MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday, 4/21 – An Amazin Sunday!
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
Saturday’s Early Slate MLB DFS action was all about offense, specifically the St. Louis Cardinals who went off for 10 runs against Chris Flexen and the Mets bullpen. The Main Slate was all about the high-priced power bats in Charlie Blackmon and Christian Yelich who went for 30+ fantasy points and was even more about avoiding Gerrit Cole, the high-priced ace who got all of TWO fantasy points, getting knocked around by the Rangers.
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 – Pitching Breakdown:
The FantasyDraft Main Slate for Sunday includes 9 games, starting at 1PM EST and excludes any games starting from 3PM EST on, which really means no Coors Field on this slate which certainly will change how we approach things.
From a pitching perspective, Stephen Strasburg ($20.7K) is the most expensive arm on the slate with an ideal match-up on the road in Miami against the Marlins. Strasburg has a 28.6% K rate and 13% swinging strike rate on the season and will take on a Marlins team with a 23.6% K rate against RHP since the start of 2018.
The Marlins have the lowest run total on the slate at 3.05 IRT while Strasburg gets a massive ballpark boost and will have CB Bucknor behind the plate, a pitcher’s umpire who calls 11% more K’s than the average MLB umpire.
Noah Syndergaard ($19K) is the second highest priced arm on the slate with a much tougher match-up in St. Louis and I think the elevated price alone will make him more of a GPP option as folks simply pay the extra to get to Strasburg if they are shopping at this price point.
Thor has a 29.9% K rate so far in 2019 with a 12.2% swinging strike rate so while the metrics are there, the fantasy performances have not been, as Syndergaard has failed to hit 20 fantasy points in 3 of his 4 starts.
Outside of Matt Carpenter, the Cardinals are a right-handed heavy line-up which works in Syndergaard’s favor as he has a K rate of 28.5% against RHB which is 7% higher than his mark against LHB since the start of 2018. Thor has an elite 55% GB rate against RHB with only a 24% HC rate against RHB and gets an added boost in St. Louis today with Bruce Dreckman behind the plate, a pitcher’s umpire who calls 11% more strikes than the average umpire.
When stepping back and looking at this slate, we do not have Coors Field on the slate, the highest IRT comes from the NY Yankees who will likely be without Aaron Judge in the line-up, and overall we have multiple high K arms to choose from which leads me towards the idea of paying up for both arms in my builds.
With Tyler Glasnow, Robbie Ray, Clayton Kershaw, James Paxton and Chris Archer all available in our player pool, I think prioritizing arms is the ideal first stop on this slate and we have seen all season long, Sunday in MLB are perfect value days as we get bench players inserted into the starting line-ups which will open up the path to pay for pitching.
One of the reasons I think Syndergaard gets lower ownership, besides the match-up, is that you can pay down all the way to Chris Archer ($16.7K) at home against the Giants. Archer has a massive 34% K rate with with a 14.6% swinging strike rate this season and against lefties, the K mark spikes to 40.6% which is important when you consider the Giants are rolling out 5 of 8 LHB today. Considering the savings you get on Archer, it will allow you to upgrade a bat you won’t get with Strasburg/Thor.
MLB DFS – Stack it Up:
The last two days I have been all over stacking an offense in St. Louis as the Mets were trotting out Jason Vargas and Chris Flexen, but today we are going to flip it and target the New York bats against a pitcher in Dakota Hudson who has been a popular target of mine early in 2019.
In three starts this season, Hudson has surrendered a 5.33 xFIP with only an 18% K rate, a 13% BB rate with 5 HR and 9 ER in only 13 innings of work. Lefties are just working Hudson thus far with .515 ISO mark, 60% HC rate and a lofty 7.94 HR/9 rate and the Mets are loaded with lefties at the heart of this line-up with Michael Conforto, Robinson Cano, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo all batting atop this line-up.
Hudson relies on his splitter nearly 50% of the time against LHB and Nimmo and Conforto specifically hammer that pitch type – with .308 and .377 ISO marks respectively with 47% HC rates and 93 MPH average exit velocity.
Heading to Wrigley Field, we have the wind blowing out to LF with Robbie Ray on the mound in a boom or bust high upside offensive spot for the Cubs bats. No pitcher on the slate gives up a higher HC rate (44.4%) than Ray and with a right-handed heavy Cubs line-up on tap this could be a difference making GPP stack on Sunday. The Cubs have four hitters with .200+ ISO marks against LHP since the start of 2018 with Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Wilson Contreras and David Bote all sporting such metrics.
A Mets lefties/Cubs righties dual stack is my first stop on this slate and while expensive – once again, we can use our punt value in Chris Davis ($4.9K) to fill our one-off while also opening up the salary to stack two high upside offenses along the two most expensive arms on the slate.
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 build.
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SP: Stephen Strasburg
SP: Noah Syndergaard
IF: Chris Davis
IF: Javier Baez
IF: Robinson Cano
OF: Michael Conforto
OF: Brandon Nimmo
OF: Kris Bryant
UTIL: Albert Almora
UTIL: David Bote
Slate Overview: Without any “must have” offenses on this slate, I think paying up for both arms with high K options is the best way to attack these builds and even with that approach, you can still attack high upside offenses like the Mets/Cubs due to the value we expect to have.
Enjoy this slate all – Happy Easter Sunday to all those celebrating. See you back here on Monday!
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