MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Tuesday, May 7 – McHugh’s Your Daddy?
Welcome to the Tuesday 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.
Monday’s MLB DFS slate was led by some high-tier arms as seven of the top ten raw point plays on the slate were starting pitchers. The winning GPP lineup in the $25 Home Run on FantasyDraft went double aces in Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer and six man max stacked the Tampa Bay Rays who put up 12 runs against the Diamondbacks in a relatively low cost stack that when wrapped around two stud arms was able to take down a GPP!
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 – Tuesday Pitching Picks:
With a few touchy weather spots tonight, including a cold and rainy game in Wrigley Field as well as some consistent rain concern in Coors Field, we may have the ability to cross some games off our player pool here tonight which is always welcome on a massive 13 game slate like this.
We have three clear studs at the top with Jose Berrios, Noah Syndergaard and Stephen Strasburg with a loaded second tier of arms like Caleb Smith, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Aaron Nola, but I think with some high-octane offenses available, it makes sense to pay even further down here tonight.
Collin McHugh ($16.3K) will likely end up as a popular SP2 target, but I would argue he could enter the SP1 conversation in both cash games and GPP’s as he checks seemingly every box tonight. McHugh is a massive home favorite (-220), pitching against a Royals team with one of the the lowest IRT’s on the slate which checks the cash game boxes but it is his K rate that makes him GPP viable.
As a reliever in 2018, McHugh used his slider newfound slider to rack up a 33% plus K rate and while he has not been able to maintain that as a starter in 2019, his 25% K rate and 11.3% swinging strike rate give him ample upside as a pitcher who has struck out 9 batters in 3 of his 7 starts this season.
The Royals projected line-up has seven of its projected nine batters with 39% of higher whiff rates against the slider with only Aldaberto Mondesi having any ISO/HC data that makes you nervous about them squaring up McHugh’s top offering.
McHugh has gone for 20+ fantasy points in five of his seven outings and with his season long numbers skewed by a disastrous 9 ER, negative 14 fantasy point outing against Texas, his price has come down to a point where I think there is far too much upside to ignore.
MLB DFS – Cheap SP2’s:
We will touch on this in a second, but there are some serious offenses we want to highlight today which may mean paying down for pitching and there are two value arms that stand out to me today.
Adrian Sampson ($10.9K) will take on a Pirates team he just faced in Texas, throwing 5.2 IP of shutout ball with 5 K’s and 0 walks on his way to 19+ fantasy points. In that game Sampson had an 11% swinging strike rate and against a left-handed heavy Pirates line-up, there is reason to believe that could continue.
Sampson this season in 40 plate appearances has been downright nasty against LHB, limiting them to a .027 ISO mark with a 20%+ K rate that is over 5% higher than his mark to RHB. Seven of the nine projected hitters in the Pirates line-up are expected to bat from the left side and Sampson gets the added benefit of moving from a hitters park in Arlington to a pitcher’s park in PNC.
Cal Quantrill ($11.2K) gets perhaps one of the best combinations of match-up and ballpark with a home start tonight against a punchless New York Mets offense that has been simply dominated by opposing arms in recent weeks.
Now this is not a simple recency bias thing where I expect Quantrill to match Chris Paddack‘s dominant numbers from last night but we can go back – way back – seven starts in fact – where opposing arms have put up at least 20 fantasy points against the Mets with 6 of those 7 arms racking up at least 7 K’s.
Now you may take a quick glance and see names like Paddack and Luis Castillo, but keep in mind this list also includes Tyler Mahle, Anthony DeSclafani, Zach Davies, Brandon Woodruff and recently signed Gio Gonzalez.
Quantrill has only made one start this season, his last time out against Atlanta where he threw 87 pitches and lived up to his minor league track record of inducing ground balls and limiting base runners.
Over the last week, the Mets have a 31% K rate, second highest in baseball, with a minuscule .089 ISO mark which is second worst only behind the slugging Miami Marlins. Quantrill gets to pitch in an elite pitcher’s park in San Diego and gets a massive pitcher’s umpire in Bill Miller calling balls and strikes. All the attention in this game will likely be on Noah Syndergaard on the other side much like it was on Monday with Jacob deGrom at near 50% ownership in GPP’s while Chris Paddack was less than 10%, which puts Quantrill in an interesting low-ownership leverage spot against the Mets.
MLB DFS – Paying up for Big Bats:
Even with Coors Field potentially at risk with rain in the forecast, there is no shortage of big bats to pay for tonight which is part of the reason I am looking to save some money at pitching.
The Boston Red Sox will take on David Hess who from a metrics perspective may be the worst arm on the slate as he is surrendering a .250+ ISO mark to hitters from both sides of the player with 40% plus hard contact rates as a fly-ball pitcher in Camden Yards where it will be 77 degrees with the wind blowing out at game time. Yikes.
All the usual suspects are in play here with the top 7 batters in the Rex Sox line-up all sporting .180+ ISO marks versus RHP since 2018, with 5 of them pushing .230+ marks. What is interesting here is that this Red Sox stack was super popular on Monday and managed only 1 run against John Means and the Orioles pen, so could recency bias push people away from them tonight against Hess? Let’s hope so.
The Houston Astros get a boom or bust spot at home against Danny Duffy and the Royals, a fly ball pitcher who has equal parts K upside and equal parts hard contact blow-up potential. The Astros line-up is loaded with hitters who can do damage against LHP and with 80 degree temperatures and 13 MPH winds blowing out, we could see the roof open as it was Monday night which would give an even bigger boost to the bats here.
One of the things I love about the Astros/Red Sox dual stacks is how well they correlate as you can stack up the Astros infield of Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve and pair it with the Boston OF of Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and J.D. Martinez. This is a pricey route but with the ability to save on arms tonight, I think it becomes a viable place to plant your flag.
MLB DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – this sample lineup is meant to be illustrative only and should not be used as a plug and play lineup.
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SP: Colin McHugh
SP: Cal Quantrill
IF: Jose Altuve
IF: Alex Bregman
IF: Carlos Correa
OF: Mookie Betts
OF: Andrew Benintendi
OF: J.D. Martinez
UTIL: George Springer
UTIL: Travis Shaw/Chris Davis
Slate Overview: With the ability to pay down for a viable SP1 in Colin McHugh tonight, it leads you down a path where you can pay even farther down at SP2 and get essentially the best of the best when it comes to bats – with a focus on the top hitters in Boston and Houston. On FantasyDraft where you have to roster hitters from three teams, I love taking the “Free Square” one-offs with power, using guys like Travis Shaw and/or Chris Davis who are under $6K and allow you open up salary in other positions while still chasing HR upside.
Good luck tonight all!
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