MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday, April 8 – Big Bats and Bad Arms!
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 fantasy baseball 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.
Sunday’s big story in MLB DFS was a three home-run day from the Yankees Gary Sanchez, but consider this for a second – the top 4 man offense on the slate was Sanchez, Daniel Vogelbach, Clint Frazier and Derek Dietrich who all blasted 2 HR’s on Sunday. Mike Clevinger was the only pitcher in the top 5 of raw points as he racked up 10 K’s in 5 innings before being forced to leave the game with back tightness.
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 – Monday Pitching Breakdown:
At first glance this is setting up to be a great GPP slate as the pitching options do not look overly straightforward and with a game in Coors Field, it could be a night where ownership ends up highly concentrated on those high-priced bats which also pushed ownership towards a specific price range of pitcher.
The other interesting aspect of this slate is that we only have one true ace available with Justin Verlander ($20.6K) which normally would make him very chalky, but a match-up against the Yankees may leave people hesitant to pay over $20K for him.
Verlander’s metrics stand head and shoulders above the rest on this slate as is 34.4% K rate and 14.5% swinging strike rate make him the best arm by a significant margin tonight. In two starts last year against this Yankees squad, Verlander was brilliant in two early season match-ups:
- May 28 at Yankee Stadium – 6.2 IP, 5 K’s, 0 BB’s, 1 ER and 23 FPTS
- May 1 in Houston – 8 IP, 14 K’s, 0 BB’s, 0 ER and 44 FPTS
Despite the home run barrage we saw yesterday, this is a Yankees lineup that is ravaged by injury and ripe with K’s, as their projected lineup has a 26.4% K rate against RHP in 2018. The recency bias of the Yankee offense clubbing 7 HR’s on Sunday may play a big part today in keeping Verlander’s ownership in check and the price point above $20K with so many looking to shoehorn in Coors Field bats may also drive the ownership down which oddly enough could make the lone ace on the slate a prime GPP target.
Dropping down from Verlander, I think you are going to spend a lot of time talking yourself into some dicey arms and my guess is that the arms in San Francisco, specifically Eric Lauer ($14.6K) against the Giants anemic offense becomes a popular SP2 based on the opponent. There is mention of some potential rain on other weather sites (and even in the FantasyDraft game preview for this one), but looking at the forecast on Accuweather, I did not see anything mentioned for game time – just keep an eye on it throughout the day.
I think rather than stopping on Lauer, you can make the case to drop even further down though for your SP2 in a massive leverage spot, rocking with Kyle Freeland ($12.1K) in Coors Field. Assuming the bats here become the popular route to go around the industry today, taking a pitcher in Coors Field to leverage that ownership is a really intriguing GPP strategy.
Freeland is not your average arm in Coors Field mind you, this is a ground ball pitcher who excelled in Coors Field in 2018, with a 2.40 ERA (although a 3.9 xFIP notes regression), with a K rate of 22.3% which is 3% higher than his mark on the road, while allowing only 1 HR/9 and a sub 30% HC rate.
Freeland made 15 starts at home in 2018, with double-digit fantasy points in ever single outing and 20+ fantasy points in 7 of his 15 starts. Freeland gave up 2 of fewer ER in 11 of those 15 outings and struck out at least 6 in 7 of his 15 home starts.
Freeland made two starts against Atlanta in 2018 – with a dominant road start (29 FPTS on the back of 6 IP, 1 ER and 9 K’s) and a mediocre home start (12 FPTS on the back of 6 IP, 3 ER and 5 K’s). This Atlanta projected line-up has a 43% GB rate versus LHP since 2018 and after two strong starts to open the year on the road where Freeland racked up 23 and 24 FPTS, this is a match-up we can exploit rather than stack against.
The Braves travel from Atlanta to Coors tonight and we have seen time and time again, teams struggle in their first game of a series in Coors Field. Also, this is the first weekday slate where Coors Field is on a Main Slate so I think the ownership is going to be a bit higher as a result of the lofty game totals. Freeland’s price reflects the Coors Field risk but he has 20+ FP upside here and I do not think there are many other arms in this price range that can say that!
