Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we dive into the top fantasy baseball plays and slate strategy to help you take down tournaments all season long at Win Daily Sports!
If you are new to MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, the goal of this article is not simply to list out the “best plays” but rather to walk through the context of the slate and help you identify the best arms and stacks to build around for MLB DFS tournament play. We will use DraftKings pricing as our anchor and help you get a head start on your winning builds!
Main Slate Breakdown
Welcome my friends to the Wednesday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots edition where we have a full day of baseball but unfortunately, with rain forecasted heavy early in the day, my guess is the 3 game early slate gets cancelled and leaves us with just the 10 game main slate to focus on – no worries though, still some really strong contests on DraftKings and another great GPP slate ahead of us!
Pitching Picks
When we step back and look at this slate, it sets up very similarly to last night in that we have tons of offenses to target, in fact, 7 of the 20 teams have 5+ IRT’s including another Coors Field Dodgers chalk attack and I think we will see heavily concentrated pitching ownership as a result of the weak player pool.
Now, the last two nights we have seen some really concentrated pitching combinations with Robbie Ray/Ranger Suarez on Monday and Brandon Woodruff/Jordan Montgomery last night, and I think tonight we will see similar trends as a result of the mid-range and value arms on this slate being so unappealing.
I also think the fact that simply “eating the chalk” the last two nights at pitcher has led to optimal results so we could see people go back to the same formula which would give us the potential to make CALCULATED and STRATEGIC pivots on a set of arms that I do not believe are “must-haves.”
Take Jordan Montgomery last night as an example – here was a pitcher that was roughly 60% in single entry tournaments, and while he put up 23.75 DK points – there was nothing about his 6K effort that you simply had to have. I know results > process people will scream – “but look, he was the second-highest scoring arm on the slate” – which is certainly true, but that score at his price point was a floor game – and I am a big believer that it is only worth the risk of eating chalk on arms with ceiling game potential outcomes.
I bring that up to set the context for tonight where we have some name value up top with guys like Zack Wheeler, Walker Buehler and Chris Sale but whether it is match-up or recent form, this is another spot where it feels like we have more floor outcomes than ceiling.
Zack Wheeler ($10.4K) is likely to be the safe SP1, much like folks anchored to Brandon Woodruff last night. His 27.4% K rate the last month is solid and ranks 11th in all of baseball the last 30 days with an 11%+ SS rate that has him comfortably sitting in the top 25.
The issue for him frankly is the match-up with Baltimore as this is a team that has consistently driven floor games from arms since the beginning of August. Since August 10th, a span of 20 games against right-handed starting pitchers – only TWICE has a pitcher managed to exceed 20 DK points with Gerrit Cole (23) and Nick Pivetta (28) hitting those marks. So it is fair to ask – are you paying over $10K for the ceiling potential of Wheeler tonight or the perceived safety on a bad pitching slate?
Walker Buehler ($9.8K) has a nice price decrease and I think the fact his name value sits under $10K will draw people to him but let me paint it a different way – what if I told you there was an arm at nearly $10K tonight pitching in Coors who has a 19% K rate the last month? Would you really be rushing to roster that guy?
Listen, I am not saying these guys won’t end up optimal type plays – but I don’t see any arm tonight as someone with 30-40 DK point “must-have” outcomes that I have to find a way to jam in at all costs.
So can we dig deeper tonight – making your way down the player pool to see if we can uncover some value options either to use as pairing with a chalkier arm up top or to go a route where we simply prioritize bats?
You want to find the direct leverage off the Dodgers chalk? How about using German Marquez ($7.4K) against them?
You guys do not need me to wax poetic about the risk of using arms in Coors Field especially against an elite offense like the Dodgers, but as you can see above in this view from StatMuse, German Marquez has pitched well and consistently well in Coors Field this season.
Marquez has made 16 starts at home with 14 of them going for double-digit DK points and 8 of his 16 pushing 20+ DK points. Yes, I see the big blow-up against the Giants and the 3.8 outing against the same Dodgers team he faces tonight – that is the risk we talked about. However, I would argue that risk is overly priced in tonight as this was an arm against the Braves and Marlins that was in the mid $8K price range and we are getting him tonight at just $7.4K.
Just take the Coors Field mystique and the Dodgers near 7 IRT out of it for a second – and think about what the numbers say – Marquez has delivered 20+ DK point efforts 50% of the time he steps to the mound and only twice in sixteen trips (12%) has he actually hurt you. Just from a pure statistical probability standpoint, there is far more reason to play him tonight than stack against him.
Just below Marquez is Chris Flexen ($7K) who gets a road start against Oakland and an A’s team he has had recent success against – dating back to August 24th when he dropped 22 DK points in a 6.2 inning, 5 K, 1 run win in Oakland.
If you look at Flexen’s last month – he has been exceptionally strong against RHB with a paltry .041 ISO mark allowed and Oakland is projected to trot out 6 RHB in their lineup tonight. If you are going this route, it is far more a “run prevention” type spot than a K spot but if you end up in this range, Flexen becomes one of those arms that is not likely to hurt you and could match the floor performances we see around the slate.
