MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – June 5 – Straight A’s Homey!
Welcome to the Wednesday’s 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.
What an absolutely bizarre MLB DFS slate Tuesday was – the high-end arms in can’t miss spots got hammered and players like Pedro Severino and Jay Bruce dropped 40+ fantasy point outings to break the slate. The Marlins scored 16 runs, Kyle Hendricks was the top scoring arm – basically, if you found a way to cash last night, good for you – for the rest of us, well the beauty of DFS is we can turn the page to the next day.
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 – Wednesday Pitching Breakdown:
We have a twelve game MLB DFS Main Slate here on Wednesday and once again our friends at FantasyDraft are bringing us another $400 MLB Free Roll to dive into. If you have not heard, FantasyDraft is moving to a new rake free model in July (with details coming) so this is a great opportunity to play these MLB daily free rolls and build up some bankroll.
The 12 game slate here tonight has a few weather risks on it we need to mention before we dive in with rain concerns for the Mets/Giants, Indians/Twins and Rangers/Orioles.
I am fascinated to see how the industry attacks this slate and how ownership ends up shaking out for the starting pitchers here this evening. To be kind, paying up for starting pitching this season has been “inconsistent” and after the Strasburg/Snell mess last night, this could be a great test case in how recency bias impacts decision-making.
We have multiple high-priced, high K arms and frankly no real offensive totals that jump out from Vegas so on the surface it would see like a night to pay for pitching – but will people be scared off?
James Paxton ($22.1K) is the highest priced arm on the slate against Toronto, with a 34.9% K rate and 14.9% swinging strike rate in 2019, which lead the slate in both metrics but the fact he was limited to 66 pitches and 4 innings his last time out – the first off the IL – I think there is simply far too much risk unless we get some definitive “no pitch count” news.
Chris Sale ($20.8K) has a 34.3% K rate and 14.5% swinging strike rate this season and after a slow start, has come on strong with a massive 43.1% K rate over the last 30 days with double-digit strikeouts in five of his last six starts.
Sale is a massive -195 favorite and this Royals team is top 10 in K’s versus LHP with a projected line-up that strikes out nearly 24% of the time against southpaws. The upside for Sale here is simply unmatched on this slate and if people are going to be afraid to pay for pitching after last night, I will simply load up on the Red Sox ace.
Charlie Morton ($22K) is that ace that seems to get lost in the shuffle on every DFS slate and at this price point today, I absolutely expect that to happen again. With a 30.4% K rate on the year though and a match-up against a Tigers team that has the third highest K rate (28.4%) against RHP in 2019 – you can make the argument that he should be a priority play based off the metrics and match-ups. Over the last month, Morton has a 31% K rate, 9th in baseball, yet we rarely talk about him as this must have ace when it comes to DFS.
I am a firm believer on simply playing what the numbers tell us and here is what we know – we have two arms in Sale and Morton, who are striking out hitters at a 30% plus clip, rank in the top 10 in K rate across baseball the last month and get match-ups against the Royals and Tigers, that strike out at a top 10 rate against that handedness.
While everyone else screams paying for pitching is dumb and spends the day talking themselves into the Jimmy Nelson‘s and Kevin Gausman‘s of the world – I will simply take two elite K arms in top match-ups. I mean it worked awesome yesterday right?
MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:
If we take the route of double-barrel aces tonight with Sale/Morton, you are going to have to find some mid-range stacks to make the build work so it will mean teams like the Brewers, Yankees and Red Sox are likely out of your price range.
However, with under-priced one-offs like Travis Shaw ($5.9K) sitting out there for the taking, you can build in one or two punts and get to a spot where you have $7.5K per batter for a team stack built around Morton/Sale, which I think is more than enough to find upside.
The Oakland A’s will get a combination of Cam Bedrosian (opener) and Felix Pena here tonight against the Angels and as I have mentioned before, I think in general we tend to shy away from stacking against openers – as most of our inclinations are to stack against the starting pitcher versus the “pitching staff” of the opponent.
The middle of this A’s line-up is loaded with power with their 2-5 of Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Khris Davis and Stephen Piscotty all sporting .200+ ISO marks against RHP since the start of 2018 with each of them owning a 43-47% HC rate.
Pena is a two pitch pitcher – throwing is slider and sinker 80-90% of the time so digging into those pitch types should be our next stop.
Against the slider, both Davis and Jurickson Profar have .200+ ISO marks while all of Davis, Chapman, Olson, Piscotty and Robbie Grossman have 35% or higher HC rates with 300+ average distance on that pitch type. Against the sinkers – well this is where the middle of this order stack really pops. Chapman, Davis and Olson all have .300+ ISO marks against this pitch type with an average 44% HC rate and 325 feet average distance traveled.
The pricing on the Oakland bats is incredibly appealing with Chapman being the only player in the line-up over $8K and with this game being on the road, you get the added benefit of a guaranteed 9 innings of at-bats here tonight.
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 line-up.
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SP: Chris Sale
SP: Charlie Morton
IF: Travis Shaw
IF: Matt Chapman
OF: Khris Davis
OF: Matt Olson
OF: Stephen Piscotty
UTIL: Robbie Grossman
UTIL: Jurickson Profar
Slate Overview: I write Picks and Pivots each day as a first look column (at 5AM EST mind you) so it is really my gut reaction to a slate and what I think may happen.
That said, I am going to be fascinated to see how people approach paying up for pitching tonight, as I think we have the opportunity to use recency bias to our benefit. We have two of the best K arms in baseball in Morton and Sale and honestly, no high-end offenses that feel like must haves, so I am fine paying up for pitching and building around a mid-range stack like Oakland.
Enjoy the slate all – stick around to Fantasy CPR for all our PGA DFS coverage and NBA Finals breakdowns! Good luck!
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