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:
With the Rockies and Braves as the only teams with 5+ run totals, you can certainly make the case to load up on the bats in Coors, but the pricing alone is going to make it nearly impossible to stack it up with 8 batters priced at $9.5K or higher – so unless you are punting at pitcher (good luck tonight with that), I simply do not see a reason to shoehorn in the pricey Coors bats.
On the other side of the coin, two of the better offenses on the slate, the Yankees and Astros, have to face two strong arms in Justin Verlander and Masahiro Tanaka so all of a sudden you start crossing off Coors, Yankees and Astros and you may be thinking – well, what’s left?
The answer is plenty and it starts with the Seattle Mariners who lead all of baseball with 85 runs scores so far in 2019 and now get, drum-roll please – HOMER BAILEY. By every measure, this is a spot we need to load up on Mariners bats as Bailey gave up 1.95 HR/9 with a 41% HC rate in 2018 with a .190 ISO mark to RHB and .271 ISO mark to LHB.
The heart of this line-up is loaded with power – as Mitch Haniger, Edwin Encarnacion, Jay Bruce and Domingo Santana are all averaging double-digit fantasy points for a Mariners squad that has a league leading 27 HR’s. Outside of Haniger at $9.2K, every player here is in the $8K or less price range which means you can take arguably the best offense in baseball so far in 2019 against likely the worst pitcher on the slate – and still have enough salary to pay up for Verlander as an SP1.
Speaking of elite offenses in 2019, the LA Dodgers have scored 84 runs thus far (one behind the Mariners), with 24 total HR’s which again is second only to Seattle. The Mariners and Dodgers run totals so far this year are 20+ runs higher than any other team in baseball and both teams are sporting .270+ ISO marks which laps the league by a considerable margin.
So with everyone focused on Coors – can we go with a full on stack of the two best offenses in baseball in 2019?
The Dodgers face off with RHP Miles Mikolas, who in 2018 was not a pitcher we would normally pick in due to his ability to limit HR’s (0.72 HR/9 in 200+ IP) but conversely this is a pitcher with a sub 20% K rate who so far in 2019 has been tattooed, giving up 4 HR and 8 ER in only 10 IP against the Brewers and Pirates. In his first start against the Brew Crew, Mikolas gave up HR’s to Yelich, Moustakas and the pitcher, Jhoulys Chacin and with the Dodgers sporting a similarly powerful offense, maybe these early season power struggles carry over into Mikolas first start at home.
The first place to target here is the LHB in the Dodgers offense and we have a ton – with Joc Pederson, Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy stepping in as one of the top stacks on the board. The trio of Joc, Belly and Muncy is where I would prioritize as since the start of 2017, each one of these hitters has at least a .265+ ISO with a 40% HC rate against RHP.
Against LHB, Mikolas splits his arsenal relatively equally between four pitchers – fastball, slider, sinker and curve which are all pitches this Dodgers core profiles well against.
Against the slider, the Joc/Muncy/Belly trio all have .200+ ISO marks with Joc and Bellinger sporting .280 and .400 ISO marks with average distance traveled at 320-330 since 2016. If Mikolas moves to the sinker, this trio all has .280+ ISO marks with an average distance traveled of 320+ feet. The only pitch that the metrics really tail off against is the curve ball with all three having ISO marks under .150 but for 3/4 of Mikolas’s arsenal, this is a team that should have some success based off their hitting profile.
MLB DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is meant to be illustrative and should not be used as a Plug and Play lineup.
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SP: Justin Verlander
SP: Kyle Freeland
IF: Edwin Encarnacion
IF: Cody Bellinger
IF: Max Muncy
OF: Joc Pederson
OF: Mitch Haniger
OF: Jay Bruce
UTIL: Domingo Santana
UTIL: $7.3K one-off
Slate Overview: My initial take on this slate is that I could end up seeing it become chalky with Coors Field bats becoming the priority for the first time on a Main Slate in 2019 which due to the pricing will force roster builds towards cheaper pitching and punt bats. Instead, I think you can make a strong case for locking in the best arm on the slate in Verlander and stacking up the two best offenses so far in 2019 in the Mariners and Dodgers.
Enjoy the slate all and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all our MLB DFS coverage across each of your favorite fantasy sites.
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