MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – June 2 – Maxin and Relaxin
Welcome to the Sunday 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.
Saturday Night’s MLB DFS slate was dominated by pitching with four of the top seven raw point plays being starting pitchers as Justin Verlander led the slate with 32 fantasy points while Jon Gray, in Coors Field, was not far behind with 30 fantasy points in a low scoring 4-2 contest between the Rockies and Blue Jays.
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 Pitching Breakdown:
I love slates like this 9 gamer we have here on Sunday with a Coors Field game with a 12+ IRT and two bad arms on the mound that will make folks have to choose how they handle their roster construction. If we work under the assumption that Coors is popular, conversely it will likely mean most opt to pay down for their arms which makes the high K arms priced over $20K a great GPP focus. We saw this last night where guys like Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom were only 20-25% owned in GPP play as many took the approach of paying down so they could jam in all the Rockies hitters they could which saw guys like Trevor Story and David Dahl at 40% or higher ownership.
Max Scherzer ($22.4K) is the #1 pitching option and the priciest play on the slate in a road start against the Reds in Great American Ballpark. Mad Max is the top dog when it comes to K rate on this slate, sporting a 31.8% K rate and a 16% swinging strike rate that again ranks best among all available arms today.
While the metrics have been elite, the fantasy production really has not followed with Scherzer failing to top 30 fantasy points in any start he has made since Opening Day. If you are going to pay this much for an arm today, you really almost need that kind of performance to make the investment worth it.
The Reds are a top ten team in terms of K percentage against RHP this season, with their projected line-up sporting a 23% mark in 2019. It is interesting however that the Reds have a 4+ IRT here today so Vegas certainly seems to be hinting at risk.
Lucas Giolito ($21.6K) comes into this game in simply elite form, routinely hitting that 30+ fantasy point mark that we mentioned Scherzer has consistently failed to hit. In his last five starts, Giolito has gone for 30+ fantasy points in four outings, striking out at least 8 batters in each one of those starts including a start against the same Indians team he faces today.
Over the last month, Giolito has a 30% K rate – with season long rates at 29.4% and a swinging strike rate of 12.8% which trails only Scherzer and Matt Boyd on this slate. Paying $21K for Giolito is going to mean some serious sticker shock considering this is an arm we as DFS plays routinely picked on in previous years.
In his last start against the Royals, Giolito was just over $19K on FantasyDraft and was only 11% owned in the $25 GPP on a slate where most looked instead to guys like Matthew Boyd or Rich Hill at 2-3x the ownership.
With a Coors Field game on the slate and the price rising even more – I am going to be very interested to see where the ownership falls for Giolito today. He gets a massive pitchers umpire in CB Bucknor who calls 12% more strikes than the average umpire with 11% fewer walks, which would seem to support another ceiling type environment for an ace arm, that most likely don’t consider in that class quite yet.
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:
In a roster build today where we focus on high-priced, high K arms like Max and Giolito, it will mean you are looking in the $7K range per batter for your stacks which takes you out of the Coors Field player pool but I think there are viable low-cost stacks and power one-offs that could easily give you better bang for your buck.
The Rays looks like they will go with LHP Ryan Yarbrough as a traditional starter today which makes identifying the player pool against him a bit easier and while Yarbrough is a solid arm, this Minnesota Twins line-up is incredibly dangerous and also, quite cheap.
Since the start of 2018, Yarbrough has only a 16% K rate against RHB, with that rate dropping to 12% in 2019 alone and that lack of swing and miss ability against a right-handed heavy line-up could present major problems.
C.J. Cron ($7.2K) has a .425 ISO mark against LHP this season with Miguel Sano ($7.5K) sporting a .234 mark of his own but more broadly this is a projected line-up with fly ball tendencies with extreme hard hit rates against southpaws.
Jorge Polanco, Jonathan Schoop, Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton all have 40% or higher HC rates against LHP in 2019 which makes a full on Twins stack a powerful option with some solid value plays like Marwin Gonzalez or Willians Astudillo who are both under $6K on FantasyDraft.
If you are looking for some power one offs – the one play that simply jumped off the page to me today was Paul Goldschmidt ($7.2K) against Cole Hamels. Since the start of 2018, Goldy has a .250 ISO mark with a massive 49.7% HC rate versus LHP – this price is FAR too cheap and Goldy will be a one-off fixture in all my builds today.
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: Max Scherzer
SP: Lucas Giolito
IF: Paul Goldschmidt
IF: CJ Cron
IF: Willians Astudillo
OF: Kyle Schwarber
OF: Miguel Sano
OF: Marwin Gonzalez
UTIL: Jonathan Schoop
UTIL: Byron Buxton
Slate Overview: With high-end arms and Coors Field expensive bats on the same slate, I am going to side with the elite arms with high K ability and look instead to find value bats and stacks. On Sundays we almost always get 1-2 punt plays which become #FreeSquares and give us extreme roster flexibility to make sure you watch the lineups as they come out.
Enjoy the slate all – see you back here on Monday!
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