MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday August 3
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.
What a bonkers night of MLB DFS we had on Thursday as offenses around the league went off and frankly, looking back I wish I had stayed with the Picks and Pivots draft line-up I posted early Thursday Morning. My goal going into the slate was to lock in Nick Pivetta who was extremely popular but came through with 21 FPTS and then stack the Braves, Nationals and Dodgers. Well the Dodgers went off for 21 runs while the Nationals scored 10 of their own and all while the Red Sox (15) and Rangers (17) were scoring runs at a crazy clip – so basically if you didnt have alot of offense, you were cooked on this night. The pitching ended up being frankly an afterthought, and my initial SP2 play of Brian Johnson ended up as the second highest SP scorer on the night with 24 FPTS only 5 points behind Mad Max! What a crazy night of MLB DFS – hope you all made some money or at least survived!
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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 – Main Slate Overview:
We have another nice slate to kick-off our weekend and we have similar weather concerns in many of the East Coast spots we had to navigate through on Thursday night as you can see below.
The weather pattern across the country is a repeat of yesterday; thus games in the East need to be watched for a delay threat: PHI, BOS, NYM, PIT and WSH. None of these games should be PPD and just like we saw in PHI last night, the delays should not last too long
— Mark Paquette; DFS meteorologist (@DFSMLBWeather) August 3, 2018
We have another slate with a handful of aces tonight with Justin Verlander, Jacob deGrom and Patrick Corbin all on the hill, with Yankees ace Luis Severino in a tough bounce back spot against the Red Sox. Of all the top end arms on the slate, Patrick Corbin ($20.2K) is my favorite top dollar spend as this is a pitcher with a 31.2% K rate against RHB and will face a Giants team that likely only has Brandon Crawford as the sole lefty San Francisco bat available to them. Corbin has faced the Giants twice since the beginning of June, going 6 innings in each outing, allowing only 1 ER per game, striking out 5 and 7 batters with 18 and 26 fantasy points in those two games.
If you want to pivot down to Marco Gonzales ($18.8K) I can see the case in cash games as this is a pitcher with 22 or more fantasy points in five straight and a 24% K rate over that time and Gonzales is a solid -168 home favorite while the Blue Jays have the third lowest projected run total on the slate.
My fellow CPR writer Adam Strangis had pointed me to Trevor Richards ($14.5K) yesterday and digging deeper, I think he may be on to something. Over his last three starts, Richards has put up 22 fantasy points in each outing with a 25.7% K rate and 12% swinging strike rate and as scary as the Phillies line-up can be at times, the Philles do lead the league in K % versus RHP this season at 25.9%.
German Marquez ($14.9K) is probably not an option that many will look towards on the road against the new look Brewers offense that is frankly loaded up and down, but based off his recent performance, we would be crazy to just overlook him. In four of his last five starts, the Rockies right-hander has put up 22, 25, 29 and 36 fantasy points against Dodgers, A’s, Mariners and Diamondbacks so has proven he can excel against top-tier offenses. Over this most recent five game stretch, Marquez has a 28.6% K rate and a 12.7% swinging strike rate so there is some upside here for a pitcher that will likely be ignored and we could get another big time outing at miniscule ownership.
On the other side of this game, I would not overlook Junior Guerra ($13.9K) at home where he has been amazing all year long. On the season, Guerra has a 2.45 ERA at home with a 24.6% K rate and has not had less than 15 fantasy points at home in any of his previous 7 home starts while averaging 19.5 FPTS. We just saw the Cardinals take advantage of a K happy team in the Rockies on the road as Martinez (9 K’s), Flaherty (7 K’s) and Mikolas (6 K’s) all had strong perfomances in similar spots.
The arm that will likely be chalky is Chris Archer ($15.9K) in this price point and it is hard to argue with the K upside here relative to his price point. Archer has always been dominant against right-handed batters, with a 27% K rate against RHB this season and this Cardinals teams outside of Matt Carpenter should be all right-handed. As Matt McGarvey pointed out in today’s Standouts column, the line movement has shifted big time in Archer’s favor and the Cardinals run total has dropped nearly half a run. This may be chalk we simply have to eat on this slate.
From a hitting perspective, this seems simple – I am going right back to the Nationals stack today against RHP Anthony DeSclafani. On the season, the Reds RHP is giving up a .400 ISO and 48% HC rate to left-handed batters – yeah, this is going to end poorly for the Reds again tonight. I would go right back to the lefty stack of Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Daniel Murphy and Matt Adams and would not overlook the red-hot Trea Turner who has 20+ fantasy points in his last three games.
My two favorite one-off plays tonight are Khris Davis and Nelson Cruz who get to face mediore lefties in Blaine Hardy and Ryan Borucki and considering Cruz (.391 ISO) and Davis (.200) are mashing southpaws, these could be some nice late night hammers to have in your roster. I actually like the Oakland bats as a nice low-owned late night stack as LHP Blaine Hardy throws his fastball nearly 33% of the time against RHB and has surrendered a .311 ISO so you can stack up Davis with guys like Matt Chapman and Jonathan Lucroy to take advantage of the splits. The Mariners/A’s are teams I will likely use to as lower owned mini-stacks alongside the chalkier Nationals to help differentiate my line-up tonight.
Last but not least – I can’t ignore the Dodgers tonight even against Justin Verlander as FantasyDraft has dropped the pricing on these bats significantly so if you need some value bats, you cannot argue with the caliber of hitter you are getting on guys like Cody Bellinger or Matt Kemp under $7K.
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: German Marquez ($14.9K)
SP: Trevor Richards ($14.5K)
IF: Matt Adams ($8.3K)
IF: Daniel Murphy ($8.1K)
IF: Trea Turner ($9.6K)
OF: Bryce Harper ($9.5K)
OF: Juan Soto ($10K)
OF: Khris Davis ($9.6K)
UTIL: Nelson Cruz ($8.7K)
UTIL: Cody Bellinger ($6.7K)
Slate Overview: I love the Nationals stack again today and the price points lead me to landing in the value range at pitcher so I will likely avoid the bigger name arms hit between Archer, Marquez, Guerra and Richards, I think I am OK with that approach on this slate. Good luck tonight all!
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