MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday July 25
![CINCINNATI, OH - JUNE 09: Jose Martinez #38 of the St. Louis Cardinals celebrates with Carlos Martinez #18 after hitting a solo home run in the first inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on June 9, 2018 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) CINCINNATI, OH - JUNE 09: Jose Martinez #38 of the St. Louis Cardinals celebrates with Carlos Martinez #18 after hitting a solo home run in the first inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on June 9, 2018 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape/cover/sport/4cb21a7e4df944f30d80f382b4d75270d4d7b6f29df9795da49ca1e5a6cdd2e4.jpg)
Welcome to the Wednesday 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.
Tuesday’s MLB DFS slate was all about pitching as Masahiro Tanaka led the way with a dominant 9 K complete game shut-out of the Rays for 44.5 fantasy points, outscoring the next closest player in Jose Berrios by 10 points. Offensively, the A’s and Rangers unloaded for 23 combined runs in by far the best stacking of the night – basically if you game stacks Arlington with Tanaka/Berrios you won all the money!
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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 Pitching
We get a nice little eight game early slate on FantasyDraft today which kicks off at 12:10PM EST and even though I am on vacation, I could not miss a slate with Jon Lester on it! With the “Main Slate” only having four games to choose from, I will spend my time on the early slate today.
The interesting thing about this early slate is that we only really have one stud to pay who is coming off a poor outing and no single offense projected to score more than 5 runs so where exactly is this “all-in” spot to spend our salary cap?
Trevor Bauer ($25.4K) is the obvious top dog on the slate, priced $6.5K higher than the next closest arm but coming off his worst start since the beginning of May, I wonder how many will let recency bias affect their decision-making here. Bauer struggled with his control in elite hitting conditions in Texas but still managed to strike out 7 batters and he gets a nice pitching umpire today back home in Cleveland.
We have a ton of high strikeout, albeit risky, arms at cheaper price points like Danny Duffy ($15.6K) and Robbie Ray ($14.6K) which sets this slate up to be a repeat of the first slate back from the All-Star Break when all three arms were on the mound in similar differing price tiers. On that night, Duffy (44%) and Ray (35%) dominated the ownership while Bauer sat at only 14% and I could see that number go even lower tonight as game log watchers balk at Bauer’s last outing.
We have a ton of strikeout arms on this slate including Jack Flaherty (29%), Walker Buehler (25.3%), Bauer (31.3%), Freddy Peralta (33.8%) and Ray (31%) so we have a variety of spots to chase K’s tonight if we opt to pay down from Bauer and absorb some of the risk.
Personally though, this looks like the ideal spot to jump back on to Bauer at reduced ownership as all the question marks and the isolated price point make Bauer someone I feel like people will opt to pass on when building rosters, allowing us to build around the single best pitcher on the slate with elite K ability.
I expect many will go back to Duffy and Ray, and I could see the case for Ray if guys like Kris Bryant and Javier Baez remain out for the Cubs, but I think Duffy remains the logical SP2 choice for as long as his price point remains at this level.
Look at Duffy’s game logs, outside of one bad outing against the Indians (totally forgivable), Duffy has been lights out while his velocity is up nearly 3 MPH in recent starts, sitting at 94-95 MPH when he was at only 91-92 MPH to start the season. Duffy has put up 21 or more fantasy points in five of his last six outings, striking out 35 batters over 32 innings while giving up only TWO ER in that stretch. Now the Tigers did light up Duffy earlier this season but this appears to be a different Duffy in recent outings, with the kind of velocity and swing and miss ability (11.4% SS rate over lats 6 starts) that we have seen in previous season.
MLB DFS – Early Slate Hitting
If you opt to pay down from Bauer on this slate, I would make a point of playing the ownership and stacking up the Indians high-priced bats against Jameson Taillon as last night we saw the Indians mostly single digit owned on FantasyDraft in GPP play and I think we could see the same thing again today but I am looking to build around Bauer which means I need to be a bit more cost-effective with my hitting choices.
The Cardinals were a popular stacking option last night against Homer Bailey and were largely underwhelming but this spot against Sal Romano is just as juicy and one I think we can go back to. Romano is giving up a .231 ISO to LHB this season with “only” a .184 ISO mark to RHB so while Matt Carpenter ($10.4K) is the premier play here, the beauty of this Cardinals stack is that the rest of it is largely inexpensive and you can attack a pitcher from both sides who gives up power. Marcell Ozuna and Dexter Fowler are both under $7K, while Jose Martinez at $7.7K gives us a relatively cheap three-man stack to attack one of the most hittable pitchers on the slate.
Romano relies over 60% of the time on his sinker, a pitch that lefites hit to the tune of a .309 ISO while righties are not far behind with a .219 mark and that is a pitch that the Cardinals have great numbers against. Since 2016, Carpenter (.309 ISO), Fowler (.230), Ozuna (.202) and Martinez (.171) and all with 37% or higher HC rates which makes this a great core to build around on this slate.
Also – it is Jose Martinez‘s birthday today, so yeah – you know what to do. #Narrative.
The Brewers are a team with a top 3 run total on the slate but I feel like could get over-looked here against Tanner Roark and the Nationals. In his last three starts, Roark has gotten blasted, giving up 17 ER in only 16 innings of work but with some really odd batted ball metrics. Normally we would see the hard hit rate spike in cases like this but Roark has actually been quite good in that stretch with only a 23% mark – however with 62% medium contact and a .456 BABIP, this looks like a case of solid base hits simply finding holes.
Roark relies on his splitter over 40% of the time to hitters from both sides of the plate and this Brewers team has some guys who simply demolish this pitch. Travis Shaw (.367 ISO against the splitter in 2018), Brad Miller (.273), Jesus Aguilar (.346) and Eric Thames (.444) have all excelled against this pitch in 2018 which means this could be another rough outing for Roark today.
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: Trevor Bauer ($25.4K)
SP: Danny Duffy ($15.6K)
IF: Jesus Aguilar ($8.9K)
IF: Eric Thames ($8.4K)
IF: Travis Shaw ($8.5K)
OF: Dexter Fowler ($6.5K)
OF: Marcell Ozuna ($6.8K)
OF: Jose Martinez ($7.7K)
UTIL: Brad Miller ($5.5K)
UTIL: Salvador Perez ($6.7K)
Slate Overview: With the going in position that Trevor Bauer will be pivoted off of in most line-ups, I think this becomes a day you opt to build around him while others take on risk with other lesser options. There is no must have offense in my opinion which makes building around pitching my preferred strategy here and I feel like with the price points on Duffy as an SP2 and the Brewers and Cardinals being relatively cheap, there is enough upside here to use this concept in tournaments as well. Enjoy your day all and we will see you back here tomorrow!
Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!