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MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: July 31 – Deadline Day!

By Brian Tulloch

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 28: Michael Conforto #30 of the New York Mets runs the bases after his first inning two run home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Citi Field on July 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 28: Michael Conforto #30 of the New York Mets runs the bases after his first inning two run home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Citi Field on July 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) /
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MLB DFS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JULY 28: Michael Conforto #30 of the New York Mets runs the bases after his first inning two run home run against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Citi Field on July 28, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images) /

MLB DFS – Building Our Bats:

Locking in top-tier arms like deGrom and/or Berrios is the easy part on this slate, where you are going to win/lose in DFS is with your bats and with no clear-cut stacks to have, I think we will see ownership largely spread out even on a smaller slate.

As a Mets fan, trade deadline day is going to be a nervous one – with franchise building blocks like Syndergaard and Edwin Diaz being discussed in deals, I really hope that by the end of the day they remain Mets, but until the deadline passes at 4PM EST I will have a hard time resting easy.

That said, while the Mets may be a team the baseball world is watching today due to trade rumors, I do not think that the DFS community will be focused all that much on them against Lucas Giolito, but they make for a great stacking spot when you consider price relative to upside.

Now Giolito has had a strong year, but in his recent games, you are starting to see “Old Giolito” rear his ugly head, giving up 7 ER and 6 ER in his last two home starts against the Twins and Cubs. What you saw in those two games was that he had control issues against the Cubs with 5 walks and against Minnesota, they simply did not chase his pitches outside the zone with only an 11% swinging-strike rate and a 26% swing rate outside the zone which are both significant drops from Giolito’s season-long numbers.

At home this season, Giolito has also been far worse, with a 4.13 xFIP, 10% walk rate and 1.4 HR/9 and tonight will have Mark Wegner behind the plate, who is a massive hitter’s umpire with a 14% walk rate increase and 15% run increase over the average umpire.

At home versus lefties this season, Giolito has a massive 51% fly ball rate and this Mets line-up has three lefties at the top with .200+ ISO marks against RHP in 2019 with Jeff McNeil, Michael Conforto and Robinson Cano. If you are going to focus in on the lefties than my recommendation is to always extend that stack to include Pete Alonso who has a .300+ ISO mark against RHP this season.

After giving up 4 HR’s in his last start, three to Nelson Cruz and one to Max Kepler, there are some clear recent trends that are pointing to the Mets as a sneaky power stack here this evening that when you factor in their price points with guys like Conforto ($7.2K) and Cano ($6.7K), you start to see a path to a powerful offense stack around two high priced arms.