MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Thursday September 20
Welcome to the Thursday 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.
All day long Wednesday I was prepared to eat the Chris Archer chalk but when I saw that Arizona line-up come out with essentially a group full of created players from a video game that I was not sure were actual MLB players, I went all-in on Cole Hamels who ended up at a third of the ownership of Archer. I felt great once I saw those ownership percentages – hoped Archer chalk flopped and Hamels would go bonkers – well, Archer dominated and Hamels stunk it up and I am now officially ready for the next MLB DFS slate.
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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:
As we head towards the last few slates of MLB DFS this season, I have mentioned this a few times, but my goal is to focus on tournament play only and scale back my bankroll a bit,simply understanding and embracing the variance that comes with the last days of a baseball season.
With that context – I am puzzled on what exactly to do with Max Scherzer ($24.9K) today pitching in New York against the Mets. Mad Max is the clear top dog on this slate, really the lone SP1 with a slate leading 32% K rate over the last month and as a road favorite of -260 and a Mets team with a run total that is lowest on the slate at 2.7, he is the clear cash game play but on a seven game slate, should we look to fade him in tournaments?
Over his four most recent outings, Scherzer has given up 15 runs in 25 innings with at least 3 ER in each start but look closer and you see a 27% HC rate and a .340 BABIP during those starts which means that the recent bump in the road may be more bad luck than a sign of slowing down.
Scherzer does have one start against the Mets in Citi Field earlier this season where he went 7 innings, striking out 5 and giving up 2 HR’s and 3 runs on his way to a rather pedestrian 19.55 fantasy points. The reality is, this Mets offense is one of the best in baseball right now – laugh if you want – but the truth is, they have 21 HR’s over the last two weeks which trails only the Dodgers during that time frame and rank in the top 4 in all of baseball in runs scored and ISO during that time period.
So if not Max….than who? Masahiro Tanaka and Eduardo Rodriguez are in the next tier of arms but their match-up against the Red Sox and Yankees offenses are just not ones I am going to go out of my way to target.
Matt Boyd ($18K) seems like the logical pivot as an arm with a 28% K rate over the last month, ranked 20th in all of baseball and trailing only Mad Max of the available pitchers on tonight’s slate. Boyd will take on a Royals projected line-up with a K rate of 23% against LHP this season but for as much K upside as they have, they also has pop as they put a hurting on Boyd just a few starts ago with 7 hits and 5 ER while Boyd managed only 5.5 fantasy points in a start in Kansas City.
Jorge Lopez ($14.8K) on the other side of this game could be an interesting mid-range GPP target assuming people only look at game logs and see the DTD tag next to his name. Lopez was the big arm the Royals got in the Mike Moustakas trade who stepped into the KC rotation and made two impressive starts against the Twins and Orioles where he went 15 innings with 12K’s and put up 27 and 31 fantasy points.
His last start against the Twins based off the game log in only 4 innings was not quite so hot and he left in the fifth inning with a rib issue which only further limited his fantasy output. Dig deeper into that game and you are going to see a BABIP fest – a .429 BABIP on a 62% GB rate and only a 28% HC rate. Digging into the StatCast data from that game and he has an average EV of 88.9 and Launch Angle of only 5 – basically what all this data is telling you is that the Twins got REALLY lucky with a series of weak hits that found the hole. Of the 9 hits he allowed in that game, 8 were singles so do not be so quick to write-off Lopez here tonight knowing the kind of upside he showed in his previous two outings.
Cody Reed has now made four starts for the Reds throwing 91 pitches in his last outing, his most of any start this season and he simply dominated the Cubs with a 10 strikeout effort that notched him 28 fantasy points. Tonight Reed will take on the Marlins, in Miami, a team we know has a weak offense but throughout the season has been tough to strikeout – well not anymore. Over the last two weeks no team in baseball has struck out more than Miami, with a 29.5% K rate and going back a full month, they rank 4th with a 25.7% mark so there is more K upside than we had earlier in the season and at only $11.3K, Reed makes for a nice point per dollar play.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Looking at the weather for tonight’s MLB DFS slate, we have no rain issues pending and there is one spot that looks to be the ideal hitting environment with 85 degree temperatures and 9-10 MPH winds blowing straight out. That game just happens to feature the best offense on the slate in the Cleveland Indians and they get the oh so fun match-up with James Shields.
This one is pretty simple – you go ahead and stack up all the top Indians bats – sure they are pricey but if you are playing the fade game of Max Scherzer, you will be able to stack 1-6 in this Indians line-up without any issue and this also is a stack that those who do go the Mad Max route will not be able to afford.
The other side of this game though is where I think you can be a bit different and full on game stack the Indians hitters with the Chicago White Sox big bats. Josh Tomlin will make the start for the Indians and over the last two seasons this is a pitcher giving up a .252 ISO to LHB with a .226 ISO to RHB with a 40% FB rate and just under a 40% HC rate. Sure the White Sox strike out a ton, but they also have some serious power bats in the heart of this line-up as Daniel Palka, Matt Davidson and Avisail Garcia all have .200+ ISO marks against RHP since 2017.
There is going to be so much focus on the Indians bats with a bad pitcher on the mound and the hot weather with wind blowing out, but all those exact same factors apply to the White Sox and their hitters will be a fraction of the ownership on this slate.
If you want a little extra leverage play on Max Scherzer than I love the idea of using Michael Conforto as a one-off as the Mets OF is one of the hottest hitters in baseball right now, with 5 HR’s over the last two weeks and has actually owned Scherzer in 21 career at-bats, going 7-21 with 3 HR’s and a .429 ISO mark.
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: Jorge Lopez ($14.8K)
SP: Cody Reed ($11.3K)
IF: Francisco Lindor ($10.1K)
IF: Edwin Encarnacion ($9K)
IF: Yonder Alonso ($8.3K)
OF: Jose Ramirez ($10.6K)
OF: Michael Conforto ($9.2K)
OF: Avisail Garcia ($9.4K)
UTIL: Daniel Palka ($9.1K)
UTIL: Yoan Moncada ($8.1K)
Slate Overview: After reading my starting pitching overview, you probably thought well great – he is telling me to fade Max Scherzer and then simply listed off a bunch of maybes without any definitive recommendation – and that is exactly right. My goal here today is to work backwards – stacking the bats I want to have and then working in reverse to find two SP options that work within that build.
The reality is, anyone who pays up for Scherzer tonight is going to either need to punt at SP2 with someone like a Sam Gaviglio and utilize value bats which means they cannot afford the pricey Indians hitters in what appears to be the perfect spot for a huge night. So fade Max, leverage with a Conforto HR at low ownership and prioritize an Indians/White Sox game stack with the best hitting weather on the slate and two arms that the metrics tell us should give up multiple long balls in this one. Enjoy the slate – I will be tilting my MLB DFS picks while watching a little Jets-Browns Thursday Night Football. Good luck!
Thursday Night Football - Fantasy Preview - Jets Vs. Browns. dark. Next
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!