MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday July 12
Welcome to the Thursday 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.
Before we start – have the Indians and Rockies stopped scoring yet? On a night where the Indians AND Rockies scored a whopping 19 runs, the question really came down to how much exposure did you have and did you pick the right bats. From Colorado’s perspective the damage was really done by Carlos Gonzalez and Charlie Blackmon, who combined for 3 HR and 9 RBI, while the Indians were propelled by a monster night from Jose Ramirez with 2 HR and 5 RBI. Even though the teams/stacks in theory were the story, it was really about having teams with these three players if you had any chance or hitting it big on Wednesday.
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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:
Holy pitching slate! I have been staring at this slate now for a solid 20 minutes trying to narrow down my player pool at pitcher and it may seem crazy but I think an argument could be made for nearly every arm on this seven game slate. So let me work backwards and give you some thoughts on how I am narrowing down my player pool and hopefully it will help you do the same.
Luis Severino and Corey Kluber – Two aces pitching against each other in Cleveland and with two high-powered offenses in the Yankees and Indians, this is a spot that feels like a total stay away from both the pitchers and the hitters as I do not want to pick on either offense and do not want to attack either elite arm. This feels like a 3-2 or 2-1 game that we can just hopefully ignore and limit our player pool tonight.
Tyler Skaggs is coming off the D.L. to face the Mariners and although he has been quite strong so far in 2018, my concern here is that we have a pitcher coming off an abductors strain a week before the All-Star break. This looks like the perfect spot to “get him some work” but not push him too hard and let him get an extended break next week – not sure I want to go here.
Wade Miley is the defacto punt option at $9.2K but he has only gone 4 innings in his previous two rehab stars so I am skeptical you get anything meaningful from him today. I actually toyed with using the Pirates hitters here today but my worry is that Miley goes 4-5 innings and then Milwaukee brings in Josh Hader who pitched two days ago and that crushes any potential from the Pirates hitters in a bad ballpark for hitting.
The question for me at the top comes down to whether I want James Paxton or Blake Snell as my SP1 (I know, no Max, more on that in a second), and assuming the weather holds in Minnesota, I think Snell is going to be the guy I build around tonight. It looks like we have some strong thunderstorms early that could cause a delayed start and then this plays clean but I will get some twitter weather information and pass that on to confirm.
On to Snell – a pitcher with a 29% K rate and 13.6% swinging strike rate this season – will take on a Twins team that has the 4th highest K rate in baseball this season against LHP (24.1%) and will face a projected line-up with a .115 ISO against LHP this season. Snell is making his first start since his All-Star snub so the narrative is in full effect here and his recent form is just off the charts as Snell has a 35.8% K rate and 16.8% swinging strike rate over his last three starts against the Mets, Astros and Nationals. Snell to me is the best arm on the slate and I can get him at a discount over Paxton/Scherzer tonight.
So why am I not on Max Scherzer tonight? No this is not my Mets homer-ism and believe me I am not scared of a line-up with Matt den Dekker and Jose Reyes but as crazy as it may sound, I simply am prioritizing LHP Steven Matz ($12K) in the same game. Wait what?
I don’t know why Matz’s price never seems to move but if you remove his one game in Coors here are his last six outings from a FantasyDraft points perspective – 17, 25, 20, 19, 14 and 21. Matz is literally the perfect SP2 play in that you are getting 6 innings and 5-7K’s while limiting runs and although the 4 points for the win is in serious jeopardy against Max (and the Mets line-up backing him), the point per dollar value is extremely strong. Matz has been able to stymie lefties with a 0.082 ISO this season and actually has good history against this team (less Mark Reynolds BvP), including two starts this year where he struck out 6 and 8 batters on his way to 13 and 24 fantasy points earlier this season.
The interesting thing about both of those starts is they were early in the year when Matz was still being treated with kid gloves, throwing only 74 and 93 pitches in those games but if you look at his recent turns, Matz has thrown 100 or more pitches in six of his last seven games with his “low mark” being 97 pitches in Coors. When you are talking SP2’s at this price point, how many are you going to get that give you this much consistency both from a pitch count and performance perspective and with so many locking in Mad Max, Matz is a nice leverage play off the field.
