MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – May 20 – Fo Shizzo My Rizzo!
Welcome to the Monday 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.
After taking the weekend off to enjoy some QT with the family, we are back with a solid 8 game MLB DFS slate on Monday with no rain issues to speak of and 80+ degree temperatures hitting some of the East Coast ballparks which should produce some ideal hitting environments.
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 – Monday’s Top Pitching Picks:
Although I took the weekend off from MLB DFS, I still watched my favorite team, the New York Mets, get swept by the Miami Marlins so maybe I should have just taken the weekend off from baseball entirely. They return home tonight in what could end up being Manager Mickey Callaway‘s final game with his seat getting red-hot and will have to try to coax a sleeping offense to take their licks against Nationals LHP Patrick Corbin (21.6K).
Corbin just faced this Mets team his last turn through the rotation and struck out 11 batters in Washington on his way to 39 fantasy points with 8 innings of one run ball. After seeing the Marlins pitchers Sandy Alcantara (43 fpts) and Pablo Lopez (32 fpts) put up ceiling type games, it is hard to argue with paying the asking price for Corbin here tonight as your SP1 in cash games and with a 30-40 point ceiling, in GPP’s he could easily end up the highest scoring play on the slate.
If you are paying up for Corbin as an SP1, pairing him with Luke Weaver ($16.2K) in the mid-range feels like the ideal route as a result of his price point and match-up in San Diego against a right-handed heavy Padres line-up. Weaver on the season has a 28.4% K rate against RHB, which is 4% higher than his mark against lefties and with only 2 LHB in the Padres line-up, this should set up well for Weaver here. Weaver has been phenomenal to start the year with 20+ fantasy points in five of his last seven outings and has been at his best on the road, pitching to a 2.38 ERA with a 29% K rate.
The high/low pairing of Corbin and Weaver feels like a strong cash game route to take on this slate but I think there are some interesting “second-tier” aces on this slate you could pay up for in GPP’s if you wanted to go double-barrel aces. We will touch on this in a second, but with some popular/pricey hitting stacks folks will want, paying up for both arms could be the best way to differentiate.
If Weaver becomes a popular SP2, it will almost mean by default that his opposition, Chris Paddack ($18.6K) gets lower ownership and with Paddack being the second highest priced arm, my guess is most will find a way to get to Corbin if they are investing this much in a pitcher.
Paddack has all the metrics we look for in our DFS aces, a 28.5% K rate, a near 12% swinging strike rate and his 35.4% K rate against right-handed batter stands out against an Arizona line-up that will be right-handed heavy with only 3-4 left-handed batters. Paddack gets the benefit of pitching at home as well, where he has been downright dominant in his last two starts against the Mets and Mariners, going 7+ IP with 11 and 9 K’s, which was good for 36 and 40 fantasy points.
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:
We are still waiting on a handful of Vegas totals today with so many pitchers being TBD, but what will surely stand out are the 5-6 IRT’s that the Texas Rangers have against Mike Leake and the New York Yankees ave against Andrew Cashner. Not only are the Vegas totals high, Leake and Cashner are two of DFS’s favorite whipping boys which means finding the chalk stacks this evening should be relatively easy.
With the context of paying up for pitching today, it is going to mean finding some value stacks and the one game that really stood out to me for value was the Phillies-Cubs in Wrigley Field with Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish on the mound. With a ton of warm ballparks today, my guess is a 50 degree day in Wrigley will not generate all the much buzz but the talent level of the hitters in this game seems disproportionate to the pricing on FantasyDraft.
Take a look at the Phillies pricing – Bryce Harper ($7.3K), Rhys Hoskins ($8.5K), Andrew McCutchen ($7.3K), JT Realmuto ($7.4K) – you start to catch my drift. With Darvish being a guy who gets 50% GB’s this season, you want to target the fly ball hitters like Harper and especially Hoskins who has a 51% FB rate and .285 ISO mark against RP since the start of 2018.
Going Harper/Hoskins as a mini-stack perfectly fine if you want to stop there but you can expand on this stack and attack Darvish’s league leading 17% walk rate in the hopes you get a few crooked innings.
On the other side of this game, the Cubs lefties are 100% in play against Jake Arrieta, who is giving up a .200 ISO and 41% HC rate to LHB in 2019. The key when attacking Arrieta with lefties is finding the sticks that hit the splitter well, a pitch he throws 50% of the time to LHB and there are a few in particular that profile well against the pitch.
Anthony Rizzo ($9.1K) has a massive .390 ISO mark against this pitch type with a 42% HC rate, 93% contact rate and 325 feet average distance traveled which makes him one of my favorite bats on this slate but you can argue not to stop there as guys like Kyle Schwarber and Jason Heyward have just under .200 ISO marks against the pitch type with 90 MPH+ EV.
One last spot on our stacking tour is in Minnesota where the Twins will take on the Angels opener Tayler Cole before facing RHP Felix Pena. Pena on the season has been someone who lefties have hit and hit hard, to the tune of a .242 ISO, 50%+ fly ball rate and a 42% HC rate and with the Twins rolling out a trio of lefties at the top of the order, this could make for another strong mid-range stacking option.
All of Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Polanco all have .250+ ISO marks against RHP in 2019 and this three man stack which costs roughly $8K per player gives you significant power upside that will likely go over-looked especially since the Angels just used this opener/Pena move against the same Twins with success on May 14th which will keep game log watchers off the scent.
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 build:
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SP: Patrick Corbin
SP: Luke Weaver
PHI – Rhys Hoskins
PHI – Bryce Harper
CHC – Anthony Rizzo
CHC – Kyle Schwarber
MIN – Eddie Rosario
MIN – Max Kepler
MIN – Jorge Polanco
MIN – Marwin Gonzalez
Slate Overview: Normally I am a big fan of stacking up 1-2 teams but tonight I think there is merit to mixing and matching stacks if you are going to fade the chalky offenses like the Rangers and Yankees.
The pitching pool in my opinion is pretty shallow today so playing the more popular arms is the route I will likely take and look to attack my bats with low(er) owned power bats and hope that Mike Leake and Andrew Cashner can limit the damage – to be honest, typing that sentence made me want to re-think everything I wrote but it’s too late now – we are pot committed.
Enjoy the slate all!
Next. MLB DFS Pitching Primer - Monday, May 20. dark
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