MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday July 1
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 early slate was one I ended up skipping entirely as the value never really opened up to where I felt comfortable with my roster builds so I opted to take the slate off and live to fight another day. The Main Slate felt very straight forward to me with Chris Sale as the clear top option with Felix Hernandez as a reliable SP2 and a Rangers 6 man stack built as the core so I went ahead and rolled with it and ended up with a really nice night as Sale was the top performer on the slate and the Rangers dropped 13 runs on the White Sox for a night FantasyDraft MLB DFS night!
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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 nine game Sunday MLB DFS slate on FantasyDraft which kicks off at 1:05PM EST with the White Sox and Rangers being the lone 3 PM EST game to end the slate. At first glance this looks like a really great slate with some top end arms, multiple 10+ run total game environments and LOTS of hot temperatures to deal with across the nation.
The top two arms on the slate, Charlie Morton and Blake Snell also happen to be facing off against each-other in Tampa Bay which puts the 4 point win bonus at risk for two pitchers that cost over $21K on FantasyDraft. The arm I have the most interest in at the top is Freddy Peralta ($19.6K) who gets a tough match-up against the Reds in Great American Ballpark but this is an elite strikeout arm that has the ceiling set the cash line on any slate with 35 strikeouts in his first 22 innings at the Major League level this season.
Peralta has been flat-out electric in his first four starts with a 15% swinging strike rate and a 41.7% K rate while holding batters to only a 27% hard contact rate. I know the sample size is four games but just humor me – compare those marks to Chris Sale this season – 15.7% swining strike rate, 36% K rate and 26% hard contact rate. Now, I am not comparing Peralta to Sale, it has been four games, but I want to put those metrics in context for you when you consider just how good he has been.
From an SP2 perspective, Dan Straily ($11K) stands out as an elite value play getting a home start against the worst team in the National League, my New York Mets. Straily in my opinion is an underrated fantasy asset as any time I get a pitcher with a 20% K rate and a 10% or higher swinging strike rate you have an arm with K upside which is all I can ask for as a punt SP2. Straily is coming off a 6 strikeout, 21 fantasy point performance against Arizona at home and has already faced this Mets team once this season with 5 K’s, 1 ER and 17 fantasy points.
It should not shock anyone that the Mets-Marlins have two of the lowest totals on the board on this early slate so I love this spot for finding my SP2 and although I like Steven Matz, I would much rather take the $2K savings on Straily who has put up 17 or more fantasy points in 5 of his 11 starts this season.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Happy Jon Lester Day all! Yes my friends we get Jon Lester regression watch today against the Twins in Wrigley and let me check the weather…….ok, it is warm……looks like…the wind….is blowing…..out….at 15 to 20 MPH. Sweet Sassy Molassy.
Listen, if you have read Picks and Pivots before you know I think Jon Lester is a massive fraud from a fantasy perspective as his pretty 2 ERA is not even remotely supported but his 4.46 xFIP, 4.51 SIERA and 36% hard contact rate. Lester is pitching to contact as evidenced by his 8.9% swinging strike rate which is his lowest mark since 2013 and when you combine that with a career high hard contact rate versus a career low BABIP (.234), everything points to a massive regression game coming and with the wind blowing out this much at Wrigley, I am planting my flag here….again.
Brian Dozier ($7.7K) is the top play here as his .242 ISO against LHP since 2017 leads this team by a substantial mark and his 40% fly ball rate is key to a match-up where we want to ball to get in the air and let the Wrigley wind do it’s thing! Keep an eye on the status of Eddie Rosario ($9K) who left Saturday’s game with a heat related illness but if he is in he profiles extremely well against Lester who throws 90-91 MPH 45% of the time and Rosario has a .299 ISO and 52% HC rate against that pitch. The fact that the Twins have so many left-handed bats could make this a really under-owned spot on this slate and with so many seemingly believing in Lester, this could be an exceptional spot for a stack in tournaments.
As much as I want to focus solely on Lester, it would be silly to overlook the game stack potential here and use the Cubs against RHP Lance Lynn with the same advantageous hitting conditions. Lynn over the last two seasons is giving up a .200 ISO to left-handed batters with a 33% hard contact rate so stacking up the Cubs LHB like Anthony Rizzo ($9.1K), Jason Heyward ($7.5K), Kyle Schwarber ($8.2K) is a great GPP strategy and you can even add Javier Baez ($9K) to the stack as all of Baez, Schwarber and Rizzo have .200+ ISO marks against RHP this season.
We are still waiting on a total for this game as Vegas normally waits until they have the wind information for Wrigley games which tells you how important that factor is in this stadium. The price points on this game stack are very reasonable and you can build a high upside game stack here while still having more than enough room to pay up for a top end SP1.
Happy Lester regression day.
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: Freddy Peralta ($19.6K)
SP: Dan Straily ($11K)
IF: Brian Dozier ($7.7K)
IF: Eduardo Escobar ($9.2K)
IF: Anthony Rizzo ($9.1K)
OF: Jason Heyward ($7.5K)
OF: Kyle Schwarber ($8.2K)
OF: Eddie Rosario ($9K)
UTIL: Javier Baez ($9K)
UTIL: Bryce Harper ($9.7K)
Slate Overview: Stepping back and looking at this roster build, I can get an elite high K arm with a game stack that pits two pitcher with 4.5+ SIERA’s against each other with 15-20 MPH winds blowing out in Wrigley, where the wind impacts offenses more than any other spot in baseball – yes please. We will need to wait and see what kind of line-ups we get for the Cubs and Twins on this day game in the midst of a heat wave, but my going in position is to load up on the best hitters each team has and simply mix and match with Peralta as my core. Good luck all and enjoy your Sunday!
Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns
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