The one arm that is kind of in no mans land that I do like today is Ross Stripling ($17.8K) who will face a Padres team in San Diego in perhaps the best pure pitching environment and versus a team he struck out 10 batters against with 35 FPTS last time they met. The issue for me is that you are paying for that ceiling game when Stripling has really been more of a 6-7K guy in recent turns living in a fantasy point range similar to Matz for nearly $6K cheaper. I like Stripling if you land there, but I think going high/low tonight with Snell and Matz is how I am going to attack this slate.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
The really interesting thing about this slate is that finding the hitting stacks is just flat-out tough with two of the best offenses (Yankees/Indians) facing elite arms and weather across the slate is really getting cooler and becoming way more pitcher friendly after a heat wave across most parks. The one team that stands out tonight is the Boston Red Sox against J.A. Happ and as the only team with a 5+ run total on the main slate, this is going to be the offense that everyone prioritizes.
The reality is though, the Red Sox cannot hit left-handed pitching – they just cant. Remember on Monday when everyone stacked them against LHP Mike Minor and he proceeded to go 5.1 innings, giving up 2 ER? This team outside of the big three – Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and now Steve Pearce (versus LHP only) are really not that great this year with 5 hitters at the bottom of this projected order with under a .130 ISO against LHP.
I think this is a stand you take tonight and fade the Red Sox stack BUT, I would play Steve Pearce ($9K) as a one-off here. He is going to be super popular especially considering the stack popularity, but this guy has not only crushed LHP this year with a .271 ISO but he also gets revenge against the team that traded him and oh by the way, he owns J.A. Happ – 10 for 28 with 5 HR and a .600+ ISO. Yeah BvP play of the day.
After two nights where the Los Angeles Dodgers faced left-handed pitching, I think tonight is the night you fire up this stack as your pivot off the Red Sox against RHP Tyson Ross. Ross on the year is giving up a .202 ISO to LHB with a 38.5% hard contact rate and a 10% walk rate compared to only a 18% K rate.
I have been beating the drum all year-long but the Dodgers against RHP are a juggernaut – with a projected line-up that has a .239 ISO versus right-handed pitching this season with 6 batters having a .200+ ISO mark since 2017 with their “worst” hitter being Justin Turner at “only” a .172 ISO. In 2018, this projected line-up has a 41% HC rate against RHP but with a mid 4 run projection in San Diego, my guess is that this stack comes in at a fraction of the ownership that the Red Sox do. I am all in tonight on this stack, starting with the core four lefties – Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson, Max Muncy and Yasmani Grandal but do not overlook Andrew Toles who has a .186 ISO against RHP since 2017 (over 100 PA) to round out this stack.
If you are looking for a cheap one-off, and are not playing Mad Max (and maybe even if you are), the Mets are getting a massive discount tonight (rightfully so) and we can get Michael Conforto for only $5.8K on FantasyDraft. That is $100 more than Matt den Dekker by the way. Conforto has always fared well versus Scherzer, going 6 for 18 with 3 bombs off him in his career and we know for as good as Scherzer is, he is going to give up a home run or two in addition to his lofty K totals. If you opt to fade Scherzer, Conforto is one of the best salary saving one-off plays on the board in my opinion.
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: Blake Snell ($22.9K)
SP: Steven Matz ($12K)
IF: Steve Pearce ($9K)
IF: Cody Bellinger ($9.2K)
IF: Yasmani Grandal ($8.4K)
OF: Max Muncy ($9K)
OF: Joc Pederson ($8.1K)
OF: Andrew Toles ($7.2K)
UTIL: Chris Taylor ($8.3K)
UTIL: Michael Conforto ($5.8K)
Slate Overview: The way this slate boils down to me at first glance, writing this at 6AM EST, is we should prioritize at least one of the top three arms with Max, Paxton or Snell and for my money, pairing them with Matz as your SP2. The real decision you will have to make is whether to eat the Red Sox chalk against Happ and honestly outside of a Pearce one-off, I think I am OK with this fade when you consider Happ has dominated the Red Sox the last two times he faced them including once this year with a 1 ER, 10 K outings. The biggest thing for me will be watching the weather in Minnesota to make sure Snell is safe and if not, pivoting off Snell to Paxton will probably be the preferred route but with 12 hours before lock – I am going to enjoy this first look before I tinker with it and end up on a Rays/Pirates stack 2 minutes before lock. Enjoy the day all!
Next: DFS MLB Game by Game Breakdowns
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