MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday August 26
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
Yesterday was a solid day for Picks and Pivots as we nailed our pitching on both slates as Lucas Giolito and Andrew Suarez were the top two overall scoring plays on the Early Slate and German Marquez and Mike Fiers put up 31 and 25 FPTS respectively on the Main Slate. We got home runs from guys like Kendrys Morales on the early slate and birthday boy Max Muncy on the main slate which helped drive the core of solid line-ups and get us set for a Sunday of MLB DFS action.
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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
Today’s MLB DFS pitching options are enticing in that we have guys like Blake Snell and Jose Berrios available to us but paying a premium to pick on the Red Sox and A’s red-hot offense seems like a spot where the risk outweighs the reward.
So where can we find elite K upside against a bad offense? Enter Michael Kopech ($18.9K) , the White Sox coveted right-hander who was sporting a 31% K rate in AAA prior to his call-up and dazzled in a rain-shortened outing his first start where he struck out 4 batters in 2 innings. Now it may seem aggressive to pay this premium for a pitcher who has all of two innings at the big league level but on this slate I think he is the top SP1 to invest in as he not only has an incredibly high ceiling but he has a much safer run prevention spot when compared with Snell and/or Berrios.
Today looks like a good day to go high/low on two pitcher sites so we can afford some of the big time offenses and with that in mind, A’s right-hander Chris Bassitt ($9.8K) looks like a strong point per dollar play against the Twins. Bassitt has made seven starts for Oakland this season, limiting LHB to a .019 ISO and RHB to only a .120 ISO and has racked up 22+ FPTS in two of his starts against the Royals and Tigers.
The Twins projected line-up has a 23% K rate against RHP this season which gives Bassitt, who has a 23% K rate in AAA this season, some added K upside in addition to his strong run prevention ability. Since going back down to AAA in the middle of July, Bassitt has pitched exceptionally well with 41 K’s in 42 innings of work with a 2.76 ERA and 1.11 WHIP and has thrown 90+ pitches in five of his seven outings so you are getting an arm at a punt price that has strong K ability and pitches deep into games against a bad offense – sign me up!
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Yes I know we have a game in Coors Field but it is hard for me to overlook the upside the Cubs offense has today at home, with the wind blowing out at Wrigley (5-7MPH) and Homer Bailey on the mound! Bailey on the season is giving up a massive .265 ISO to LHB with a 37% HC rate and against RHB it sits at a similarly lofty .193 ISO with a 49.7% HC rate – Bailey is by far the worst arm on this slate and the Cubs offense is going to be at the core of my roster builds today as a result.
Look up and down this projected Cubs line-up that has a .200+ ISO mark as a whole against RHP this season with guys like Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber and Javier Baez all with individual marks well over .200 on the season. The nice part about this Cubs stack is that outside of the three players mentioned, the secondary pieces all sit in a nice $7-$8k range on FantasyDraft so it is easy to mix and match the secondary bats like Daniel Murphy, Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward and Ian Happ.
I would focus on the left-handed batters first in this stack as Bailey leans on his fastball nearly 45% of the time against LHB this season and is giving up a .241 ISO mark using that pitch in 2018. If you look at the Cubs against right-handed pitchers who throw their fastball 93 MPH like Bailey does, you will see a line-up that feasts off this pitch type as Rizzo (.218 ISO), Schwarber (.174), Zobrist (.222) and Murphy (.200) in particular seem like ideal targets to take Bailey deep today!
One of my favorite parts of playing on FantasyDraft is that you can go with a full 6 man stack which means you need two one-off plays to fill out your roster and if we go with a full Cubs stack today that leaves me focused on two individual plays to fill out my roster.
First is Nolan Arenado at home versus LHP Austin Gomber – this one is pretty simple, Arenado in Coors against a mediocre lefty is like DFS 101 – you lock it in and move on. Secondly, I am going to continue to roll with the red-hot Kendrys Morales who has homered in five straight games and has 6 HR’s in that give game span. Morales will face off with Vince Velasquez today, a pitcher giving up a .204 ISO to LHB and 1.44 HR/9 – making this a tough spot to fade one of the hottest hitters in all of baseball.
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: Michael Kopech ($18.9K)
SP: Chris Bassitt ($9.9K)
IF: Nolan Arenado ($10.2K)
IF: Anthony Rizzo ($9.8K)
IF: Javier Baez ($9.6K)
OF: Kyle Schwarber ($8.2K)
OF: Ben Zobrist ($8K)
OF: Jason Heyward ($7.5K)
UTIL: Daniel Murphy ($8.3K)
UTIL: Kendrys Morales ($9.2K)
Slate Overview: With high-end K arms like Snell, Berrios and Kopech on the mound, I think paying up for one of the three is a must on this slate and with the value that Bassitt provides, going high/low on two pitcher sites gives you the ability to stack up all the offense you could want. Enjoy this Sunday MLB DFS slate and the rest of your weekend – we will see you back here on Monday.
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Best of luck in your MLB DFS contests across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and analysis!