MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday August 28
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.
So I must say, looking back at yesterday’s MLB DFS slate – that was one of the most difficult and uncomfortable slates I can re-call and frankly the fact I escaped with a positive bankroll night makes me quite happy. All day my plan was to go high/low at pitcher with Patrick Corbin and either Gerrit Cole or Sam Gaviglio and the more the day unfolded it felt like this Cole/Gaviglio/Tanaka tier was getting all the buzz and I started to wonder if paying up for a popular Corbin and a seemingly forgotten Gerrit Cole was the way to go. It meant going cheap with bats but the Mets stack/prices made a Corbin/Cole pairing possible and when lock hit and I saw guys like Gray at 50%, Tanaka at 35% and Gavigilio at 25% and the arguably the best arm on the board in Cole at only 13%, I felt good about my decision.
Now after early HR’s by the A’s, it really then came down to hoping the chalk mid-tier failed, specifically Gray, who got whooped by the Angels for only 2 fantasy points. Cole and Corbin each exceeded 20 fantasy points and although Jon Lester managed to wiggle out of trouble AGAIN, the trio of Michael Conforto, Kevin Plawecki and Amed Rosario generated enough offense to at least salvage our cash games on this night. I am happy to close this one and move on – phew!
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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 when you open up this slate and see top-tier arms like Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Aaron Nola, Charlie Morton, Walker Buehler, Jack Flaherty and Carlos Carrasco, my guess is that gut reaction will be we need to pay up for pitching just as mine was. However there is a catch tonight, the temperatures around the Majors are off the charts hot and we have wind blowing out around many of these ballparks which could turn this into one of those summer baseball nights where offense is how you win a slate.
If you want to pay up for any of the top-tier arms I mentioned I am certainly not going to argue with you but I think there is an interesting mid-tier tonight where you can chase guys that will get you around 20 FPTS and afford you the salary flexibility to pay up for the high-end bats we covet.
Lance Lynn ($15.4K) is the obvious mid-range choice tonight in the same spot Masahiro Tanaka was in last night but considering he is $3K cheaper and a massive -240 favorite, this should be the chalk SP2 choice at first glance. Lynn just faced this White Sox team in the beginning of August in one of his first starts for his new Yankee squad and was simply dominant with 7.1 scoreless innings, 9 K’s and 36 fantasy points. In 18 innings against the White Sox this season, Lynn has racked up 24 K’s and averaged over 24 FPTS in his three outings – this is not going to be a sneaky play by any stretch but considering this is the spot the industry loved with Tanaka last night, I do not see how you love this spot any less considering the price decrease and the history of upside in this match-up.
Speaking of a history of success in certain match-ups, Jakob Junis ($13.8K) gets to take on a Detroit Tigers team he has simply owned this season, with three 20+ fantasy point performances, going 7+ innings in each outing, surrendering only 4 runs in 22 innings while striking out 18 batters. After a brief rough spell in the middle part of this season, Junis looks to be rebounding nicely in his last four starts where he has exceeded 20+ FPTS twice (both at home as he is today), with a 28% K rate and 12% swinging strike rate in those last four starts.
So step back for a second and think about this slate if you were to go with a Lynn/Junis combination. Price wise, you are locking in two mid-range arms that allow you just under $8.9K on FantasyDraft to fill our the rest of your roster – getting all the high-end hitters the Scherzer/deGrom etc. owners will not be able to afford.
From a match-up perspective, Lynn is averaging 24 fantasy points per start against the White Sox while Junis is averaging just over 24 FPTS in his match-up against the Tigers. Now, past results cannot predict future performance and blah blah blah – this is more meant to be an illustrative view of how this slate could shake out. Considering the highest priced arm, Mad Max, just put up 28 FPTS in the same exact match-up he sees tonight against the Phillies – wouldn’t you take the salary savings on Junis/Lynn and hope they can replicate their same level of success while using the high-priced bats to make up the difference?
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Why don’t we go ahead and just rename this section the “Brian wants to stack the Dodgers again” part of Picks and Pivots. Listen, if I play the Dodgers every other night do you really think on a night where they get perhaps the biggest ballpark boost heading to Arlington, with a near 6 run total, in hot weather against arguably the worst pitcher on the slate in Ariel Jurado that I am NOT going to stack them?
Part of the reason I want to look at the mid-tier range for arms is that I want access to this Dodgers high-priced line-up and all its glorious upside against Jurado. Jurado is basically a one-pitch pitcher, throwing his sinker 65% of the time against LHB and 73% of the time against LHB so in an effort to find the best plays from the Dodgers – let’s focus in on how they fare against the sinker.
In 2018 – here are some of the team leaders against this pitch type from right-handed pitching – Yasiel Puig (.182 ISO), Chris Taylor (.241 ISO), Joc Pederson (.250 ISO), Matt Kemp (.304 ISO), Yasmani Grandal (.333 ISO), Max Muncy (.625 ISO) and Cody Bellinger (.722 ISO).
My focus is going to be on the Dodgers lefties tonight as Jurado is giving up a massive .314 ISO on his sinker to lefties this year with a paltry 0.7% swinging strike rate – no seriously, less than 1% swinging strike rate on a pitch he throws to lefties 65% of the time. You can mock my Dodger DFS love all you want – the stats do not lie – there is a reason Vegas loves this spot! Get as many Dodgers as you can build into your line-up and move on – it is that simple.
The other game that stands out to me on this slate is the Brewers and Reds from Great American Ballpark with a solid 9.5 run total of its own that will likely get over-looked considering neither team has a run total over 5. The Brew Crew faces off with Anthony DeSclafani, a fly ball pitcher who is giving up a whopping .290 ISO and 40% HC rate to left-handed batters which means the Milwaukee left-handed power ranks right up there with the Dodgers bats as my favorite stack tonight.
Travis Shaw (.287 ISO), Mike Moustakas (.241 ISO) and Eric Thames (.283 ISO) all mash RHP with each hitter sporting a 40% or higher HC rate in 2018. Thames specifically profiles extremely well against the two main pitch types of DeSclafani (FB/Slider) as he has a massive .375 ISO against his FB velocity and .381 ISO mark against the slider so far this season. Pairing the Dodgers and Brewers lefties gives you unmatched power upside on this slate and I think going with 3-4 man stacks of each team is the way I will approach this slate around some mid-tier pitching.
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: Lance Lynn ($15.4K)
SP: Jakob Junis ($13.8K)
IF: Max Muncy ($10.6K)
IF: Cody Bellinger ($9.7K)
IF: Yasmani Grandal ($9.2K)
OF: Joc Pederson ($9.4K)
OF: Austin Jackson ($5.9K)
OF: Eric Thames ($8.4K)
UTIL: Mike Moustakas ($8.3K)
UTIL: Travis Shaw ($9K)
Slate Overview: Even with all the top end arms on this slate, I am finding myself more inclined to allocate salary to the bats as the Dodgers and Brewers are two stacks that have massive upside in my opinion tonight. In order to make those stacks work, it means paying down at pitcher but with the track record of success/upside that Lynn and Junis have against their opponents tonight, I think there is merit to paying down for this mid-tier and letting the bats win you the day! Good luck all.
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