MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Saturday August 25
Welcome to the Saturday 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.
You know how when people have a bad night in MLB DFS and they say, well that is variance for you? Last night was that night for me and frankly any night Jason Vargas is one of the top raw point scorers on a slate is probably a night I should have taken off and/or just lit my money on fire. In all honesty most of my core was strong with Folty/Cobb on the mound and the Dodgers went off for double-digit runs but the low-owned Arizona 1-4 stack I made a point to build around was a complete dud as I get SEVEN total fantasy points from the top four in the Arizona line-up – Goldy, Pollock, Escobar and Peralta. I do not want to live in a world where Jason Vargas out scores those four guys combined by 25 points – stupid variance!
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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/Turbo Slate Overview:
The five game early/turbo slate today is an interesting one in that there is no build right off the bat that jumps out to me so which means we have to dig a bit deeper to build our MLB DFS line-up. From a starting pitching perspective there are two arms that I assume will be the chalk/popular investments in Rick Porcello and Zack Wheeler, mostly because the rest of the options are less than ideal but paying $20K+ for these arms feels aggressive and not the optimal use of salary.
Sure Porcello gets a great match-up and ballpark pitching in Tampa but do I really want to pay over $21K for an arm with a 23% K rate who last time he went into Tampa pup up NEGATIVE fantasy points? If I am paying that much for a pitcher, I want not only upside but also the elite safety and I am not sure Porcello gives you either one.
As much as I love Wheeler as a Mets fan, this Nationals line-up is still very dangerous and I feel like his recent game logs and the fact that Jason Vargas dazzled last night will jack up the ownership even more on Wheeler and listen, I have seen chalk Zack Wheeler nights (at Baltimore two starts ago) when he was priced in a similar range and was knocked around for only 14 FPTS.
Rather than pay up for pitching, I am fine living in the mid-tier today and letting my bats do the talking.
Lucas Giolito ($14.6K) will still have his rough starts from time to time but this is a pitcher who over his last seven starts as put up a 23% K rate, 10% swinging strike rate and has gone for 16+ FPTS in five of his seven outings. Giolito will be taking on a Tigers team in Detroit, a match-up he just had and went for 20 FPTS on the back of 6 innings, 7 K’s and 3 ER’s.
Andrew Suarez ($13.1K) is not an arm I usually roster in MLB DFS but he gets an interesting spot today where he is pitching at home in one of the best pitcher’s park against a Rangers team that strikes out a ton against lefties and loses the DH. Suarez at home this year sees a 3% uptick in his K rate (to 22%) when pitching at home which seemingly matches up perfect with a Rangers team with a top 5 K rate against LHP in 2018 at over 23%.
The beauty of rostering both Giolito and Suarez is that you can load up on bats and on this slate there is one clear elite option I want to stack up – The Boston Red Sox. This is obviously not about the ballpark as Tampa Bay is not the best spot to stack offenses and Ryan Yarbrough is an impressive left-hander, one night after Jalen Seeks was able to stifle this Boston offense. This is all about playing the talent and metrics as the big Red Sox bats simply mash left-handed pitching as Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and Steve Pearce are all sporting a .200+ ISO against southpaws this season.
Nick Pivetta has been a pitcher we have used this year due to his high K upside but on the road in Toronto today, this could be a spot we load up on the Jays bats as Pivetta is surrendering a 1.64 HR/9 rate with a whopping 50% HC rate to lefties on the road this season. Kendrys Morales is on an insane HR heater and you can stack him around left-handed power bats like Curtis Granderson and Justin Smoak for a full on secondary stack around the more expensive Red Sox top-tier bats.
MLB DFS Sample Line-Up and Early 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!
SP: Lucas Giolito ($14.6K)
SP: Andrew Suarez ($13.1K)
IF: Justin Smoak ($7.4K)
IF: Kendrys Morales ($9.2K)
IF: Steve Pearce ($8.5K)
OF: Mookie Betts ($10.2K)
OF: JD Martinez ($10.1K)
OF: Curtis Granderson ($8.4K)
UTIL: Xander Boegarts ($9.9K)
UTIL: Rhys Hoskins ($8.6K)
Slate Overview: Any time we get a short slate like this I try to see if there will be chalk plays I am fine with fading and I think Porcello and Wheeler are those plays for me. Not only do I think they are over-priced, rostering them makes stacking the high-priced Red Sox a near impossible task which seems like an awful trade-off considering the lack of top-tier offenses available to us today. Stack the Red Sox and Blue Jays and hope that Giolito and Suarez can get me 15-20 FPTS each – it is as simple as that!
MLB DFS – Main Slate Overview:
It would be easy to open tonight’s Main Slate, see Corey Kluber, Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw and think – OK this is a pay up for pitching kind of night, but then you look at the bats and see a Coors Field game, the Dodgers with a near 6 run total and big time offenses like the Indians, Yankees and A’s on the board and now the tough decisions begin – these are the slates I love.
The interesting part about this slate is I think the mid-tier pitching is strong enough where you can make the case to fade paying up for the top three arms and instead roll in the range of guys like Mike Fiers, German Marquez and even Robbie Ray.
Mike Fiers will take the hill against a watered down Twins line-up and will come into this start with 20, 24 and 33 FPTS in his last three outings. In those three outings against the Mariners, Dodgers and Rangers, Fiers has a massive 32% K rate with a 12% swinging strike rate and it is that kind of upside that give him elite point per dollar upside at only $16.8K.
If German Marquez was not pitching in Coors, I feel like we would be all over him tonight, but in fairness he also likely would not be only $15.1K. Just look at the numbers – Marquez has a 30.1% K rate against RHB this season and will face a team tonight in the Cardinals that will have 6-7 right-handed batters in the line-up. Marquez has put up 20+ fantasy points in 8 of his last 9 starts including three starts in Coors Field so this is a spot where I will play the talent and splits and overlook the Coors Field effect.
With Fiers and Marquez, you can load up on bats and with a near 6 run total against a pitcher in Brett Kennedy who has a 45% HC rate and only a 12% K rate – you know I am going to love me some DODGERS tonight – come on, you totally saw that coming right?
The projected Dodgers line-up has a .250 ISO against RHP this season with Justin Turner the only bat under a .200 ISO against RHP on the year. The lefties like Cody Bellinger, Yasmani Grandal, Joc Pederson and Max Muncy are where I would start and would have no issue mixing in Manny Machado to complete this stack.
I used Stephen Gonsalves in his first start, but tonight I want some Oakland bats against the left-hander who carried over his minor league control issues to the major league level and facing big bats like Khris Davis and Matt Chapman in the heart of the Oakland line-up seems like a disaster waiting to happen!
MLB DFS Sample Line-Up and Main 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 ($15.1K)
SP: Mike Fiers ($16.8K)
IF: Cody Bellinger ($9.2K)
IF: Max Muncy ($9.3K)
IF: Yasmani Grandal ($8.4K)
OF: Joc Pederson ($8K)
OF: Khris Davis ($9.8K)
OF: Chris Davis ($5.8K)
UTIL: Matt Chapman ($8.1K)
UTIL: Manny Machado ($9.5K)
Slate Overview: We certainly have some great top-tier arms tonight to spend up on but the mid-tier is strong enough with Fiers/Marquez that I am comfortable paying down and stacking up the bats I really want – aka the Dodgers. Using Chris Davis at near minimum price against Sonny Gray feels like a HR cheat code and opens up a bath to all the bats you could possible want within this build! Good luck all!
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