MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Wednesday September 26
Welcome to the Wednesday 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.
With only a few days left in the MLB DFS regular season, the standings got that much tighter after Tuesday Night’s action as the Milwaukee Brewers now find themselves just a half game behind the Cubs in the NL Central, while the Rockies are only a .5 game behind the Dodgers for the NL West and all while the Cardinals sit just .5 game out of the Wild Card – it is going to be a crazy last few days in the National League!
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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:
For the last time this season we get the privilege of watching Jacob deGrom ($25.9K) taking a baseball mound in what should be a Cy Young season for the Mets ace. Over the last month, deGrom has a 34.6% K rate, is coming off back to back 30+ fantasy point games and has double-digit K’s in three of his last six trips to the mound.
The only real negatives you can say about deGrom here today are the price and the match-up, against a Braves team that rarely strikes out and works deep into counts but that certainly has not stopped deGrom in this match-up so far in 2018. deGrom has faced the Braves five times this season – averaging just under 26 fantasy points per game with 47K’s in 40 innings of work. Yes, deGrom is priced up but he is arguably the best pitcher in baseball and this Cy Young chase has pushed his game to a whole new level – I expect it one last time this evening.
German Marquez ($19.6K) is actually the best strikeout arm on the slate tonight and that is saying something when you go up against deGrom – but the stats speak for themselves – Marquez has a slate leading 37.3% K rate over the last month which ranks third in all of baseball behind only Blake Snell and Justin Verlander.
The stat that really jumps out to me though is the swinging strike rate, which is a massive 17.9%, again behind only Snell and JV during that time period as Marquez has put up elite 30+ fantasy point outings in three of his last five starts.
So we have an elite K arm, on a team with everything left to play for – you can make the argument to use Marquez as your SP1 pivot or opt to pay up for deGrom and Marquez here and pay just under $7K per batter with some value across the slate.
My honest take – I do not like the value options or mid-tier on this slate as I think the opportunity cost for missing on pitcher is simply too high. We have cool weather in almost every park on the slate (outside of Arizona really) so this looks like a slate approach much like we had early in the MLB DFS season where you prioritize the arms and find the value bats and stacks to make it work.
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
If you are looking to pay up for two elite arms like Jacob deGrom AND German Marquez tonight, it means you have under $7K per batter to build your line-up so go ahead and cross off the Rockies bats from your player pool now – you are not going to be swimming in that player pool on this slate.
Now, that does not mean you have to stack the Marlins or pick and choose some slap hitting one-offs to make this build work – this is power upside to be had in some cheaper stacks like the Chicago White Sox as they take on the Indians and RHP Shane Bieber.
Bieber is going to get the start for the Indians here today after a series of less than stellar outings in hopes he can figure things out and be a bullpen arm for Cleveland in the playoffs. Bieber has given up at least 3 ER in 7 of his last 8 outings which includes 11 ER allowed in his last two outings where he surrendered 3 HR’s and a near 50% hard contact rate.
Now the White Sox bats are about as boom or bust as any stack in baseball as this is a projected line-up with a 27% K rate against RHP but this is also a team that has hit 16 HR’s the last two weeks which is a top 10 mark in all of baseball.
Bieber on the season has some pretty easy splits to figure out – he is giving up a .238 ISO mark to LHB with a 47.3% HC rate and a 1.33 HR/9 rate while limiting the damage to RHB to the tune of a .131 ISO on the back of a near 55%GB rate.
So this one feels pretty simple – if you are a left-handed batter in the White Sox line-up, then you are in play for a stack here tonight. Daniel Palka is the premier piece here with a .288 ISO mark against RHP this season and he also happens to be the most expensive part of the stack at $8.3K but do not worry – there are value bats like Nicky Delmonico ($5.5K) and Leury Garcia ($6.4K) that you can use to balance out the cost per player in a White Sox stack.
Palka and Omar Navarez have really been the bats doing the most damage in this most recent stretch with 5 and 3 HR’s respectively while each hitter is sporting is sporting a .350+ ISO mark during the last two weeks. Keep an eye on the line-up here as Delmonico left last night’s game with an injury after a diving catch but work to prioritize Palka/Navarez and simply work the rest of the left-handed batters in around them to take advantage of Bieber’s splits this season.
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: Jacob deGrom ($25.9K)
SP: German Marquez ($19.6K)
IF: Yolmer Sanchez ($7.5K)
IF: Omar Navarez ($7.5K)
IF: Yoan Moncada ($7.6K)
OF: Daniel Palka ($8.3K)
OF: Leury Garcia ($6.4K)
OF: Nicky Delmonico ($5.5K)
UTIL: Logan Forsythe ($5.9K)
UTIL: Jose Osuna ($5.8K)
Slate Overview: Even with Coors Field on the slate, my personal preference is to prioritize pitching on this slate and build around two of the best strikeout arms in baseball in deGrom and Marquez. The White Sox stack has enough power and is cheap enough where you can still chase HR upside in your bats within this build and as we have seen every night – value plays becomes easy to find when line-ups are released as the out of contention teams tend to unlock some cheap bench bats which makes punting an easy path on FantasyDraft. Good luck all!
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