MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – June 30 – What’s That Snell?

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’s MLB DFS slate started with a bang as the Yankees and Red Sox scored roughly 100 runs in the London Series and ended a bit with a whimper as Kershaw and Gray were able to keep the Coors Field bats quiet while Justin Verlander could not even crack double-digits on a night where paying up for pitching seemed to flop for the 1,675th slate in a row.

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 Slate Pitching:

Welcome to the final day of June as we creep closer to the MLB All-Star Break and a league mandated break from MLB DFS. Thankfully we get a really interesting Sunday slate this afternoon with 9 games to break down with some big themes missing – we have no Coors Field to jam in and we do not have the Yankees/Red Sox game with both teams have 8+ IRT’s.

We do however have elite pitching and lots of it – with Max Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, Shane Bieber and Lucas Giolito all on the mound and all over $20K on FantasyDraft. Considering the big offenses are not on this slate, the pitchers seem like the place to spend our salary but how many times have the “can’t miss” arms – well, missed – this season?

Scherzer and Cole are the clear top dogs on this slate but you are going to have to pay through the nose to get them at $24K and $23.1K respectively but with both arms as -280 favorites, they seem like the ideal route to go in cash games and they become building blocks in GPP’s.

Cole leads the slate with a 36.6% K rate on the season but Scherzer at 38.6% leads the league over the last month – basically, either arm could be considered the top play here today depending on how you slice it. Mad Max will take on a Tigers team with a 25.6% K rate against RHP this season and over the last 30 days, no team in baseball has a higher K rate than Detroit at 25.6%

I think anchoring to one of them as an SP1 is a clear path on this slate, but the path to an SP2 is not so clear and comes with considerable risk.

What is up with Blake Snell ($15.9K)?

Snell has been a total mess his last few outings, getting blasted by the Twins and Yankees for 14 runs and -19 fantasy points and has only cracked single digit positive fantasy points one time in his last five trips to the mound.

There is no doubt that Snell has the K ability to dominate any slate and this match-up against a Rangers line-up with a 27.8% K rate against LHP is literally the best possible match-up he could ask for as Texas strikes out at the highest rate versus lefties in all of baseball this season.

Is it possible Snell is simply running into some bad luck recently?

This is a pitcher with a .294 career BABIP and the last five games we are seeing a massive jump to .482 and while that 11.94 ERA is ugly, the xFIP being “only” at 4.75 tells you that maybe, just maybe, there is some bad luck involved.

Today, Snell will be at home, a place he has only pitched once during this recent five game rough patch and his season and career splits would tell you he is materially better at home. He gets a high K match-up and also a massive pitcher’s umpire in Bruce Dreckman who calls 12% more strikes than the average umpire.

From a roster construction perspective, going with Max/Cole and Snell not only gives you two of the best pure K arms on the slate by every metric, but you are also doing so at a significant discount due to Snell’s recent struggles.

Snell may be broken as people have theorized but on a short slate like this, I am willing to roll him out as a far too cheap SP2 in the hopes that positive regression starts to come his way today.

MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:

We may not have Coors or the London bats to choose from but we still have multiple game totals over 10 and with a Max/Cole and Snell pairing at pitcher, you really have the flexibility to go whatever way you want with bats today. remember too, Sunday’s are value days in MLB DFS as lineups get released, regulars get a day off and punt plays give us salary relief that makes watching lineups ahead of lock a keep component of Sunday MLB DFS strategy.

You act like you don’t know where I am going today.

It is hot in Great American Ballpark with temperatures pushing towards 90 with 8 MPH winds blowing straight out and a massive hitter’s umpire behind the plate for non other than Jon Lester.

Stack those Reds baby!

There are four guys from the Reds that simply hammer LHP this season with Nick Senzel, Yasiel Puig, Phillip Ervin and Eugenio Suarez all well over .200 ISO marks and Ervin, Suarez and Senzel all have 54% or higher HC rates against southpaws in 2019.

Rather than go all-in against my buddy Lester, I think you can build around this core four but also stay in this game for some Cubs bats against Anthony DeSclafani. The book on DeSclafani has always been simple – he limits righties but gets hammered by lefties – to the tune of a .288 ISO, 45% FB rate and 46% HC rate since the start of 2018.

Anthony Rizzo and Kyle Schwarber have 240+ ISO marks each against RHP this season and they both have .200+ ISO marks against the primary offerings to lefties – the slider and sinker – that DeSclafani throws. You could argue Great American Ballpark is the best pure hitting park and game environment on the board today, so building a game stack here is a viable route.

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.

SP: Max Scherzer OR Gerrit Cole 

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SP: Blake Snell

IF: Anthony Rizzo

IF: Kyle Schwarber

IF: Eugenio Suarez

OF: Yasiel Puig

OF: Nick Senzel

OF: Phillip Ervin

UTIL: $4.3-$4.8K per player

Slate Overview: Depending on which ace you want to anchor to today at the top, going with Snell as your boom/bust SP2 gives you the salary savings to easily stack up Great American Ballpark and while we wait for line-ups, we can mix and match 1-2 punt plays at our UTIL spot on FantasyDraft.

It feels scary to say, but Snell is the key to this slate. I think his name recognition and match-up at this reduced price point is going to make him popular which certainly could warrant a fade but if the positive regression starts today and you don’t have him, you could end up chasing the field with a much weaker SP2 crop.

Lastly – tomorrow is July 1 and at Fantasy CPR and FanSided we have some big news to share. Keep an eye on our social media Monday Morning as we are ready to take our game to the next level.

Happy Sunday All!

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