Scrolling down just a bit more, this one may take some selling – but hear me out – Taijuan Walker ($6.8K) in Fenway Park. Now, you are going to look at Walker’s recent stretch of crooked numbers and wonder why on Earth I would recommend him here but I think this is an under-the-radar spot for him based on price and match-up.
The Red Sox are projected to throw out 6 batters from the right side against Walker tonight and that really is the key when you look at his pitch mix and recent trends as the last month he has a 33% K rate and 52% GB rate against RHB. If you simply look at his K output in recent starts against the Yankees/Nationals – he struck out 14 batters in total and 13 of them were from the right side.
The key for Walker against right-handed heavy teams is the slider, a pitch that he is using more and more as the season goes on – with 35%-40% usage in recent outings. The Red Sox right-handed batters all have 30-40% whiff rates on this pitch type so if it is on – there is some serious K potential.
The risk is obvious – in Fenway park and the fact they still have 3 left-handed studs in Devers, Schwarber and Verdugo that could make this go bad quickly is the argument against it and I certainly get that part of it especially with Walker’s struggles against LHB with power since the break. This is a GPP play only but considering the slate context, it is one I think we can employ.
Stacks on Stacks
Now the chalk stack again will be the Dodgers because – well, Coors Field – but with so many other strong offenses in play, and the fact I think Marquez is actually in our player pool – I think you can deduce I am perfectly fine pivoting to other bats here.
We were all over attacking Taylor Hearn in his last start against the White Sox due to his struggles with hard contact and after Chicago put up 7 runs in just 3 innings of work – not sure why we wouldn’t go right back to the well with the New York Yankees here today.
You are asking a lefty who is giving up a 55% HC rate the last month to come into Yankee Stadium – yeah, this is not going to end well. Hearn is going to rely heavily on his sinker – he tried this against the White Sox and they pummeled it to the tune of a 75% hard contact rate and this Yankee line-up has hitters up and down that profile well against it.
Giancarlo Stanton is the bat that really stands out with a .632 ISO, 44% HC rate and a 101 EV with a 363 foot average distance traveled. Seriously, those are video game numbers. This is the easy HR call of the night – Stanton is taking Hearn deep (maybe more than once).
Aaron Judge, Luke Voit and Gary Sanchez all have similarly strong profiles with high ISO/HC rates, and especially in the cases of Sanchez ($3.7K) and Voit ($3.2K) you are getting some serious value considering the upside and our desire to pay up for arms.
Speaking of value bats that are seriously under-priced – let’s go back one more time to the Houston Astros who just continue to rake and are still WAY TOO CHEAP. Houston has scored back-to-back nights with 10 runs against the Angels and tonight they get RHP Janson Junk (great name, not a great arm).
Junk has struggled so far with just an 11% K rate and a 50% HC rate and this Houston line-up just continues to offer us free squares with their barrage of $2K value. Martin Maldonado ($2.4K) has gone deep back-to-back night and dropped 20 burgers for us at punt pricing and yet here he is -still free. What I continue to love about him is that batting in the 9 spot, he allows us a wrap-around stack for the road team and the 9 innings of guaranteed at-bats so it is like getting a punt lead-off guy hitting in front of Altuve, Bregman and company.
The real HR call of the night though exists right here – yes, I know I gave you Stanton, but here is one more – Carlos Correa ($4.7K) on his birthday – drops a birthday narrative bomb. Book it.
What stands out to me with the Astros/Yankees very honestly is the insane value. Listen, the Astros value isn’t new to us – we have been using it all week with Jose Siri, Chas McCormick and Marwin Gonzalez in addition to the aforementioned Maldonado. But even the Yankees – these bats are not as expensive as they should be and you can get a really strong mid-range build with the Yankee power that feels far too cheap.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We have covered ALOT of different angles here today in Picks and Pivots and I really want to step back and summarize it for you because you may have gotten here and wondered how you should attack it.
The easy part – stacking the Astros and Yankees. That is the CORE of my strategy tonight as we can take two of the hottest offenses in baseball the last 2 weeks and pair them together. The Yankees ranks 1st in baseball the last 14 days in team ISO at .241 with 33 HR’s while the Astros ranks 3rd with a .226 team ISO and 26 HR’s. You are pairing two red-hot offenses with power together and the value that exists across the lineups gives you some incredibly varied correlations.
That value is the key to unlocking who and how we prioritize with our arms.
The simple truth is – I don’t feel the need tonight to play any arm. I can make cases for many (as I did) but none feel like musts and any time that is the case I am more than willing to work backward and use ownership as a guide for ways to be different in GPP’s.
Get it? Got it? Good.
Good luck tonight all! Let’s keep that hot streak rolling! Come join the Win Daily Sports Team – grab a Gold Membership and take advantage of all the tools, articles, and expert coaching we can give you to make you a consistent winner in DFS.
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