MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday, April 19 – Knocked on your Vargas
Welcome to the Friday 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.
Thursday’s split slate action started with a dominant early slate performance from Patrick Corbin and the Braves offense, which was a popular stack, was stymied by Luke Weaver of all people. The main slate was more focused on the bats as Ryan McMahon returned to the Rockies lineup and slugged two HR’s as the top raw point play on the night, while Julio Urias and Kyle Freeland were able to shut down two elite offenses and put up the best pitching scores of the night!
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 – Friday Pitching Breakdown:
We have a loaded 14 game Friday Night slate across Major League Baseball but the very first thing you notice when you look at this slate, is we have weather/rain risks across multiple spots that we need to watch for.
The following games have serious PPD/delay risk due to expected rain – Orioles/Twins, Pirates/Giants, Royals/Yankees, Braves/Indians and White Sox/Tigers. So that means the following arms are either risky or out of play – Jose Berrios, Corey Kluber, Madison Bumgarner, CC Sabathia, Jakob Junis, Touki Toussaint and Jordan Lyles.
What you will also notice is we have a ton of elite offenses on this slate with a game in Coors Field and a game in Arlington, so while locking in a top arm like Justin Verlander may seem like the way to go, I think in this salary cap driven world, we may need to drop down a bit to find our arms if we want to load up on hitting.
Tanner Roark ended up being a popular SP2 play last night more as a necessity rather than people really loving the match-up, but for every reason I argued Roark last night, the same can be said for Reds RHP Anthony DeSclafani ($14.1K).
DeSclafani gets a massive ballpark boost heading from Cincinnati to San Diego and much like Roark last night should benefit from a Padres line-up that outside of Eric Hosmer is entirely right-handed. Since the start of 2018, DeSclafani sees a 2% K rate boost against RHB, sporting a 23.5% K rate, with a 50% GB rate, only a .160 ISO and will take on a projected San Diego lineup with a 24% K rate against right-handed pitching.
Against RHB, DeSclafani relies primarily on his slider/sinker combination, throwing them nearly 80% of the time – using the sinker to generate a 61% GB rate and .094 ISO while the slider gets him a near 40% whiff rate. Not only does DeSclafani get the benefit of pitching in San Diego, he will also draw Bill Welke behind the plate who is a favorable pitcher’s umpire, calling 8% more strikes than the average umpire per swishanalytics.com.
When you consider the salary savings here, I think DeSclafani offers you elite point per dollar upside on a night we want to save salary for bats.
One of the benefits of being part of the team here at Fantasy CPR is that I am surrounded by DFS obsessed minds, guys who seemingly can quote off FanGraphs stats and will argue umpire data and BvP matters until they are blue in the face and litter our writers chat with nuggets each day – some I end up using, others I may tuck away for another day.
Well our Thunder Dan, who writes our Pitching Primer for FanDuel and DraftKings, has been beating the drum for “Lefties versus the Angels” all year-long and I mocked him just a few days ago when he told me Mike Minor was a lock.
The fact is, lefties have been excelling in this spot all season long, with the exception of Drew Smyly, and well that is because Smyly is terrible.
The last four LHP to face the Angels – Mike Minor, Cole Hamels, Brett Anderson and tonight’s opponent Marco Gonzales ($15.2K) have averaging over 29 fantasy points per start with each arm going for 22 or more. In those four starts, the lefties combined for 20 K’s versus only 5 walks, giving up just 2 ER’s and 3 of the 4 went at least 8 innings.
Gonzales not only gets a match-up he dominated this season, but he gets the added benefit of having Angel Hernandez behind the plate, another massive pitcher’s umpire who has an 11% higher K rate call than the average MLB umpire.
I am going to ride with Thunder Dan on this one – let’s hope I am not the jinx to end his lefties versus Angels heater!
MLB DFS – Top Hitting Spots:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and it is rare to find a picture for my articles that so perfectly sums up how I want to attack hitting here tonight – we have a game in Coors Field and Jason Vargas takes the mound for the Mets, which puts his opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals in a batting practice like atmosphere.
Let’s start in Coors Field where we have another 11 game total and there is never going to be anything sneaky about bats in Coors but I actually think the “pivot off Coors” narrative you hear is making the pivots become chalkier than actually playing the hitters in the best hitting park.
Take last night as an example – everyone around the industry talked up the Tampa Bay Rays as the “pivot” stack – but it got to the point where more talk was on Tampa than on Coors and it showed in the ownership. Guys like Ji-Man Choi were over 60% owned in GPP play, Brandon Lowe at 30% and Austin Meadows at 25% – compared to the Rockies bats like Nolan Arenado (17%), David Dahl (16%) and Ryan McMahon (5%).
As a MLB DFS analyst/writer, it may seem “obvious” to write-up Coors but I also notice that as players and writers are getting smarter, sometimes we try to over-look the obvious and over think our advice.
We have 70+ degree temperatures in Coors tonight with Vincent Velazquez on the mound, a fly ball pitcher who has given up a .233 ISO to LHB since 2018 – why exactly are we getting cute? Lock in Charlie Blackmon, David Dahl and Ryan McMahon again – take advantage of Velazquez’s struggles with lefties and hope they people leave these bats under-owned again.
Need another reason to play Coors – Cowboy Joe West will be calling balls and strikes, who’s 11% run boost is the second highest of any umpire in baseball who is averaging over 9 RPG in games he was calling balls and strikes.
Speaking of not over-thinking – as a Mets fan, I am forced to watch Jason Vargas every fifth day and despite a brief magic act in the second half of last year, this has been a miserable addition for New York who we have been able to pick on with bats more often than not for DFS purposes. Vargas is a total mess this season with an 8% K rate that is 2% LOWER than his walk rate, while giving up 70.8% hard contact – no that is really the correct number, I made sure not to mis-type it.
If you play for the Cardinals and plan to have a bat in your hand, you are in play – stack up Paul Goldschmidt, Marcell Ozuna, Paul DeJong and mix in Matt Carpenter for an elite 1-4 stack against the worst arm in the history of baseball – OK, maybe that’s a stretch, but as a Mets fan my hope is that I can not only make money with a Cardinals stack but that this also becomes the final straw and Brodie Van Wagenen send Vargas packing after tonight so I never have to watch him again.
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 line-up.
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SP: Marco Gonzales
SP: Anthony DeSclafani
IF: Matt Carpenter
IF: Paul Goldschmidt
IF: Paul DeJong
OF: Marcell Ozuna
OF: Charlie Blackmon
OF: David Dahl
UTIL: Ryan McMahon
UTIL: $8.3K one-off
Slate Overview: Tonight looks like a slate where you can pay down at pitcher to a solid mid-tier, look to get 20-25 fantasy points from each SP and then load up on bats. With so many spots with rain risk, my preference on a slate this large is to simply cross those games off, especially with so many other good places to go – not sure we need to take the risk.
Enjoy the slate kids, kick back relax and get set for the weekend while Jason Vargas serves up HR’s to the Cardinals delight.
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