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MLB DFS picks and pivots September 3 – Angels in the outfield

By Brian Tulloch

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 16: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels shakes the hand of teammate Shohei Ohtani #17 at home plate after Trout hit a solo home run as catcher James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox looks on during the fifth inning of the MLB game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on August 16, 2019 in Anaheim, California. The White Sox defeated the Angels 7-2. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 16: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels shakes the hand of teammate Shohei Ohtani #17 at home plate after Trout hit a solo home run as catcher James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox looks on during the fifth inning of the MLB game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on August 16, 2019 in Anaheim, California. The White Sox defeated the Angels 7-2. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images) /
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ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 16: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels shakes the hand of teammate Shohei Ohtani #17 at home plate after Trout hit a solo home run as catcher James McCann #33 of the Chicago White Sox looks on during the fifth inning of the MLB game at Angel Stadium of Anaheim on August 16, 2019 in Anaheim, California. The White Sox defeated the Angels 7-2. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images) /

MLB DFS: Building our bats

While simply telling you to lock in two top arms may seem like a no-brainer, we DFS players know that we live in a world ruled by the salary cap and although it may seem difficult to build a stack we like at low salary, there are viable options for us tonight.

When looking through the offenses on this slate, the first thing I did was head to FantasyLabs MLB lineups page and toggled the price point to find stacks around $7K that could even make this viable.

Now, while Jon Lester IS pitching today with 14 MPH winds blowing out at Wrigley, I felt like taking the Mariners was the easy way out and I needed to dig a bit deeper and that is where I landed on the Angels bats versus RHP Mike Fiers.

What if I told you that you could build a 6 man stack going up against an arm with the 4th highest SIERA of any arm on the slate (5.21) and who has the second-lowest swinging-strike rate (7.8%) of any arm today who trails only the venerable Chi Chi Gonzalez in terms of worst advanced metrics this fine Tuesday.

Fiers is a reverse splits pitcher, giving up 1.5 HR/9 to RHB this season and this Angels line-up has 4 batters with 200+ ISO marks against RHP this season with Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Justin Upton and Kole Calhoun all with elite power marks.

The 4.2 IRT for the Angels is not going to stand out but you know what will? The pricing. Guys, Mike Trout is the most expensive bat on the team at only $8.7K. Think about that for a second, the best hitter in baseball is priced LOWER today than guys like Jonathan Schoop and Drew Butera.

Now expand the stack and you see that only Shohei Ohtani is above $8K and this stack starts to set up perfectly for point per dollar upside. While I love to sit here and beat the Jon Lester regression drum, the reality is that Mike Fiers numbers scream far more regression as his SIERA is nearly 2 runs higher than his ERA which is the largest gap of those metrics for any arm on this slate.