MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday August 20
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Sunday’s MLB DFS Main Slate had a few key hits and some misses which prevented us from having a huge overall day but our core build put us in the position to drive past the cash line in the majority of our contests. Building around the arms of Luis Castillo and German Marquez proved to be a key decision, especially with Castillo, who was the top overall point scorer on the slate with a 6 inning, 9 K, 31 fantasy point performance at home against the Giants. Offensively, our top bat on the day, Eugenio Suarez, came through with a big HR but he was really the only offense we got to back our big pitching as the Brewers lefties let us down which was a shame when you consider all of Travis Shaw, Mike Moustakas and Christian Yelich were under 5% owned.
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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:
At first glance this may seem like a top-heavy pitching slate with names like Gerrit Cole and Corey Kluber on the mound but considering the match-ups, I have a hard time paying up for either ace on this MLB DFS slate. Cole at $26K on FantasyDraft is just entirely too over-priced when you consider he has only managed to go over 25 FPTS once in his last five starts and in that run was two starts against this exact same Mariners team he will face tonight – in those starts Cole managed to rack up 14.3 and 22.8 FPTS – solid starts for sure, but also not worth paying $26K for in my opinion.
Kluber on the other hand has been solid with 7 K’s in three straight outings but I cannot imagine paying $21.6K for him in Fenway against the Red Sox – both these arms will likely be lower owned than normal so there is the case in GPP’s for paying up as most will see exactly what I did, but I think there are better ways to attack pitching in the lower tier arms tonight.
Zack Wheeler ($18.1K) is priced back down after seeing his price jump to over $20K in his last start and gets a home match-up with a Giants team that just got destroyed by the Reds pitching staff over the weekend. In the last three games, arms like Luis Castillo (31 FPTS), Matt Harvey (25) and Anthony DeSclafani (21) have all had strong outings against a Giants team ranked dead last in ISO over the last two weeks. Wheeler has 7 or more K’s in five of his last seven starts while giving up 2 or fewer ER in five of seven starts as well so this is a pitcher who has K upside with an elite run prevention match-up which makes him an ideal target in any format tonight.
The mid-tier behind Wheeler is strong with a few names – Alex Wood, Chris Archer and Kevin Gausman all priced in the $12-$13K range and frankly, I think you can make the argument for any of them as your SP2 but the one pitcher I am focused on initially is Twins left-handed rookie Stephen Gonsalves ($11.3K) who will make his major league debut at home at the Chicago White Sox offense we have picked on all year in MLB DFS.
Gonsalves has shown some significant K upside (23% at AAA and 33% at AA this year) and the fact that he has a multi-pitch arsenal makes him very intriguing in his first start in the bigs.
"Gonsalves was a big name high-school arm who didn’t make a ton of progress in his draft year, working in the low-90s with a sinker, three pitches, feel, and projection, but a soft breaking ball that some scouts thought may never be consistently average. He’s still mostly that guy, with all of his pitches and command either projecting for 50 or 55, but his curveball has improved and now flashes above average.He still uses both the slider and curveball depending on the situation, and his length helps create plane for a fastball that sits 89-91, peaking at 95 mph, and plays up due to the extension he creates down the mound. Per FanGraphs.com."
The White Sox strike out at a Major League leading 26.3% rate versus left-handed pitchers in 2018 so the match-up frankly could not be better for the Twins rookie in his debut. Now this pick does not come without risk (a 13% BB rate in AAA is concerning) but the White Sox walk at a 7.8% rate versus lefties which is 7th lowest in baseball so the match-up screams upside here which makes him a nice pivot off the name value SP2’s like Wood, Archer and Gausman.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
One day after using the Milwaukee Brewers as my low owned stack (and seeing them dud), my guess is that they become the chalk stack today on a shorter slate where they have the highest Vegas total as of this writing with a home match-up against Homer Bailey.
Bailey on the season is giving up a .244 ISO to LHB and a .210 ISO to RHB with a whopping 51% HC rate – let’s keep it simple, any and all Brewers bats are in play here today. Go down the line and the numbers the Brewers have versus RHP this season is just eye-popping – Christian Yelich, Mike Moustakas, Eric Thames, Jesus Aguilar and Travis Shaw all have .200+ ISO marks with 41% or higher hard contact rates. This is one of those spots where I simply ignore ownership and play the best plays and on a site like FantasyDraft where you can stack up to 6 batters from one team, this could be an ideal spot to deploy that strategy and go all-in on what seems to be the best hitting spot on the board.
I promise you, I do not set out to do this every day.
But….
The Dodgers versus a lefty. Rinse and Repeat.
I actually played the Turbo Slate yesterday for the sole reason the Dodgers faced a lefty and they went out and put up 12 runs on the Mariners so I see no reason not to go right back to the well here today against LHP Austin Gomber. Gomber is not a bad pitcher by any stretch but a 41% HC rate and .160 ISO marks versus RHB are not going to deter me from deploying a Dodgers stack that once again is priced entirely too low with no batter over $9.2K on the roster.
One of the reason I like the Dodgers today is how they fit with the Brewers stack price and position wise. Milwaukee is expensive – with guys like Aguilar ($10.3K) Moustakas ($9.2K), Shaw ($9.2K) and Thames ($8.8K) so you can balance that with some of the Dodgers pieces especially in the OF like Matt Kemp ($7.4K), Enrique Hernandez ($7.5K) and Chris Taylor ($7.7K).
Keep an eye on the status of Manny Machado who underwent X-rays after being hit on the hand late in Sunday’s game and although the initial reports look good, it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Dodgers hold out their stud trade deadline acquisition with World Series goals in mind.
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: Zack Wheeler ($18.1K)
SP: Stephen Gonsalves ($11.3K)
IF: Mike Moustakas ($9.2K)
IF: Eric Thames ($8.8K)
IF: Brian Dozier ($8.5K)
OF: Khris Davis ($9.5K)
OF: Matt Kemp ($7.4K)
OF: Kike Hernandez ($7.6K)
UTIL: Travis Shaw ($9.3K)
UTIL: Jesus Aguilar ($10.3K)
Slate Overview: To me this slate breaks down more like a Tetris game in which I know the overall pieces I want (Wheeler, Dodgers, Brewers) and it then just boils down to how I make it all fit. You could make the case for a full on stack for either core offense here and much will depend on line-ups to see if bats like Machado or Thames are in the line-up but at first glance it seems relatively easy to stack both teams together by using the salary savings at SP2 with the Twins top prospect making his MLB debut. Good luck tonight all!
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