MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday August 24
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.
Thursday’s MLB DFS split slates were a mixed bag for Picks and Pivots as our results on the Early Slate were strong backed by a roster build where we opted to pay up for BOTH Max and deGrom and game stack the Tigers/White Sox where we got HR’s from value bats like Jose Rondon and Ronny Rodriguez as low owned punts within our pitching focused build. The Main Slate worked out for cash games behind strong pitching from Sean Newcomb and our Oakland stack but the stance of fade Cole Hamels/stack against him and fade the chalk Cubs bats backfired as Hamels was the top point scorer on the night and the Cubs put up 7 runs at home in Wrigley.
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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:
One of the worst parts of having great pitching slates the day before is you know at some point the pitching will fall off a cliff and well today is one of those days we wish we had even a few of the options from Thursday’s loaded pitching slate.
Mike Foltynewicz ($21.1K) is the top arm on this slate not only in terms of price, but also in match-up (at Miami) and he has the highest K rate of any arm in action today so he seems to check all the boxes as an SP1. Folty just faced this same Miami team in Atlanta where he gave up only 1 ER in 8 innings with 7 K’s on his way to a 29.2 outing and followed that up with a 9K, 7 inning shutout for 31 FPTS against the Rockies, so it is safe to say Folty comes into this game in top form.
My initial reaction when I saw that Folty was the “ace” on the slate and knowing we had Coors Field available to us was to pay down at pitching and load up on bats but the more I think about it, won’t that be everyone’s default reaction? Without that must have arm, a deGrom, Sale or Scherzer, won’t people be more inclined to spend their salary on hitters today, specifically Coors Field, which could make Folty a lower owned contrarian play which seems odd to see when he is by far the best arm available to us and has the highest K upside.
The rest of the pitching options on this slate all scream mediocre – it feels like you are sorting through run prevention spots, hoping for 15-20 fantasy points and I have a hard time paying a premium for guys like Rich Hill when I simply do not see any arm on this slate outside of Folty capable of putting up a performance you just have to have in order to be over the cash line.
That leads me to the bargain bin and guys – let me be clear – it is UGLY. Not only are the cheap options bad but we also have a mid-tier that is stuck in terrible match-ups so this is looking like a slate where you want to avoid over paying but also where you may just want to get a decent SP2 outing and just get out alive.
Drew Hutchinson ($12.7K) will make the start for the Rangers and gets not only one of the best ballpark boosts heading to San Francisco, but will also face an absolutely ice-cold Giants offense. The Rangers right-hander is coming off a strong start against the Angels where he 5 innings, striking out 6 batters on his way to 19.65 FPTS and what really stood out to me was his near 19% swinging strike rate in that game which was by far his highest mark as a starter this season.
The other side of this coin is that Hutchinson was blown up in his first start by the Orioles of all teams so for as good as this match-up seems on paper, any SP who has been destroyed by Baltimore recently needs to be second guessed.
At the same price point, Gio Gonzalez gets a road start against Jason Vargas and the Mets and for as much as I dislike Gio, the price being this low against a team he has had success against is tough to just ignore. In his last five outings against the Mets, he has gone for 16, 17, 14, 23 and 25 FPTS and has never been priced below $16.4K so this $12.7K price tag today on Gio is a bargain within the context of his recent outings against the Mets.
Now Gio is also coming off a start where he got blasted for 8 runs by the Marlins so much like Hutchinson, this pick as an SP2 does not come without risk but the Mets have 6 of their 8 projected starters with 22% or higher K rates against lefties this season so there is upside here for Gio at a deflated price point.
Now if you are feeling crazy, Alex Cobb ($10.5K) at home against the Yankees would seem like an offensive stacking spot but with the way Cobb has been throwing lately it is silly not to consider him.
In his last four starts, which includes a start at Yankee stadium as well as starts against the Red Sox and Indians, Cobb has gone for 23+ FPTS against each of those top-tier offenses with a “floor game” of only 15 FPTS against the Rays of all teams. Cobb has given up 2 or fewer runs in each of those outings relying heavily on getting ground ball outs (51% of the time) and with the Yankees putting together a line-up without Sancez, Didi and Judge, this is a Yankee line-up I think we can actually pick on today.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
The game in Coors Field is going to be the obvious spot for offense with a near 11 Vegas total but with Miles Mikolas and Antonio Senzatela on the mound, I am not sure this is a spot we need to go all in. Now these arms are not by any means shutdown aces but they are arms that limit damage, specifically HR’s as Mikolas (0.69 HR/9) and Senzatela (0.52 HR/9) and both pitches limit HC which may set this game up to underwhelm those over pay the Coors Field premium for bats.
With that being said, I think my favorite stack on this slate is the Arizona Diamonbacks who despite “only” a 4.74 run projection, have one of the best match-ups against RHP Erasmo Ramirez tonight. Ramirez on the season has some truly awful numbers to hitters from both sides of the plate giving up an absurd .455 ISO to LHB and a 42% HC rate while surrendering “only” a .212 ISO and 50% HC rate to RHB.
The Mariners RHP will have to deal with David Peralta who might be the hottest hitter in baseball right now, with HR’s in his last four starts and is batting .427 since the calendar turned to August. Add on guys like Paul Goldschmidt, Eduardo Escobar and AJ Pollock to this stack and you have four hitters at the top of this Arizona line-up that are sporting .230+ ISO marks against RHP in 2018.
Well it is a day that ends in Y and the Dodgers are facing a lefty – so you know I am going right back to the old well here with the Dodgers RHB against Clayton Richard. Manny Machado, Justin Turner and Matt Kemp all have .200+ ISO marks against LHP in 2018 and this Dodgers team actually has had success against Richard with some BvP numbers that are worth noting. Kemp is 15-38 with 3 HR’s and Turner is 9-21 with an HR but perhaps the most interesting BvP is punt play Austin Barnes who is 9-17 with a .412 ISO mark and an HR against Richard in his career.
Offensively, this looks like a slate where the Coors game is going to be over-owned with the lack of high-end pitching and considering that the other high dollar offenses like the Red Sox, Indians and Braves all sit in bad road ballparks, I could see people simply defaulting to Coors. Arizona is my favorite pivot off Coors and we know at this point, the Dodgers ownership being in the late games is a spot I will go to every time against a bad left-handed pitcher. One more time – Let’s Go Dodgers.
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: Mike Foltynewicz ($21.1K)
SP: Alex Cobb ($10.5K)
IF: Paul Goldschmidt ($10.6K)
IF: Eduardo Escobar ($8.7K)
IF: Lucas Duda ($6.8K)
OF: David Peralta ($10.2K)
OF: AJ Pollock ($8.8K)
OF: Matt Kemp ($8.5K)
UTIL: Manny Machado ($9.2K)
UTIL: Austin Barnes ($5.6K)
Slate Overview: After looking over this slate and jumping into building a roster I took the approach of locking in Folty and a 4 man Arizona stack and then worked backwards fitting in Dodgers right-handed bats and seeing where they left me for my SP2. With no SP2 that I love, I took the approach of simply backing in to whatever arm of Gio, Hutchinson, Cobb, I was left with and although I do not feel strongly about any of them, I think there is a case to be made enough for each that they work if I am comfortable with the rest of my build. Enjoy your day all and let’s kick off the weekend with some wins.
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