MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – June 10 – CarGo Down Narrative Street
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.
Happy Monday all – hopefully you all had a great weekend and are ready for a huge week in sports as we have MLB, the end of the NBA season and the US Open kicking off on Thursday which gives us multiple paths to play DFS and we have everything covered all week long here at Fantasy CPR.
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 Pitching Breakdown:
We have a nine game MLB DFS slate on Monday but keep an eye on the weather as we have some serious rain risk in NY and Philadelphia (and even late game Boston) which could wipe out the Mets/Yankees and Phillies/Diamondbacks before the slate even locks.
It is not all bad news though – our friends at FantasyDraft have another $400 FREE ROLL for tonight’s slate that you can jump into and build that bankroll ahead of their July switch over to rake free DFS!
While this slate has a handful of high-end arms on the slate, the one thing you will notice is that they sit in tough match-ups either against dangerous offenses or in some cases, having to pitch in Coors Field. The clear number one on this slate is Chris Sale ($21.2K) who will take on a K heavy Rangers line-up in Boston where Sale is a massive -250 home favorite and the Rangers have a slate low 2.79 IRT.
Over the last month, Sale leads all of baseball with a 41.5% K rate while sporting a near 16% swinging strike rate which is a top 5 mark during the last 30 days. Sale has double-digit strikeouts in 6 of his last 7 games, having gone for 40+ fantasy points in 3 of his last 6 outings and will face a Rangers team that strikes out at the 4th highest rate against LHP this season at 26.4%.
Sale will be popular, but with his current form and on a short slate like we have tonight, this is a fade at your own risk play and considering the match-ups the other top arms have at immaterial discounts off Sale, I will simply stick with the Red Sox ace.
If paying up for Sale, then going high-low on a two pitcher site may be the best route on this slate and there are two arms I think you can make a case for.
Joe Musgrove ($10K) will take on the same Atlanta Braves team he just faced in Pittsburgh, racking up 24.4 fantasy points on the back of 8 innings of 3 ER ball with 6 K’s and only one walk. Musgrove is the second cheapest arm on the slate but has gone for 17+ fantasy points in 7 of his 12 starts this season so he has a proven track record of performance at only $10K tonight, if we can get 17+ FPTS again tonight as your SP2, I think you would sign up for that right now.
Now Musgrove is by no means safe and facing the same team in B2B starts can be dangerous especially against a line-up like Atlanta and a hug park shift from PNC to Sun Trust. I would also suspect that the game log watchers will see the outing against the same opponent and simply plug and play which could drive up his ownership here tonight.
Tanner Anderson ($8K) is the cheapest arm on the slate and considering he is an actual starting pitcher and not an opener, this is about as cheap as you will find a pitcher on FantasyDraft – for price alone, we have to consider him here tonight. There is nothing in Anderson’s minor league profile that inspires a high level of confidence here as he profiles as an average sinker/slider arm who has scuffled to a 6+ ERA at AAA this season with only a 14% K rate.
The argument for Anderson is that he is stretched out, having thrown 82 pitches per game over his last 5 outing and with a heavy reliance on his sinker, he has a 50% plus ground ball rate at AAA. As Oakland Pitching Coach Scott Emerson stated in this SF Chronicle Article:
"“I knew about the heavy sinker, but wasn’t expecting his slider to be as good as it was; it’s got a really late break,” he said. “And the maturity level is great. He can change arm angles and he looks totally under control.”"
The Tampa line-up is not one I normally pick on, but we have to recognize this is a positive ballpark for Anderson and if you dig into the Rays stats against the sinker, you will see a ton of high GB rates and outside of Choi, nobody hits the pitch with any real power. If you are rolling with Anderson tonight, you are banking on that sinker being a ground ball inducing, soft-contact machine as any sort of performance resembling a solid start here tonight would give you the ability to pay off this price tag that will be cheaper than most hitters you roster.
MLB DFS – Building Out Bats:
With Chris Sale a priority spend tonight, the very first thing I did when I looked at this slate was to see not only if there was cheap pitching, but what cheap bats we could use to make him fit into our builds and boy oh boy, are there some cheap bats tonight.
First off – Khris Davis ($5.8K) – what did he do to the folks that run the FantasyDraft pricing algorithm to deserve this price? Adeiny Hecheverria is $700 more than Khris Davis – what a world. Yes Charlie Morton is not an arm I want to pick on, but the A’s prices are all punt worthy and a hitter the caliber of Davis is simply too cheap not to take a shot on.
Morton throws a sinker/curveball to RHB this season nearly 70% of the time – Davis, owns a .299 ISO against the sinker and .184 ISO against the curve and has a .375 ISO with 2 HR’s off Morton ins 16 AB’s in his career for the BvP crowd.
Secondly – Carlos Gonzalez ($5.7K) heading back to Coors Field, with ALL the narratives in play here as he returns to the Colorado for the first time as an opposing player. So you are telling me, I can get a punt play, in Coors Field, hitting in the middle of the order AND he has narrative? Get out of here – he’s lock city people.
OK now, step back – you have Sale, a cheap SP2, Davis and CarGo and well, a WHOLE lot of salary to spend – so let’s spend it right here in Coors Field with the Rockies versus Yu Darvish.
Colorado has a 6 IRT, the highest on the slate which frankly should not shock anyone and in the context of this slate, playing the Coors Field bats feels like the optimal play as we have no weather concerns and near 80 degree temperatures at first pitch.
Go ahead and stack up the Rockies bats who are back home after a long road trip and now have Charlie Blackmon sitting atop the lineup again. Blackmon-Story-Arenado-Dahl-Murphy-McMahon is a viable #6ManStack – a route I love taking on FantasyDraft where you can go all in one offense in GPP’s.
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: Chris Sale
SP: Tanner Anderson
IF: Trevor Story
IF: Nolan Arenado
IF: Daniel Murphy
OF: Charlie Blackmon
OF: David Dahl
OF: Khris Davis
UTIL: Carlos Gonzalez
UTIL: Jason Heyward
Slate Overview: Nothing overly complicated on this slate but sometimes that is the best route to take and not over think the obvious – getting the clear top arm in Chris Sale and loading up on the best hitting environment in Coors Field – rinse and repeat.
With some of the cheap bats we outlined, and the ability to drop down at SP2, I think looking at this roster construct, it would be a potential cash game route in addition to using the theory in GPP’s.
Keep an eye on the weather today and react accordingly – with a small slate looking like it could get even smaller – expect some heavy chalk here tonight. Now, that does not mean the chalk is a bad play – just something to keep in mind if you are going to be entering some huge entry field GPP’s.
Good luck all!
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