmus who are sporting 35% K rates each so to say there is K upside here would be an understatement.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
The Yankees and Red Sox will face off tonight in New York with warm temperatures and the wind blowing out and even though Vegas is projecting these two teams to score at a lower rate than their season averages, the power upside is hard to overlook here.
Both CC Sabathia and Eduardo Rodriguez have been able to limit hard contact to right-handed batters this season, with both pitchers sporting a mark below 30% but these are no normal offenses they have to face off against today. Sabathia will have to navigate through Mookie Betts ($10.8K) and J.D. Martinez ($10.6K) who have a .277 and .385 ISO respectively against LHP the last two seasons and if you dig into CC’s pitch types you will see that both batters have significant success against the pitches Sabathia throws most often.
This season, Sabathia throws his slider 32% of the time, a pitch that Mooke and JD have .200+ ISO marks against and his sinker, this is thrown over 20% of the time is a pitch this duo hit for a .250+ ISO each. Basically you have two of the best hitters against LHP in an elite hitting ballpark that simply smash the pitches that their opposition throws over half the time – good luck CC.
On the other side of this game we have a similar power duo in Giancarlo Stanton ($10K) and Aaron Judge ($10.7K) who have a .450 and .250 ISO respectively against LHP the last two seasons. E-Rod relies nearly 50% of the time on his 93 MPH fastball, a pitch that Judge hammers for a .750 ISO and 51% HC rate while Stanton is “only” at a .350 ISO and 46% HC rate.
This is an interesting case where the opposing arms have been able to limit the ISO and HC of RHB this season but they face a an elite group of hitters that not only excel against southpaws, but also have shown considerable power against the pitch types their opposition uses most often. The Vegas data (reduced run totals) and the pitchers metrics this season make this a spot I would not stack but instead look to target the big four here and capture the HR upside as it only takes one mistake to hitters of this caliber to pay off their price tag with a bomb into a hot and humid New York night!
One of the benefits of paying down for pitching tonight is you basically can pick and choose which power bats you want so go ahead and lock in the big 4 bats in Yankee Stadium and then grab arguably the two best one-off plays on the slate in Mike Trout ($11.2K) and Paul Goldschmidt ($9.4K). Trout and the Angels have a 5.3 run total which is 2nd highest on the slate and nearly a full run higher than their season average which is what happens when you get to face David Hess – a pitcher with a 6+ xFIP and .220+ ISO to hitters from both sides of the plate. Trout is clearly the guy to build around within an Angels stack but if you need salary relief, than grab someone like Luis Valbuena ($6.8K) who has a .213 ISO against RHP over the last two seasons and a near .300 ISO against the low 90’s fastball which is what Hess relies on over 60% of the time.
Goldy gets a lefty at home – do I need to say more? Goldy is red-hot, has a .330 ISO against LHP the last two years and will take on LHP Andrew Suaraz who is giving up a massive 51% HC rate to RHB since 2017.
Listen, I can hear the grumbling already as readers look at this hitter write-up and say – wow, thanks for telling us to play all the best hitters in baseball tonight – a true hot take. However the reason I laid it out this way is to show you how the best hitters on the slate also happen to be in massively good spots which is why I think paying down for both arms on this slate and stacking the best hitters across the slate is a really interesting route with incredible upside.
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: Felix Pena ($13.2K)
SP: Sandy Alcantara ($10.3K)
IF: Paul Goldschmidt ($9.4K)
IF: Justin Bour ($6.9K)
IF: Luis Valbuena ($6.8K)
OF: Mookie Bets ($10.8K)
OF: JD Martinez ($10.6K)
OF: Aaron Judge ($10.7K)
UTIL: Giancarlo Stanton ($10K)
UTIL: Mike Trout ($11.2K)
Sample Overview: Now THIS is a MLB DFS slate we can sink our teeth into! We get multiple high-end aces and a plethora of high-priced bats in great hitting spots so where do you want to go. Personally, I think there are some intriguing punt arms with K upside that at first glance make me interested in paying down at SP and simply getting every single top bat I want. BOMBS AWAY tonight kids!
Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel, DraftKings and DRAFT and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR each and every day for our DFS news and analysis!