Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Monday 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 back my friends to a Monday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have 7 games to break down and a strong tournament contest selection to kick off the week after a Sunday that was focused on football.
Pitching Picks
The overarching story of this Main Slate is that pitching is LOADED – up and down, at all price points, and with a ton of K upside. So go ahead and just scrap the idea of using guys that can just “get there” because that will not cut it tonight – you need to focus solely on the big strikeout arms of which we have a ton!
Robbie Ray ($10.6K) is the elite arm on this slate and has been the single best strikeout pitcher in baseball the last month with a 44% K rate and a 19% swinging-strike rate which rank as the top marks in the league over the previous 30 days. Ray has put up double-digit K’s in 5 of his last 6 trips to the mound with DK point totals of 33, 35, 36, 37, and 41 – just insane output on a consistent basis and the clear top dog on this slate. In a game the Blue Jays need to win as they continue to fight for a Wild Card berth, we can all but guarantee that Ray goes for 100+ pitches and the ceiling is simply one I think we have to lock in on.
What is awesome about this slate though is how the SP2 options are so deep and they sit at so many price points that you can get really different GPP builds as a result.
I think Adam Strangis nailed it in Starting Rotation that the likely chalk is Ranger Suarez ($6.4K) at the low-end of the pool who has been chalk in each of his last two outings and now gets a price drop of $1,000 despite two straight outings in which he went for 20 and 21 DK points with 14 K’s over those starts. The Ray/Suarez combination just makes far too much sense from a high/low perspective tonight.
We just saw the Yankees throw back to back left-handers at this Baltimore team in Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes who struck out 11 and 12 respectively so the ceiling for Suarez here is massive and it is hard to argue against him as a strong PP/$ play.
Speaking of Nestor Cortes ($8.6K) – after that 11 K outing for the Yankees he got a minor price increase and gets a solid home start against the Rangers tonight. Cortes is kind of in no man’s land for pricing – but this price point may be the spot to get different in GPP’s – as I think the fact we have multiple arms here, will spread out any ownership you’d get.
All of Sean Manaea, Nestor Cortes and Huascor Ynoa are in this $9K price range and they all have strong K metrics to support using them as a contrarian pay-up option. Both Manaea and Ynoa sit firmly in the top 15 of arms over the last month with swinging strike rates of over 12% while both Cortes and Ynoa have lofty 33% K rates over the last 30 days. On a night where Suarez could be massive chalk (think 40-50%) – I think following ownership here and locking in a low-owned SP2 is a great way to be different.
Stacks on Stacks
You would think on a night with so many strong arms, we would have trouble getting the bats but this 7 game slate is even loaded here with big time totals for high-powered offenses like the Yankees, Braves, Astros, Phillies, Brewers and Oakland who all have IRT”s at 5 or higher.
I think that offense is the spot tonight you can totally differentiate yourself and you can do it quite easily – by taking the best offense in baseball the last two weeks.
No, not the Rays – but close 🙂
The Toronto Blue Jays are going to be the single-digit owned offense tonight that gets totally overlooked because it is setting up to be the perfect storm in that we have multiple teams with high totals where their 4-4.5 total will get totally lost and the fact they are facing a shiny new toy in RHP Shane Baz will likely put more folks on the pitcher than using the Jays bats.
This is not an indictment of Baz by any means, the kid is a top 20 prospect in all of baseball for a reason, one of the top right-handed arms in all of the minor leagues and one with NASTY K stuff – frankly, one I would argue we should play most nights because his price is too cheap considering the upside.
But flip the script a second – he has to face the most prolific offense in baseball the last 14 days as Toronto ranks 1st with 100 runs scored, 31 HR’s and a .255 ISO mark – literally clean sweep!
As I mentioned with Ray, the Jays need to win every single game right now and so they are not going to take their foot off the gas and the fact we could get them as an overlooked stack tonight on the road with 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats is just far too tempting!
Baz relies on a high-velocity fastball and a slider and this Jays lineup have bats that pop off the page against that pitch combination with high ISO/power marks up and down the lineup. Listen, Baz could come out and dominate in his first start – he could also be far too jacked up, lose his control and have to fight from behind in the count to the best offense in baseball that has to win every game and if that happens – oh boy, it could get ugly FAST.
The best part about this Jays lineup is that while the top of the order is expensive, they have some amazing cheap wrap-around potential with Jake Lamb ($2K) projected in the 9 hole which allows you a path to stack the Springer, Semien, Vladdy, Bichette types with ease by using Lamb’s salary savings in front of them!
The other high-powered offense that has some seriously high/low salary options tonight is the Houston Astros against RHP Jaime Barria. Houston is another road team with 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats and with both Michael Brantley (on the IL) and Kyle Tucker (DTD) banged up you could get multiple punts with Jose Siri and Chas McCormick both at $2K at the bottom of the lineup alongside a punt C like Martin Maldonado or Jason Castro.
Barria gives up a TON of hard contact – 58% to RHB and 47% to LHB with his slider being the primary pitch type to both sides of the plate in terms of volume but also the one with the highest opposing ISO marks.
Yordan Alvarez absolutely destroys sliders from RHP to the tune of a .436 ISO, 52% HC rate, and an average distance of 343 feet. Seriously – that’s the average. We call our shots around these parts – and Alvarez is taking Barria deep tonight on a slide piece. Book it.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Looking at this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate – boy is it a good one – and it is one I simply can’t wait to see play out with ownership because I really do think we can find ways with our SP2 options and core stacks to be totally different from the field and get massive GPP edges!
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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