MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Friday, May 10 – Down with the Kipnis
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 MLB DFS split slates had some interesting outcomes starting with the early slate which saw the chalk SP1 in Carlos Carrasco get the hook from mother nature after 5 innings of work as the game was delayed and ultimately called which gave him a 5 inning performance and on FantasyDraft, awarded the CG and CGSO bonuses! The Main Slate was simple – how many Cardinals bats did you have? With 17 runs against Joe Musgrove and the Pirates, having any/all parts of a St. Louis stack won you all the money on this 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 Main Slate Pitching:
We have an absolutely loaded Friday Night MLB DFS slate with a ton of high-end pitching, warm(er) weather in nearly every ballpark and a game in Coors Field a day after they scored 20+ runs with snow falling around them. This is going to be fun.
Let’s start at the top with my favorite arm – Luis Castillo ($20.3K) who gets a road start in San Francisco against the Giants who will travel from Coors Field back home where the “Coors Hangover Effect” has the ability to rear its head as the Giants already weak lineup has to travel from an elite hitting stadium to one of the worst. Castillo has a 30.3% K rate this season with 14.9% swinging strike rate and will face the same Giants line-up he just struck out 9 against in Great American Ballpark.
Zack Wheeler ($18.7K) comes into this game with double-digit K games in two of his last three outings against Philly and Milwaukee and will now get to face off with the Miami Marlins at home. Wheeler is a huge favorite (-185) at home against a Marlins team with the second lowest IRT on the slate which puts Wheeler in a great cash game spot with the K upside to make him a lower priced SP1 in GPP’s.
German Marquez ($17.9K) is pitching at Coors Field which will likely take him out of many folks player pools by default but against a right-handed heavy Padres team, I think this is an opportunity to lock in an ace for a bargain price.
Marquez has simply dominated right-handed batters since the start of 2018 – with a 33.5% K rate – and with Eric Hosmer being the only Padres bat from the left side here tonight, this sets up perfectly for Marquez to put up a big number. In 2018, Marquez had a 36% K rate against right-handed batters in Coors Field with a 2.26 xFIP, holding batters to a .229 average over 45 total innings of work.
Put it this way – if this game was in San Diego, everyone would be all over Marquez in this spot and the fact Marquez has demonstrated success pitching in this ballpark, gives me all the confidence in the world as a high-end SP2 alongside either Castillo or Wheeler tonight.
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:
As much as I want to pay up for arms, we have to keep in mind that we have a game in Coors Field, with a low K lefty on the mound in Eric Lauer, who is giving up 44% HC and a 6% higher fly ball rate to RHB this season. Forcing in the duo of Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story, while both over $10K, feels like an absolute must here today and expanding that stack down to Ian Desmond and Mark Reynolds makes for an elite 4 man power stack on this slate.
Now, telling you to lock in some combination of Castillo/Wheeler/Marquez with a four man Rockies stack is certainly not going to come cheap and it took a while to unlock exactly how to get there, but I think there is a viable value stack on this slate that makes paying up for both arms AND stacking Rockies, a very real possibility.
The Cleveland Indians will face off against RHP Frankie Montas in Oakland and when you dig into Montas’ splits and pitch types combined with the Indians pricing, there is some serious profit potential to be had.
Montas has been extremely difficult on right-handed batters but to lefties, it has been a totally different story with a .200 ISO and 40% HC rate since the start of 2018 and while he has improved this season, his reliance on the sinker, which he throws 53% of the time to lefties since last season could be an issue here today.
Go up and down this Indians line-up and these lefties hit the sinker extremely well with Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez sporting .282 and .269 ISO marks respectively, however we want value – so keep digging and you see Jason Kipnis ($5.8K) with a .210 ISO and 41% HC rate, with Jake Bauers ($6.4K) right there with him with a .200 ISO and 45% HC rate. Carlos Gonzalez and Leonys Martin are priced at $6.4K and $6.5K and have .180+ ISO marks since the start of 2018 with Martin sporting a .205 mark this season against RHP.
In 2019, Montas has dropped his sinker usage to 40% and increased is splitter usage to 20% which is a pitch he did not throw at all last season – and if he throws it to CarGo it could go a long way, as he has a .421 ISO mark against that pitch type.
The Indians bats outside of Ramirez and Lindor are simply far too cheap against a pitcher who has struggled in his career with left-handed power and a 2-3 man Indians value stack, opens up a world of possibility in your roster construction on a slate where you are going to need/want value.
MLB DFS – Sample Lineup and Slate Overview:
Please note – the sample lineup shown below is meant to be illustrative only and should not be used as a plug and play build.
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SP: Luis Castillo
SP: Zack Wheeler/German Marquez
IF: Nolan Arenado
IF: Trevor Story
IF: Mark Reynolds
OF: Ian Desmond
OF: Jakob Bauers
OF: Carlos Gonzalez
UTIL: Jason Kipnis
UTIL: $5.5K-$6.3K one-off
Slate Overview: Looking at this slate, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that you are going to want some high K arms and a core stack of big bats so finding a way to do both is really the challenge on a slate like this.
As shown above, there is a path to getting Castillo and Wheeler/Marquez with the four man Rockies RHB stack as a result of the value that sits with the Indians here today against Montas.
This is one of those slates where it feels like GPP scores will be off the charts as a result of such a big player pool with high-end arms and high-end stacks readily available so do not be afraid to swing big here tonight and take some shots. Keep an eye out for the lineups as they are released, find that value and lock and load.
I will be taking the weekend off to celebrate Mother’s Day with my wife and kids – so enjoy all the MLB DFS, make sure to spoil all the Moms out there and if you are a Mom yourself, thank you for all you do – enjoy YOUR day!
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