MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Monday, April 15, 2019

Welcome to the Monday’s 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 MLB DFS action was largely overshadowed by a historic day at the Masters and while Tiger Woods was putting on a show for the ages, the MLB DFS Sunday Slate was being dominated by David Price and Jose Berrios on the mound with Billy McKinney, Lucas Duda and Cesar Hernandez providing the offense as we all expected. On a slate without much offense, the winning line-ups nailed both pitchers and had some combination of the low priced hitters who fell on the right side of variance this day.

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.

If you are looking to try out a new DFS site, head on over to FantasyDraft and enter my referral code for 10% rake back on your entries.

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:

When you first open up the pitching player pool on this slate, you are going to see a huge amount of “name” arms that will likely lead you to think this is a slate filled with high-dollar aces that require our salary cap. However even though the arms in isolation are impressive – Trevor Bauer, Noah Syndergaard, Aaron Nola, Clayton Kershaw and Luis Castillo – they also happen to be facing offenses and pitching ballparks where I worry that this is the best use of my salary cap space in MLB DFS.

In addition to the tough opponents, I also think there is a preferred mid-tier on this slate with better point per dollar options that allows us to target arms with high K upside while building around the best bats.

Trevor Richards ($16.1K) sit just below this “elite” pricing tier and will get a home match-up against the Chicago Cubs. Richards was a trendy pre-season sleeper for the Marlins and has carried that over into his first three starts, going at least 6 innings in each outing, striking out 6 batters per game while averaging just under 19 fantasy points.

Richards has the K metrics we look for when identifying our pitcher as is 25% K rate and 14.7% swinging strike rate in 2019 are steps up from his 23% and 10% mark in his 2018 campaign. Richards relies on a nasty change-up, a pitch he has thrown nearly 40% of the time in 2019 and when you see the movement, you can understand why.

When you look at the Cubs projected line-up, 7 of the 8 batters have 30% or higher whiff rates since 2016 against the change-up from right-handed arms with Anthony Rizzo being the only bat in the line-up under that mark. The fact that Richards is a -145 home underdog, may keep folks off this play but in his spacious home park, I would much prefer the K upside of Richards over the “favorite” in Yu Darvish.

Matt Shoemaker ($14.9K) has always had the talent to pitch at the Major League level but has struggled to stay healthy, which for DFS purposes rarely matters as we get the benefit of operating on a start to start basis. So far in 2019 Shoemaker has the kind of metrics we look for when selecting our SP’s as his 26.8% K rate and 14.3% swinging strike rates gives us another sneaky point per dollar upside arm.

Shoemaker, has already put up two 30+ fantasy point starts in his first two outings against Detroit and Baltimore. Since the start of 2018, Shoemaker has an elite 32% K rate against LHB and the Twins projected line-up has 5 of them in it, with 6 hitters having 21% or higher K rates against RHP.

Shoemaker relies heavily on his sinker to generate GB’s (however only at a 3% whiff rate), while the strikeouts come from his splitter and slider which have 47% and 33% whiff rates.

Why is this important? The splitter, which Shoemaker has thrown over 33% of the time this year is a pitch that every single hitter in the projected Twins line-up has a 37% or higher whiff rate on – every single one!

The slider, a pitcher he uses almost entirely against RHB – so think Cruz, Cron, Buxton and Schoop – all four of them have 40% or higher whiff rates against that pitch type.

So no matter how you slice the pitch type data, Shoemaker profiles exceptionally well against this Minnesota team and with 30+ fantasy point upside demonstrated, he has the potential to be one of the top raw point arms on the slate at a fraction of the cost.

MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:

With the savings we get in our pitchers, we have the ability to spend up on hitting but with so many talented arms on the slate, there become far less spots to identify hitters. The Milwaukee Brewers have a 5.2 IRT, the highest on the slate and at home against RHP Dakota Hudson, who they have already faced once this year, it is hard to argue there is a higher upside offense talent wise.

Hudson has been exceptional in his early career against right-handed batters but has struggled with left-handed power, including his first start this year against the Brewers were he gave up 3 HR’s to Travis Shaw, Christian Yelich and Mike Moustakas. While he was able to hold the Dodgers scoreless last start, he struggled with control, walking 4 and requiring 100 pitches to get through 4.2 innings while allowing a 60% HC rate in that game.

Hudson relies on his sinker nearly 50% of the time against LHB so far in his career and oh doctor, the metrics on the Brewers big lefty bats – Yelich, Moose, Shaw and Grandal – well, buckle up kids:

• Yelich – .245 ISO, 47% HC rate, 95 MPH avg EV and average distance of 323
• Shaw – .234 ISO, 39% HC rate, 92 MPH avg EV and average distance of 321
• Moustakas – .234 ISO, 38% HC rate, 91 MPH avg EV and average distance of 317
• Grandal – .412 ISO, 47% HC rate, 92 MPH avg EV and average distance of 341

The run total may push the ownership here by default, but the match-up and pitch type data is what will push me to roster these four and I am perfectly fine making them a core part of my builds and being overweight on the field even if they are popular.

With so many strong arms on the hill, it will be tough to find offenses you want to target on this slate – well that is true almost everywhere, as in Chicago we get arguably the worst two arms on the slate facing off against each other in Ervin Santana and Heath Fillmyer – who have combined to surrender 12 runs in 6.2 innings between them in 2019.

Santana is a fly ball pitcher who has given up a .329 ISO to LHB and .511 ISO to RHB since the start of 2018 with only a 12% walk rate so this means we will have balls in play and potential for base runners which puts the power/speed combo of Whit Merrifield and Aldaberto Mondesi at the top of the player pool today. With the weather being cold in Chicago, Merrifield and Mondesi do not have to rely on power alone to have big fantasy days and surrounded by the red-hot Alex Gordon who has at least 2 hits in 4 of his last 5 games, this stack has extremely high potential alongside the Brewers.

MLB DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:

Please note – the sample lineup shown here is meant to be illustrative only and should not be used as a plug and play build. 

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SP: Trevor Richards

SP: Matt Shoemaker

IF: Yasmani Grandal

IF: Travis Shaw

IF: Mike Moustakas

OF: Christian Yelich

OF: Lorenzo Cain

OF: Brian Anderson

UTIL: Aldaberto Mondesi

UTIL: Whit Merrifield

Slate Overview: Even with so much high-end pitching on this slate, I think you can make a strong case to pay down for both arms with Richards/Shoemaker and capture strong K upside that allows you to build around the high dollar stacks the folks who pay up for the Bauers of the world wont be able to afford.

Much like we have in recent days, I am using a cheap power one-off like Brian Anderson ($5.5K) who has homered in back to back games in the same way we were using Chris Davis over the weekend. The salary savings alone give you the ability to build seemingly any way you want and satisfies the requirement on FantasyDraft to roster batters from 3 teams.

Good luck tonight all!

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest MLB DFS news and analysis each and every day!