MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – May 21 – Grand Opener, Grand Closing
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 ended up having some strong top-tier SP performances as three arms (Mike Soroka, Mike Minor and Brad Peacock) all went for 30+ fantasy points despite the slates highest priced arm in Patrick Corbin barely cracking double-digit fantasy points against the Mets. Offensively, the Rangers/Mariners game lived up to the Vegas high total, combining for 19 runs while the popular Yankees stack put up 10 runs and was the core offensive stack on the winning lineup in the $25 Home Run on FantasyDraft.
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’s Pitching Breakdown:
One night after the spend up ace in Patrick Corbin let everyone down, I am very interested to see how folks will treat the pay up options at pitcher tonight as we have two arms sitting over $20K on FantasyDraft in Justin Verlander ($22.2K) and Caleb Smith ($20.7K).
Verlander steps to the mound tonight in Houston against the White Sox and Vegas is basically screaming at us to lock him in as a -350 home favorite with Chicago sporting only a 2.24 IRT which is well over a run lower than any other team on the slate. Verlander has a 31.1% K rate this season (9th in MLB) with a 14.5% swinging strike rate which ranks 10th in the league but at this point you do not need me to tell you JV is a stud.
The match-up here is an elite one as the White Sox have a 25.7% K rate against RHP this season, which is top 5 in baseball, with only one player (Tim Anderson) having lower than a 20% K rate – meaning up and down this line-up there are K’s to be had for Verlander.
As good as Verlander is – metrics wise, Caleb Smith has been better – with a 16.5% swinging strike rate which is second to only Blake Snell and a K rate of 35.2% which trails only Snell, Gerrit Cole and Chris Sale for the league lead in 2019.
Smith’s opponent today, the Detroit Tigers, strike out at a 26.8% clip versus LHP in 2019 which ranks 7th in baseball and despite having all right-handed batters in their projected line-up, it actually may play into Smith’s upside.
On the season, Smith has a 37.4% K rate versus RHB, an 8% increase over his mark on lefties so as crazy as it sounds, Smith may actually have more K upside with the traditional splits the Tigers could throw out there.
There is no doubt that Verlander and Smith are the top two arms on the slate and while it is certainly not “sneaky” to play them, there are a couple of factors which could lead to them being under-owned.
First, the recency bias of Patrick Corbin last night and the overall theme in 2019 of high-end arms putting up duds in “can’t miss spots” (ie. deGrom versus the Marlins on Friday). I really think this trend is going to keep ownership on aces trending in a reasonable direction.
Secondly, there is a clear step down tier of solid arms like Domingo German (vs Baltimore), Zack Greinke (in SD), German Marquez (in Pit) and even Julio Teheran as an SP2 in SF which allow you to grab strong arms at a discounted price relative to JV/Smith.
Third is the pricing – I will say, the pricing tonight on FantasyDraft is one of the tightest I can recall this year which is making paying up for arms a real challenge. However that also ties in interestingly to the pivot options above – because while guys like German and Greinke are cheaper, they are only $1K cheaper than Smith so are we really getting THAT much of a discount?
So could we go double-barrel aces tonight and make it work? Let’s dig in!
MLB DFS – Building Bats Around Two Stud Arms:
When you open this slate and you see the Astros with a 6+ IRT against Dylan Covey, the Yankees versus David Hess, a 10+ run total between the Twins and Angels and another hot and expected high scoring affair between the Rangers/Mariners – I think you start to see pretty quickly that offense could end up ruling the day and adding even more to a potential fade of the higher priced arms.
As I mentioned, FantasyDraft did a great job of forcing your hand today – you cannot pay up for two arms and comfortably fit in any of these high dollar stacks so you are going to have to draw a line in the sand in your roster builds. Personally, when it comes to MLB DFS, I am going to attack variance more so with chalk offenses than with pitching as I believe it is far more common in a range of outcomes that elite hitters will under perform than to see the top tier arms put up duds. Now in fairness, that really has not been the case in 2019 with the “juiced balls” so the tide could be turning but I think siding with the larger sample and building around pitching feels like a contrarian option here tonight.
The first thing you need to do on slates where you want to pay up for arms is find your #FreeSquares and our old friend Chris Davis ($5.5K) fits the bill in the heart of the O’s order against RHP Domingo German. German since the start of 2018 has surrendered a .220 ISO to LHB with a near 40% HC rate and fly ball tendencies and Davis, despite all his struggles this year still has a .200+ ISO mark against RHP. This price tag is simply too cheap and you start to open up a path to a stack alongside your twin aces.
The stack I am looking at tonight is the LA Dodgers who will head to Tampa Bay to take on the Rays and my guess is this stack gets largely ignored this evening. First off, the Rays will be going with an opening in Hunter Wood (RHP) with LHP Jalen Beeks likely to take the “bulk” of the innings after Wood – and this concept of openers, is something that I really am starting to think gets people to overlook opposing offenses.
Think of it this way – why is everyone going to be on the Yankees tonight? Well they are facing David Hess of course. The Astros run total is approaching 7 because of Dylan Covey on the other side. We spend so much time focused on finding our bats based on the opposing pitchers we want to pick on, which at least for me in many cases leads me to cross off offenses that are facing openers.
I played around with this idea last night with the Twins against an Angels opener and then Felix Pena, and the Twins lefties (Kepler/Polanco/Rosario) were all single digit owned. Could we see something similar tonight with the Dodgers?
We will have to keep an eye on the line-up that LA rolls out because they have the ability to play the splits more so than any other team in baseball – will they load up with their cheap righties like Enrique Hernandez ($6.4K) and Chris Taylor ($5.5K)? Could we opt to play it straight up with mid-range bats like Max Muncy ($8.4K) and Justin Turner ($8K)? Will a pricey bat like Cody Bellinger ($10.6K), who is the most expensive hitter on the slate get passed on for the Yankees, Astros or Mariners/Rangers hitters?
You are going to need to wait and see what the line-up is here before you can really start to mix and match your stack with the keys being you get guys like Kike’ and Taylor in which will open the salary savings to stack up the rest of the Dodgers hitters. The fact that the Dodgers are going to an AL park here gives them the added benefit of adding a DH all while getting 9 guaranteed at bats on the road – this will be the line-up I wait to see tonight as it could open up an under-owned GPP path that also allows you to pay up for two arms.
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: Justin Verlander
SP: Caleb Smith
IF: Chris Davis
IF: Martin Maldonado
IF: Austin Barnes
OF: Cody Bellinger
OF: Alex Verdugo
OF: Kike’ Hernandez
UTIL: Max Muncy
UTIL: Justin Turner
Slate Overview: Without having an exact idea of the Dodgers lineup tonight, I am absolutely guessing a bit here but I think you can see what is possible with this stack. You can fit in a six man Dodgers stack along side BOTH Verlander and Caleb Smith here as a result of using two pure punts in Davis/Maldonado (who is the cheapest player on the board at $3.9K).
The Dodgers could end up being the kind of single digit owned stack that wins you a GPP as folks will simply not focus in on them with the Rays using an opener and with so many other high totals to pick on. Keep an eye on the lineups today – this could be a spot we target heavily once we get a better idea of how the Dodgers plan to attack it.
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