Welcome to the Saturday 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.
Well Sonny Gray was not a good idea. Sorry about that. The big three of Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom and Lance McCullers were three of the top seven scorers on the slate which was a bit predictable but sharing the stop spots with guys like Jordan Zimmermann, Evan Gattis, Jose Bautista and Andrew Knapp made the top scores a bit less predictable. Thankfully the Indians stack I built around came in at single digit ownership and their 10 spot was largely driven by the top 5-6 guys in the order so their stack was able to salvage the night for me and let’s us survive to live another day in MLB DFS.
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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 – Early Slate Overview:
We have an eleven game early slate on FantasyDraft today with 2 games that kick-off right after 2PM EST while the remaining games all have 4PM EST or later start times so make sure if you are playing this slate you are checking line-ups before lock to ensure we have all the confirmations before we need for the later games. I am going to be busy today so going to make Picks and Pivots a bit more brief to give you my initial MLB DFS thoughts on today’s slates so let’s jump right in.
Starting Pitching:
We have five arms priced above $20K with Luis Severino, Blake Snell, James Paxton, Charlie Morton and Corey Kluber all available, but as always, my gut instinct is to find ways to pay down at pitching and there are some solid mid-tier arms that allow us to get two good arms and the high dollar stacks that can truly set the cash line.
Carlos Martinez ($16.3K) has been a totally different pitcher in his last two starts with 6 IP, 7-8 K’s and 2 ER allowed in each of his two starts against the Indians and Arizona and finally looks to have regained the form that routinely made him a high priced DFS investment, yet at $16K we are still getting a significant discount here today. Over his last two starts, Martinez has a 30% K rate with an impressive 14.1% swinging strike rate which gives me confidence in rolling him out again here today in a massive pitcher’s park in San Francisco against a Giants team that strikes out at the 8th highest mark (24%) against RHP this season.
Steven Matz ($12.2K) outside of a understandable hiccup in Coors Field has put up the following fantasy outings in his most recent turns – 25, 20, 19, 14 and 21 – so why exactly is he priced as one of the cheapest arms on the slate at home against the Rays? Yes, I understand he is going against Blake Snell so the win equity may be tougher to come by, but this price is just flat out too low for Matz when you consider his recent performance which includes 6-7 K’s in five of his last six starts. Since the beginning of June, Matz has a 23% K rate, 9% swinging strike rate and a 3.67 xFIP – and now he gets one of the weakest line-ups in baseball at his home park – this is an easy point per dollar play for me that opens up a ton of options for our offensive build.
Hitting Overview:
Another day and another chance to stack the Indians at home against a bad pitcher in Edwin Jackson. The Indians have the second highets implied team total and after scoring 10 runs last night, this is an offense that I think you need to prioritize on the early slate. Now Jackson has been very good in his two starts for Oakland, including a 6.2 inning, 6 K, 2 ER outing his last time out and interestingly enough he has won 10 straight starts versus the Indians but how is this any different than Paul Blackburn last night who came off a great outing against the Indians than proceeded to allow a Cleveland hit parade on Friday? The top 6 stack is firmly in play again today as Francisco Lindor, Jose Ramirez, Edwin Encarnacion and Yonder Alonso all have .200+ ISO marks against RHP this season and this Indians team is averaging over 6 runs per game at home, which is the most in all of baseball. Top stack on the board and with with the savings we get at SP it is not hard to make this build work at all.
The Rangers make for a nice cheap secondary spot to pick and choose pieces and although they let us down against Jordan Zimmermann last night, I think we can go attack Mike Fiers here today. Fiers on the season has a .214 ISO and 34% HC rate to left-handed batters so this is a spot where picking 1-2 bats from the Rangers and going HR hunting is a viable one-off strategy to put around an Indians stack. It sounds like Joey Gallo will be out a few days with blurred vission but there are enough options in the Rangers line-up to make picking and choosing pretty easy at all salary levels. Shin-soo Choo ($8.8K) is red-hot and has a team leading .255 ISO against RHP this season or you can drop down to Ronald Guzman ($6.5K) who is 7 for his last 15 including a HR.
Slate Overview: This slate is much like last night in that it is loaded with top end aces but once again, I like the idea (as I seemingly always do) of paying down for under-priced arms like Martinez and Matz and stacking up elite offenses like the Indians. Remember on FantasyDraft, you can stack up to 6 batters so going all in and locking Lindor, Ramirez, E5, Alonso, Brantley and Kipnis is something I find most people will not do so it gives you an advantage over the field that only takes 2-3 guys in their stacks and if the Indians go off (again) at home, you can easily pass the field!
MLB DFS – Main Slate Overview:
The main four game slate comes down to one decision – are you paying $27K for Mad Max at home against the Marlins? As great as Scherzer is, I just cannot see the roster build that allows you to feel good about the rest of your team on a four game slate so I will likely opt to pay down and pair guys like Robbie Ray and David Price who are both -170 favorite against the Padres and Royals respectively.
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Ray had a rough first outing off the DL but settled down after a bad first inning to rtire 13 of the next 15, striking out 7 batters and putting up a 17 swinging strike rate on 94 total pitches so I feel comfortable taking the discount here and paying under $19K for Ray which gives you $8K more to allocate to your bats. Price meanwhile is coming off a bad outing against the Yankees (which is a spot he usually struggles) but had put up 20+ fantasy points in four of his last five outings so I am willing to go right back to him here. Pairing Ray and Price gives you two very solid arms with legit K ability and you still have over $8K per batter to fill out the rest of your roster.
Offensively this looks to be a spot where I pick and choose a few spots for mini-stack with the favorite being Arizona at home against Tyson Ross. Ross is giving up a .200 ISO to LHB this season with a 40% HC rate so building around the higher priced bats like Jake Lamb and David Peralta and pairing them with cheaper guys like Daniel Descalsois a great way to attack the splits here in the late night hammer. The key value spot I will look to use is with the Angels as guys like Kole Calhoun ($5.8K) and Luis Valbuena ($6.8K) give you the salary relief to game stack this Dodgers/Angels game and load up on the higher priced Dodger bats like Max Muncy and Joc Pederson against Deck McGuire and the Angels pen.
Overall, as much as I love the spot for Scherzer, I can pivot down to a Ray/Price combo and get the Arizona/Dodgers elite bats which is a build that Mad Max owners will simply not be able to afford! Enjoy the slate all!
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.
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