MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday August 21
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s MLB DFS slate ended up being a solid one for Picks and Pivots, centered around Zack Wheeler who once again dominated for the Mets with a 10K, 30+ fantasy point outing. The biggest pivot I made during the day ended up being a critical one as once Kevin Gausman was scratched for Bryse Wilson, I moved off Twins LHP Stephen Gonzalves for him which allowed me to grab a few extra big bats. The Wilson play over Gonzalves was really all about salary – I could take the same rookie risk with a high K upside arm but could do it with a pitcher that was nearly $3K cheaper and that difference allowed me to get an extra Brewers bat into my line-ups. That slight difference in this instance worked for me but certainly could have backfired as the risk with Wilson and Gonzalves was about the same – on this night, fortune was on my side.
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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:
Let’s start this slate off with the first thing I noticed – weather – we have rain concerns in a few key spots including Pittsburgh, Washington, Chicago and Coors Field so this seems like a day we need to keep our eyes peeled on Twitter for weather updates as the day unfolds.
The second thing that really stood out to me on this slate was how ugly the pitching options were with the exception of the two studs at the top – Patrick Corbin ($23.1K) and Blake Snell ($22.2K) – who have by far the two highest K rates of any of the starters going tonight with 30.7% and 28.5% K rates in 2018 which rank 8th and 11th in the league respectively so far this season.
Both arms are massive favorites with Snell a -240 home favorite against the Angels and Corbin a -200 favorite against the Royals in Arizona and not shockingly, the Royals and Angels have two of the lowest run totals on the entire slate. I very rarely look to pay up at one pitching spot, let alone both, but on this slate I actually think that strategy may be warranted as you can target two arms with elite K ability and 13-15% swinging strike rate marks and that kind of K upside within the contest of this slate is going to be hard to duplicate.
Now there are potential pivots but I think they are dangerous ones. Jose Berrios on the surface would seem to have a great match-up with the White Sox but if you read Picks and Pivots you know I harp on Berrios extremely wide home/road splits and with this game being in Chicago (with rain risk), I am not sure it is a pivot worth making. Berrios does have a 10K outing versus this same White Sox team in 2018 but that was in Minnesota where he has an ERA nearly 3 runs lower and where he sees his K rate spike to 29%. On the road in 2018, Berrios has a mediocre 20% K rate and in his only start in Chicago this season, he went 6 innings, striking out only 2 batters on his way to 8 FPTS.
Stay in the same game and my guess is the buzz on White Sox top prospect Michael Kopech will make him a popular SP2 on this slate and although I love him in season long leagues I think this is a good spot to fade in his major league DFS debut. The K upside is obvious with Kopech, a 31% mark in AAA will tell you that, but the risk lies in his 11% walk rate in AAA and as we saw with Gonsalves last night, that lack of control at the major league level can make this unravel quickly.
I am sure people will use Masahiro Tanaka in Miami against the Marlins but we have seen this story time and again with Miami – they may not score runs but they are a pesky team that does not strikeout, in fact the projected lineup has only a 16.8% K rate versus RHP this season.
You want to chase “upside” with Tanner Roark, Kyle Hendricks, or Nathan Eovaldi? Fun fact – you actually cannot – they do not possess upside. I have tried to make Dylan Bundy work – it never does.
There is just nothing I can get excited about at pitcher tonight outside of Corbin and Snell and it is leading me to builds initially where I lock in both and spend my time sorting through the bargain bin for some cheaper stacks.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
We have five teams with 5+ run totals on this slate including a game in Coors Field, but if we opt to go with a Corbin/Snell duo, it leaves us just under $7K per batter on FantasyDraft which means paying for those high-priced offenses in Coors etc. is simply not doable in a salary cap world, so where does that leave us?
Can I interest you in stacking the San Francisco Giants, the team with the lowest ISO numbers of any team in baseball the last two weeks? Yes I know this team is ice-cold, scoring 39 total runs the last two weeks which is second worst in baseball in front of only the Cubs, but there is a price and match-up play to be had here as a cheap stack on this slate.
Steven Matz is making the start for the Mets and as much as Zack Wheeler was dominant in this spot last night, do not confuse his recent run with that of the Mets left-hander. Matz went to the DL with a forearm strain and returned against Philadelphia, only to give up 4 ER in 2 IP before being pulled and in fact this is a pitcher who over his last four starts has given up 20 ER in only 13 innings of work with a 2.63 HR/9 and 38% HC rate.
On the season, Matz has simply terrible splits against right-handed batters, surrendering a .222 ISO and 39% HC rate to RHB and the Giants are going to load up on righties in this spot at some great potential value.
Andrew McCutchen ($8.4K) is the only real “pricey investment” as the rest of the right-handed batters here like Evan Longoria ($6.5K), Buster Posey ($7.7K), Gorkys Hernandez ($6.8K) and Austin Slater ($6.5K) allow you a much cheaper platoon stack against the Mets left-hander.
The other intriguing thing about this stack is that we have seen Matz struggle to go deep into games since his forearm issue and the Mets are fresh off a 13 inning game last night where they used their bullpen for 6 innings so if the Giants can get to the Mets starter early, they could end up making this a bullpen game.
The numbers for the Giants are certainly not “strong” this year but against LHP they do have some nice ISO marks – Cutch (.174), Longoria (.226), Hernandez (.176) and Posey (.140) – certainly this is not a murderer’s row but there is enough here to make this a low-owned value stack that could do some damage.
If you ignore the fact the Giants are ice-cold (hard to do I know) and simply think of it this way – they get a huge ballpark boost out of SF, facing a pitcher who gets hammered by righties and has given up 20 ER in his last 13 innings – it doesn’t feel like a stretch to make this a stack you can use if you want to pay up at SP or work them around some higher priced hitting stacks tonight.
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: Patrick Corbin ($23.1K)
SP: Blake Snell ($22.2K)
IF: Evan Longoria ($6.5K)
IF: Buster Posey ($7.7K)
IF: Jonathan Lucroy ($5.9K)
OF: Stephen Piscotty ($6.6K)
OF: Gorkys Hernandez ($6.8K)
OF: Andrew McCutchen ($8.4K)
UTIL: Austin Slater ($6.5K)
UTIL: Chris Davis ($6.3K)
Slate Overview: Well kids, it is not the sexiest line-up I have ever built but then again it doesn’t have a Dodgers stack in it so you are probably already confused as to what article you are reading. It may not seem like the most upside batters but in an effort to pay up for both Snell AND Corbin tonight, this is the spot in which your salary cap will lead you. I think it is a viable strategy though considering the park upgrade and struggles of Matz lately that the Giants can finally do some damage and it would shock me if they are anywhere close to being owned considering their recent performance. Good luck today all – I will keep an eye on Twitter all day and do my best to pass on any information I can as it breaks.
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