MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – June 18 – Cano More Mr. Nice Guy

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.

As a GPP player I am all about fading the chalk and making pivots (hence the title of this article) and well on night’s like Monday sometimes that backfires in a big way. As soon as the Angels started teeing off on Edwin Jackson and home runs were flying from the three most highly owned bats on the slate in Mike Trout, Justin Upton and Shohei Ohtani, I knew my night was going to be a tough one. Sometimes fading the chalk gives you all the leverage – on this night, fading the chalk was a one way ticket below the cash line.

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 Pitching Breakdown:

Before we jump into tonight’s MLB DFS slate, our friends at FantasyDraft are hooking us up with ANOTHER $400 MLB Free Roll here tonight so make sure you get into that contest and start building that bankroll before their big July change to rake free DFS.

Tuesday’s slate is loaded with offense and at first glance, we do not have a ton of obvious cheap #FreeSquares to plug-in like we normally do, so I think most will look to go high-low at pitcher to try to afford more bats which gives us an interesting opportunity to build around pitching as we have three of the best K arms in baseball based off recent trends all taking the mound today.

Justin Verlander ($22.8K) is the de-facto ace on this slate with a 32.8% K rate and 15.9% swinging strike rate which both lead the pitching pool today. Additionally, Verlander comes into this game with a 36.1% K rate over the last month which is a top 5 mark in baseball over that time and has 30+ fantasy points in 5 of his last 7 starts.

The Reds will likely have 4 lefties and the pitcher in their lineup today which adds significant K equity to Verlander, as he is sporting a 39.5% K rate to LHB in 2019. He is the cash game lock and in GPP’s, I think he makes for a scary fade.

Brandon Woodruff ($17.5K) is an elite K arm that is rarely priced as one, as his 29.1% K rate over the last month is top 15 in baseball and second only to Mr. Verlander on this slate. Woodruff gets a massive ballpark boost heading to San Diego against a K heavy Padres team with a 26.4% K rate against RHP in the projected line-up. Considering the salary savings you get on Woodruff, he makes for an interesting “pay up” SP2 alongside Verlander here tonight that could even see a bigger boost if Manny Machado is forced to serve his one game suspension.

Jacob deGrom ($19.5K) feels like he will be totally over-looked on this slate tonight and with that in mind, I have interest – a ton of interest.

You have Verlander at the top or a cash game pivot in Clayton Kershaw against the Giants. Also it is Kershaws bobblehead night – so like, all the narratives and stuff.

The Braves offense is red-hot and there is some rain risk early in the game that could push people off him even more and frankly, at first glance it seemed like taking the $2K savings to Woodruff was the safer path in roster builds. deGrom has a 29% K rate over the last month, the same as Woodruff – and has now gone 5 straight starts with 2 or fewer runs in every game with no wins to show for it – typical Mets stuff when Jake pitches.

This is a gut feel play to be honest for GPP’s – the Mets are in a total free fall right now and got bludgeoned by the Braves offense last night. Nobody is going to play deGrom despite the fact he is under $20K but this could be a spot we see vintage deGrom tonight and with New York seemingly in must win, I could see him never handing the ball to the bullpen on this night. deGrom has gone over 100 pitches in 8 of his last 9 starts, with a season high 116 last time out – if he is on, this could be a complete game type scenario for a team in dire need of one.

MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:

If you read Picks and Pivots you know I am a die-hard and stubborn Mets fan and I also love me some regression (see every Jon Lester day for the last 3 years) and as if it is not bad enough I am a fan of this team – I also intend to light my money on fire tonight and stack the Mets when likely nobody else will – but hear me out.

Now you will see Julio Teheran‘s tidy little 2.92 ERA that is second to only Mr. Verlander on this slate and think – why would I want to pick on the Braves righty – well kids, regression is coming.

No pitcher on this slate has a wider E-F differential than Teheran – simply the difference between his FIP and ERA which is -1.22, which also happens to be the third worst mark in baseball this season. His SIERA at 5.00 is bottom 10 in the entire league and his 11.4% walk rate is bottom 5 in baseball – essentially every metric is screaming at us for regression including a BABIP of .231 which is one of the luckiest in the league.

If you are going to attack Teheran here it 100% starts with the lefties as those have historically been his Achilles heel, especially at home. Michael Conforto, Robinson Cano and Jeff McNeil make for a great top of the order stack and you can include Pete Alonso in a full on 4 man Mets stack in case this is the start the wheels fall off for Teheran.

Teheran throws his slider to righties over 30% of the time and Alonso has crushed this pitch (and seemingly all others) in his short career with a .444 ISO, 44% HC rate and a decent little 372 average distance traveled – basically he’s got a home run on lay away if that slider hangs.

The Mets line-up is definitely one to watch today – specifically, will Mickey Callaway look to get Dominic Smith into the lineup to get another lefty against Teheran? Smith has a .205 ISO against RHP this season with only a 15% soft contact rate so he is making a ton of medium/hard contact and for a team starved for offense, he could make for the ideal 5th man in a stack if the Mets opt to give him the start tonight.

A Mets stack – I mean, hey, what could possibly go wrong? (ducks).

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: Jacob deGrom

IF: Pete Alonso

IF: Jeff McNeil

IF: Robinson Cano

OF: Michael Conforto

OF: Dominic Smith

OF: Mike Trout

UTIL: Ryan Cordell

UTIL: Jose Rondon

Slate Overview: This slate feels like a wide open one which is perfect for GPP’s and with a ton of 5+ IRT’s and tough pricing on FantasyDraft, I could see paying up for both arms being a contrarian route.

In this build, I am banking on the Teheran-Mets stack regression and grabbing two of the best arms in baseball, with a Mike Trout one-off and I can do that by using two $3.9K bats from the White Sox which open up a ton of salary.

Now you can obviously pay down from Trout and spread that salary more evenly, but I always like to find those true punts that give you a path to the raw point ceiling of a star player like Trout. Enjoy this slate all – it should be a wild one.

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest MLB DFS news and analysis across FantasyDraft, FanDuel and DraftKings.