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.
Even on a night where our pitching choices were ugly, we continue to see pitching dominate MLB DFS as we go down the stretch as five of the top eight raw points plays on the night came from the mound with Dylan Bundy coming in as the top arm even against a dangerous and popular Oakland offense.
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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:
Over the last week or so as rosters and bullpens expanded and the weather got cooler, we have seen a pretty consistent trend of pitching being the winning formula to build around in MLB DFS. Tonight we have a strong top-tier of arms including Max Scherzer in Atlanta and overall we have three arms with 30% or higher K rates on the season which means we have clear paths to upside if we choose to pay up for pitching.
As much as I recognize the trends, it is hard for me to over-look what at first glance, looks to be a really strong mid-tier for starting pitching today which may lead me away from the higher priced arms on this slate.
Tyler Anderson ($13.1K) gets the largest ballpark boost moving from Colorado to San Francisco where he will take on a Giants team that is striking out at the highest mark in all of baseball the last month, 28.3%, which is over 2% higher than the next closest team. Anderson has faced this Giants team twice recently, both in Colorado and he struck out 7 and 9 batters in this outings. The projected Giants line-up has a near 23% K rate this season and LHP so when you consider the opponent, ballpark and strikeout upside, Anderson becomes my favorite SP2 on the slate and one of the best point per dollar arms available to us.
Zach Eflin ($13.6K) becomes a player on my radar anytime he is at home against a right-handed heavy team and tonight against the weak hitting Marlins line-up, he becomes another great mid-tier option. On the season, Eflin has a K rate 3% higher at home than on the road and that mark jumps to over 25% at home when he is facing right-handed batters. This Marlins team will likely only have 2-3 LHB in it, and as we know, they are not good ones, which is why Miami has one of the lowest team totals on the board. Eflin faced this same Marlins team on August 4 in Philadelphia and went for 25.6 fantasy points on the back of 8 innings and 6 K’s which seems like it is squarely in the range of outcomes tonight.
Jorge Lopez ($13.1K) is the same price as Tyler Anderson, who I expect to be quite popular on this slate, so I love the idea of using him as a pivot or even to pair with Anderson if you want to go all-in on bats. Lopez is a top prospect from the Brewers system that was sent to Kansas City in the Mike Moustakas trade and after living mostly in the bullpen has made five straight starts and looking like the dominant top prospect in his two most recent outings.
Two starts ago against the Orioles, Lopez went for 30.75 fantasy points with 8 K’s, 0 walks and only 1 ER allowed and followed that up with a near perfect game against the Twins, taking a perfect game into the ninth inning before a walk and a hit forced his exit but he still managed to 26.8 fantasy points on the back of 8 strong innings and 4 K’s against the very same Twins team he will face today.
Personally, what I like about Lopez is that this is a pitcher with a strong multi-pitch arsenal, relying on a strong fastball and a nasty 12-6 curveball as his “out pitch” especially against RHB where it has a 15% swinging strike rate so far in 2018. The knock on Lopez has also been in inconsistent control and we saw that in his first few starts with a double-digit walk rate but the last two games where he has walked only 1 batter in 15 innings of work shows you that when he is locating, his ceiling is sky-high.
On the other side of this game, if you are looking to pay “up” then Jose Berrios ($18K) against the Royals looks enticing. Berrios has made three home starts (where is he typically much better as his splits have shown all year-long) against the Royals, averaging over 23 fantasy points per start with 19K’s in 20 innings of work.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
We have two elite hitting teams on this slate, both with 5+ run totals, facing hittable pitchers in favorable hitter’s parks which makes the Yankees and Indians the clear top spot to pay up for hitting on this slate.
The Yankees let me down on Wednesday as a stack but tonight, back home in Yankee Stadium against RHP Marco Estrada seems like the perfect spot to go back to the well! Estrada on the season has a .212 ISO to RHB and a .280 ISO to RHB with a 55% fly ball rate to hitters from both sides of the plate which seems like a recipe for disaster against a healthy Yankee team in their ballpark.
Estrada has made one start in Yankee Stadium this year and the results were about what you expected – 5 innings and 5 ER with 3 HR’s launched by the Bombers. Giancarlo Stanton, Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorious are my favorite plays from the Yankees tonight as all three batters have a .230+ ISO mark against RHP since 2017 and Didi and Sanchez specifically are fly ball hitters which is what you want to prioritize here to take advantage of an extreme fly ball arm like Estrada.
The Indians will take on LHP Matt Boyd who is actually a much better pitcher than I think the industry tends to give him credit for, which is why I will not bother with the fringe pieces from the Indians and instead focus on the premier plays at the top of the line-up. Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez not only crush LHP (.230+ ISO marks since 2017) but they have also hit Boyd especially well if you want to play the BvP game. Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson both sit at reasonable price points at $8.5K which makes them easy add-ons to any Indians stack as both have the platoon advantage here tonight.
While the Yankees and Indians have the highest run totals, meaning they will be quite popular, I think the Angels bats are actually one of my favorite stacks to use around them tonight. The Mariners will not have James Paxton on the mound as scheduled as he stayed home due to a virus which means the Mariners will have to start either potentially Erasmo Ramirez a day earlier than they were planning or use a bullpen game with someone like Roenis Elias.
Either way this Angels team looks to be one we can use as the price points for this stack outside of Mike Trout are just super reasonable. Justin Upton and Shohei Ohtani are just over the $8K mark and perpetually under-priced Jose Fernandez ($5.8K) continues to be an elite value play to build around. I will keep an eye on who gets the start here but honestly – the fact that it is not James Paxton is really all we need to know to feel confident in an Angels stack.
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: Tyler Anderson ($13.1K)
SP: Jorge Lopez ($13.1K)
IF: Francisco Lindor ($10.2K)
IF: Didi Gregorious ($9.4K)
IF: Gary Sanchez ($8.5K)
OF: Giancarlo Stanton ($9.1K)
OF: Mike Trout ($10.5K)
OF: Shohei Ohtani ($8.1K)
UTIL: Jose Ramirez ($9.4K)
UTIL: Edwin Encarnacion ($8.5K)
Slate Overview: With so much strong mid-tier pitching today, it becomes really easy to drop down for high ceiling arms like Anderson, Eflin or Lopez and load up on all the top bats of the night. Keep an eye on the Mariners starter news and follow me on Twitter @2LockSports as I will update accordingly once we get more news – good luck and let’s crush this MLB DFS slate heading into a weekend of football.
Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest DFS news and fantasy sports analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings all season long.