MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Sunday, May 12 – Mother’s Day Edition
Welcome to the Mother’s Day 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.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Mom’s out there – those who play DFS, or tolerate the rest of us to play each and every day and a special Mother’s Day shout out to my wife – Mrs. 2LockSports who amazes me every day as a mother to our kids.
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 – Sunday’s Pitching Picks:
Let’s kick-off this Sunday MLB DFS nine game slate with a look at the weather, as it appears this will become a six game slate before we know it with all-day rain expected for the Mets/Marlins, Red Sox/Mariners and Orioles/Angels.
Unfortunately that will eliminate some of the top arms on this slate in Noah Syndergaard, Caleb Smith and Griffin Canning but such is life – so let’s dig into the “safe” weather games and figure out how to attack this slate.
Blake Snell ($20.6K) gets a home start against the Yankees and with multiple other top-tier arms likely to be rained out, Snell stands out as the clear top arm on this small slate and a dangerous fade. Snell is sporting a 35.3% K rate and 18.5% swinging strike rate and will get to pitch in a pitcher’s park against a banged up Yankees lineup.
Snell has put up 30+ fantasy points in four of his last six starts and if he has one of those days and you choose to fade – you better hope your bats have monster days to make up the gap. Outside of an ownership play, I see no reason to get cute on what could be a six game slate – just play Snell.
Lucas Giolito ($15K) is one of the more volatile arms in DFS – one that we have likely chased after before, only to get burned and likely also one we have tried stacking against. On the surface, his metrics would be ones we would normally jump all over – a 29.8% K rate, 11.9% swinging strike rate and a 3.56 xFIP – and today against the Blue Jays, it is hard to overlook him as a strong SP2.
Toronto’s projected lineup has a 28% K rate against RHP this season and Giolito gets Angel Hernandez calling balls and strikes, a massive pitcher’s umpire who calls 11% more strikes than the average umpire and seemingly everything points to Lucas with the lid off as a strong secondary option to build around.
Corbin Martin ($15.3K) is the likely pivot in this range, the “unknown” option on the slate – which will likely bring ownership and buzz by default. Martin had a 24% K rate at AA last season and has stepped up his game this year at AAA with a 29.8% K rate over 5 appearances.
Martin is the biggest favorite of any arm today (-215), not bad for your first Major League start, and his minor league K resume is likely going to lead folks to chase that upside here today against a K heavy Rangers line-up.
My take here is simple – Martin may end up as the popular SP2 play today as a top prospect making his MLB debut, however Giolito is a great reminder that not every top prospect comes up and has immediate success.
If Martin is the more popular option, than I have no issue taking the slight savings and going to Giolito and hoping that the Rangers power gets to the young Astros arm early and knocks off some of those first start jitters.
MLB DFS – Building Our Stack:
With 5+ IRT’s on this Main Slate, my guess is the Minnesota Twins and Houston Astros become the popular chalky stacks on this slate and while either is a fine play, if we are going to find a way to be different today, I think it comes more with the bats than with the arms.
Put simply – I think if we played this slate out 100 times, variance would likely land more on the side of the hitters than pitchers, meaning Blake Snell is likely less prone to flop than a chalk offense stack like the Twins or Astros.
With that being said, I want to chase after power offenses – and while a date with Masahiro Tanaka is not one we normally want to target, this Tampa Bay Rays offense is loaded with power and has the upside to take down a GPP on any given slate.
With Austin Meadows back at the top of this line-up, the Rays now have the top 7 batters in their projected lineup sporting .190+ ISO marks against RHP with their projected line-up sporting a combined hard hit rate of nearly 45%. The 1-5 stack here with Meadows, Tommy Pham, Ji-Man Choi, Yandy Diaz and Brandon Lowe is stacked with power and Tanaka is an arm that has always struggled with the HR ball and in fact has surrendered at least 1 HR per game in his last 6 starts.
With Mike Zunino injured, this could be the day we see Anthony Bemboom ($4.1K) get a start at catcher and at this price point in the #9 spot in the line-up, he offers you a “Free Square” value as part of a 6 man Rays wrap-around stack.
If you are looking for a pivot stack, assuming the Pirates go left-handed heavy, then we can load up against Dakota Hudson who has given up a .400 ISO and 44% HC rate to LHB this season with 8 HR’s and 11 ER in only 12 innings of work against left-handed batters in 2019.
Josh Bell and Gregory Polanco have .379 and .282 ISO marks against RHB this season and despite their high price tags, make for an elite two man power stack that may get over-looked with the focus on the Twins and Astros today.
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 lineup.
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SP: Blake Snell
SP: Lucas Giolito
IF: Brandon Lowe
IF: Yandy Diaz
IF: Anthony Bemboom
OF: Tommy Pham
OF: Austin Meadows
OF: Ji-Man Choi
UTIL: Gregory Polanco
UTIL: Nelson Cruz
Slate Overview: Assuming the weather knocks three games off this slate, I am going into today with Blake Snell as priority number 1 and using Giolito/Martin as my SP2 options which will allow you to stack up at least one high end offense.
I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, the 6 man stacks on FantasyDraft have been routinely found at the top of GPP’s in recent weeks so I think it is worth playing around with some 6 man stacks today, especially if you eat the Blake Snell chalk as it will allow you a way to differentiate and go all-in today against some of the more popular offensive stacking spots.
Happy Mother’s Day all!
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