MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday, April 28 – Whoa Bundy!
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.
Another day of MLB DFS and another day where the Minnesota Twins bats dominated a slate with Max Kepler as the top dog on the early slate with 2 HR’s while the Twins put up 9 runs, picking on the Orioles bullpen as the early chalk offense. The Main Slate was all about Clayton Kershaw and the Rangers stack that erupted for 15 runs against Mike Leake and the Mariners bullpen.
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:
We get a nice 10 game slate here on Sunday and big kudos to FantasyDraft for upping the size of their GPP’s which are normally much smaller on weekends but they have essentially doubled the normal size and prize pool here today and I really hope that trend continues!
Of the 10 games on tap there are some serious rain concerns in New York and what looks like some late game rain concerns in Boston and overall, Vegas is telling us every single game has a 8-9 IRT so for once we do not have a 10+ game staring at us and screaming to play!
Is Chris Sale ($19.5K) back? After a 10K performance last time out against the Tigers, a 45.1% K rate, it still only brought his season long numbers up to a 22.6% K rate as a result of his early season struggles.
The swinging strike rate against the Tigers was his highest of the season at 13.4% but what concerns me is the velocity – which was at 95.5 MPH in his previous start and then dropped back to 92.7 MPH. So was Sale really “back” or was the increased K output a result of a poor Tigers lineup?
Sale is throwing his slider nearly 50% of the time this year and while this Rays team does have K’s in it – it also has three bats in Avisail Garcia, Tommy Pham and Yandy Diaz who have .250+ ISO marks and 45% or higher HC rates against that pitch type so there is some serious risk sitting in the middle of this Tampa line-up and if folks are going to blindly play Sale here, you can get some leverage with a Rays mini-stack.
If you are going to pay up on this slate for pitching, Matthew Boyd ($17.9K) feels likes the safest route as an SP1. Boyd is facing a White Sox projected lineup with a 28.7% K rate against LHP since the start of 2018 and will toe the rubber in arguably the best pitching weather on the slate where it will be in the 40’s with the wind blowing in at Chicago.
With some big bats on this slate, the more I look at this slate the more I am interested in paying down for my arms, so let’s dive into the bargain bin and get some value.
MLB DFS – Bargain Arms:
Let’s cut to the chase on this slate – with how red-hot the Minnesota Twins bats have been, if we thought they were chalky on Saturday, they will likely be even more so today against RHP Dylan Bundy.
Look at the ownership of the Minnesota bats on Saturday’s 7 game Early Slate in GPP’s – Max Kepler (36%), Nelson Cruz (33%), CJ Cron (41%), Eddie Rosario (25%) – now while Dan Straily was able to keep the Twins bats quiet, it was the O’s bullpen which opened the floodgates for the Twins chalk stacks.
Of the available arms on this slate, only Chris Sale and Jack Flaherty have a higher swinging strike rate than Bundy’s 12.8% so while there is clearly risk using Bundy, if the Twins bats are going to make up a third of the field, this seems like the perfect leverage spot in GPP’s. Yes, I am recommending Dylan Bundy in GPP’s today against the hottest offense in baseball.
Take the name out of it for a second – Bundy has a 25% K rate and 13.2% swinging strike rate in 2019 which are are nearly identical numbers to Noah Syndergaard this season. Last night, Thor was massively owned (50-55%) on a 7 game slate facing arguably just as dangerous of a line-up in Milwaukee but this was a case where you played the name and the resume so really how much different is this?
Bundy just faced this same Minnesota team and gave up only 2 ER’s with 4 K’s and today will get a massive pitcher’s umpire in Chris Conroy who calls 11% more K’s than the average umpire. In that last game against Minnesota, Bundy had a 13.7% K rate, limited the Twins to a 22% HC rate and got a bit unlucky with a .320 BABIP.
Listen, this is a massively risky call but in tournaments, you are getting leverage on a third of the field, maybe more, and Bundy from a pure metrics perspective has every bit the K upside as the other arms on this slate. Scared money don’t make money my friends.
Chris Bassitt ($14.8K) sits just below Bundy in the FantasyDraft pricing pool and after an exceptional start against Texas, he gets to face the Vlad Jr’s (I think they are actually called the Blue Jays but who knows) in Toronto.
Bassitt was phenomenal in his first start, striking out 7 Rangers with a 12% swinging strike and only a 22% HC rate. The projected Jays line-up has a 26.2% K rate against RHP since the start of 2018 and with Bassitt you not only get sneaky K upside but you also get a ground ball pitcher who limits hard contact.
Reynaldo Lopez ($12.2K) is the second cheapest arm on FantasyDraft, opposing Matthew Boyd in elite pitching weather facing a Tigers team he just went against – pitching 6 innings, striking out 8 and racking up 21 FPTS. Lopez has back to back starts with 21+ fantasy points with a 12.4% swinging strike rate in those games and 27.7% K rate – giving you 20+ fantasy point upside at a bargain price.
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats
With so much focus on the Twins today against Bundy, it will be interesting to see how much love the Atlanta Braves get with their slate leading 5.1 IRT against LHP Tyler Anderson. With temperatures in the mid 70’s with 7 MPH winds blowing out to LF, this loaded Braves line-up could be another interesting pivot off the Twins chalk.
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Anderson has been a mess to start 2019, giving up 5+ ER in three straight starts and this Braves stack 1-5 can make him pay both with power and with speed. The top 5 hitters in the Braves projected line-up – Ozzie Albies, Josh Donaldson, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Johan Camargo all have .195+ ISO marks against LHP since the start of 2018, with every single one sporting a HC rate of 37% or higher.
If you want to pay up for arms and still stack up a top offense, the path to do so may be in Baltimore with two “free squares” in Chris Davis ($5.5K) and Stevie Wilkerson ($3.9K) who combined will cost you as much as Nelson Cruz ($9.4K).
Opposing starter Kyle Gibson, has a .298 ISO mark against LHB this season, relying heavily on his sinker which Davis in particular simply crushes – to the tune of a .320 ISO, 46% HC rate and 320 average distance.
As an example – you could pay up for both Sale and Boyd, slot in the 5 man Braves stack with the two cheap Orioles and you would have $9.5K remaining for a one-off bat like the aforementioned Cruz, or someone like Bryce Harper.
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