Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Sunday 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!
Early Slate Breakdown
Welcome into Sunday’s MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have 10 games – well, I guess we are scheduled to get 10 games. The Yankees/Twins game has already been postponed due to Hurricane Henri and it looks likely Boston/Texas follows and there are consistent rain concerns for the Atlanta/Baltimore game as well which clouds (pun intended) this slate a bit at first glance.
So, remember all those slates this week with strong top-end pitching to choose from? Those were fun weren’t they? Well, sorry to rain on your parade (MORE RAIN PUNS) – but today’s pitching is straight garbage.
The reality is, there is not a single arm on this slate that I feel like I have to have and if/when we lose Nathan Eovaldi, John Means and Touki Touissant to rain – well, this slate gets even worse. Without having high strikeout ceiling plays that I think could set the cash lines, I am fine pivoting to a different strategy today where I focus on cheaper arms with strong run prevention in plus match-ups.
All that brings me to Wrigley Field where we have the wind blowing in at 10 MPH for the Cubs/Royals and Alec Mills and Carlos Hernandez on the mound.
Hernandez ($5.9K) gets the best match-up arguably of any pitcher today against the Cubs who lead all of baseball in strikeout rate over the last two weeks at 31.4% and we have seen this spot deliver time and time again for opposing SP’s.
In the last two weeks, a span of 13 starts, opposing starting pitchers have avered 20.1 DK points per start with 10 of the 13 going for double-digit DK points and 6 of the 13 putting up 23+ ceiling type games.
Hernandez got touched up last game against Houston but prior to that he was in excellent form, with 15, 22, and 23 DK points against the Yankees/White Sox and he did that with a high ground ball rate and generating soft contact. So where Hernandez has been more “run prevention”, when you add in the Cubs swing and miss ability – you get a boost to his ceiling off an arm that is now $5.9K and was over $6K the past two starts.
On the flip side of this game is Alec Mills ($6.6K) who is the definition of run prevention type MLB DFS play with a low K rate, high ground ball profile that is typically more floor than a ceiling. Over the last month, among SP’s with at least 20 innings – he ranks top 10 in soft contact rate at 23% and he is doing this with a near 50% ground ball rate and in Wrigley Field this season those numbers get even better with a spike to 55%.
Now the Royals are not a K-heavy team but they align perfectly with Mills pitch approach as over the last 14 days they rank bottom 3 in all of baseball in team ISO and top 3 in baseball in GB rate. So we get a pitcher who thrives on soft contact and ground balls against an offense that is hitting ground balls and making weak contact – oh and could also be without Salvador Perez today due to injury.
We will need to wait for lineups today, but if the Royals are without Salvy AND go right-handed heavy (while losing the DH in Wrigley) – I think this becomes a spot where Mills cruises to 15-20 DK points with the wind helping him in the friendly confines.
Now going with “double punts” means we get all the bats we could want and I would suspect anyone employing that strategy will load up on the Blue Jays and their slate high 6+ IRT.
For everyone that has chased the shiny run totals of the Braves knows that Vegas totals do not always equal DFS success.
So go ahead and play the Jays today – because with a 4.5 run total, who exactly is going to play the best offense in baseball? Yep – that is right – it is a Tampa Bay Rays day (when isn’t it).
Reynaldo Lopez has been excellent recently and part of me thinks – he becomes the cheap SP route for DFS players today which makes me even more excited to stack against him. The reality is, he has a 95% left on base rate and a .148 BABIP – screaming luck city – and has to face the best offense in terms of power metrics in all of baseball the last two weeks.
In his career, Lopez is a fly-ball pitcher with a sub 20% K rate and while his K rate has spiked in just 25 innings this season, that has come on the back of right-handed batters with lefties only sitting at 21% this year. Guess what the Rays have in droves – left-handed power.
Lopez uses the slider as his primary offering off the fastball to left-handed batters and they have hit it to the tune of a .333 ISO mark since the start of last season. If you look at the Rays lineup – all of Brandon Lowe, Austin Meadows, Ji Man Choi and Wander Franco have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Meadows leading the charge with a .455 ISO and just a 15% ground ball rate. Against a fly ball pitcher like Lopez – I am calling a Meadows dong today.
On the other side of this game, the Rays are expected to start Chris Archer – yeah, he is still around. Archer is likely going to be limited here, as he got up to just 71 pitches in AAA so I fully expect some initial rust before the Rays get into their pen and that is where the White Sox have really done their damage in this series – scoring 3 runs to come from behind on Friday and pushing in two more last night after Luis Patino left the game.
These two teams correlate really nicely together which makes me really intrigued by a full-on DraftKings game stack of the White Sox and Rays as these are two of the most boom/bust offenses in baseball right now. They both rank in the top 8 in baseball in team ISO and slugging the last 14 days (with the Rays being first in both marks) hitting 25 and 24 HR’s respectively (#1 and #2 in baseball during that time) where the White Sox ranks first in hard contact rate (40%) with the Rays sitting firmly in the top 5.
From a recent metrics standpoint – you are getting two of the hottest offenses in baseball and if this game produces offensive fireworks, we could get into the bullpens early and see some serious crooked numbers on the National TV game of the day!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We set up today with a solid MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and one where I think we can make serious GPP waves as we attack a high-powered game stack and some cheap arms with match-up boost to unlock their ceilings!
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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