MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday September 25
Welcome to the Monday 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.
Remember yesterday when I said the last week of MLB DFS was extremely chaotic and full of variance? Well, shortly after publishing Picks and Pivots we found out that Tyler Anderson was scratched, the Yankees would opt to sit Luis Severino and the Mariners were going to limit James Paxton against the A’s.
The A’s took advantage of that move and pounded the Mariners bullpen on their way to clinching a postseason birth and we now officially have all the playoff berths clinched in the American League while the Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Dodgers and Rockies battle it out for the four remaining spots in the NL.
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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:
Much like I did on Monday, I am looking to narrow my player pool to only those teams with something to play for and starting right at the top, that means locking in Walker Buehler ($22.9K) as my SP1 tonight.
Over the last month, Buehler has a 34.5% K rate which is just 0.1% behind slate leader Max Scherzer and good enough for a top 10 mark in all of baseball during that time. Buehler has put up 27+ fantasy points in five of his last seven outings including back-to-back 34 and 37 fantasy point games in his most recent turns which gives you elite upside to build around for a Dodgers team that needs to win every single game.
One of those games, against this very same Arizona team, Buehler went 6.1 innings, striking out 9 and allowing only 1 ER which was good for 27.25 fantasy points. Buehler is the second largest favorite (-190) and Arizona has the third lowest run total on the board so this is looking like a cash game safe SP1 with the kind of GPP upside to outscore every other arm on the slate.
Finding a cheap SP2 is going to be key on this slate as we have a ton of bats to pay up for in addition to making a high-dollar investment in Walker Buehler as our SP1, but frankly the options are underwhelming.
Robbie Erlin ($10.9K) seems like the best play if you need a punt as he gets the best pitching environment and match-up with a date against the Giants in San Francisco. Now this is a match-up Erlin just had in San Diego where he was solid, but not spectacular, going 5 innings with 3 K’s and 3 ER for 11 fantasy points.
Not only will he get the benefit of facing one of the worst offenses in baseball during the second half of the season, but Erlin will also get an extremely pitcher friendly umpire calling balls and strikes – as if he or anyone else needs help pitching against the Giants in their spacious ballpark! The issue with Erlin is that he has failed to go more than 85 pitches in any of his last four starts which certainly caps the upside for a pitch who already has very little of it.
Basically if you are rostering Erlin, you are looking at his last three home starts (in a similar pitching environment to this game in SF), where he went for an average of 14 fantasy points ans you are simply hoping for a similar outcome in this game.
If you need a punt, Spencer Turnbull ($8.2K) is the cheapest arm on the slate and although I recommended him and got burned last time out, there is reason to go back here. Turnbull has a minor league track record of a 25-30% K rate across AA and AAA with a double-digit swinging strike rate and will be pitching in low 50 degree weather in Minnesota. Yes, this is the same team that smacked him around last start (45% HC rate and 6 ER) but that game log is what everyone else will see – so if you can stomach the risk and hang your hat on his minor league K resume – this punt SP2 gets you all the hihg-end bats you could possibly want.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
Another night the Dodgers need to win and another night with 90+ degree temperatures with the roof open at Chase Field. Last night, the Dodgers were able to put up 7 runs against Robbie Ray and the Arizona bullpen and now tonight they face-off with Matt Koch – a pitcher who finally had regression hit him hard after some initial early season success.
On the season, Koch is giving up a 45% HC rate to hitters from both sides of the plate with a .191 ISO to LHB and .256 ISO mark to RHB and will be tasked with navigating this loaded Dodgers line-up – good luck kid. If you crack the starting line-up tonight then you are in play for a Dodgers stack on this slate with the only real risk being pinch-hit risk for a team that has a deep bench and can mix and match as we get into the later innings as we saw them do last night.
Against right-handed pitching, the Dodgers projected line-up as an AVERAGE .251 ISO mark with every single batter except Brian Dozier (.196 ISO) sitting over .200 on the season. Seriously – a .196 ISO mark is the team low for this line-up.
My goal is to fit as many Dodgers into my line-up as possible tonight – this is a great all-in spot and although they are priced up, this late in the season we can almost guarantee some cheap value plays to fill in around them once line-ups are locked in,
If you want to scale back with only a 3-4 man Dodgers stack, you can use some of the mid-tier bats from the Cardinals and Brewers in a play-off type atmosphere as LHP’s Austin Gomber and Gio Gonzalez take the mound. Now neither pitcher here is “bad” as both arms are surrendering a sub .150 ISO to right-handed hitters this year but that also helps deflate the prices on some of the right-handed batters as guys like Ryan Braun, Marcell Ozuna and Jonathan Schoop are all under $8K tonight and get the platoon advantage on this match-up.
On the Cardinals side, Ozuna, Jedd Gyorko, Yairo Munoz and Harrison Bader all have .200+ ISO marks against LHP this season which makes then an intriguing bottom of the order power stack here tonight with the wind expected to be blowing out 7 MPH in St. Louis.
On the Brewers side, Jesus Aguilar and Ryan Braun have .260 ISO marks this season against southpaws so you could build an high-upside power stack in this game for a fraction of what it costs to fully stack the Dodger and either use a game stack here as a primary build or a secondary option around the Dodgers big bats.
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: Walker Buehler ($22.9K)
SP: Robbie Erlin ($10.9K)
IF: Yasmani Grandal ($8.1K)
IF: Cody Bellinger ($8.7K)
IF: Max Muncy ($9.6K)
OF: Joc Pederson ($10.4K)
OF: Marcell Ozuna ($7.4K)
OF: Ryan Braun ($7.6K)
UTIL: Jonathan Schoop ($6.7K)
UTIL: Yadier Molina ($7.6K)
Slate Overview: Much like Monday, my goal is to limit my player pool to the NL teams battling it out for the playoffs which means building around Walker Buehler and the Dodgers offenses in elite hitting conditions versus a bad pitcher in Chase Field. The Cardinals find themselves in a near must win game tonight so just like we have “pinch hit risk” with the Dodgers, I would argue the same applies to the Cardinals – this game is going to be managed like a post season game so just keep that in mind before you go all-in on any one stack as the players you build around could be limited to only a handful of at-bats.
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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!