Adam Strangis 
Welcome to the Monday edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we dive into the top fantasy baseball plays and slate strategy 15thto 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 into a 10 game Monday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have a little bit of everything – we have some aces, a game in Coors Field, a little rain in Cincinnatti, and 7 teams overall with 5+ IRT’s per the folks in Vegas.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Pitcher Breakdown
With Adam getting a well-deserved day-off from Starting Rotation after helping to cover for me on vacation, I am going to dive a bit deeper today into the arms to help you decide where to go.
Stop #1 on our tour is Gerrit Cole ($10.9K) who returns from the COVID list to start against the Angels in Yankee Stadium and has racked up 3 double-digit strikeout games in his last 4 trips to the mound. The issues for Cole typically arise in left-handed power-heavy teams in Yankee Stadium but today he is likely to get a largely right-handed heavy Angels line-up which plays into his 0.29 HR/9 rate against RHB in NY.
Anecdotally, the only other concern would be a pitch count limit or some sort of restrictions due to his COVID battle the last two weeks but assuming he is full systems go – Cole has the kind of must-have ceiling on a 10 game slate that I want to anchor to but that is also why he is trending at near 50% ownership at first glance early this morning.
Kevin Gausman ($10.1K) gets a home start against the Mets and frankly, I have no interest. Sure the Mets have to fly cross-country after playing the Sunday Night ESPN game in NY but the reality is, Gausman is not an arm I want to pay $10K for with his recent numbers. Over the last 30 days, he has just a 27% K rate with just a 21% K rate against LHB, which the Mets will throw at him in droves tonight. Add on the fact that during that time, lefties have hit him to the tune of a .200 ISO and 58% HC rate and I am not looking to pay $10K for him in this spot despite the Mets struggles and potential jet lag.
Frankie Montas ($9.5K) is the last of the top-tier options and one that I think could be a GPP difference-maker against the White Sox. Over the last 30 days, Montas has been dominant -in fact, his 34.5% K rate is the single best mark of any qualified arm over the last 30 days.
Montas has always been a dominant K arm to left-handed batters, in fact, he has a 10% higher K mark to lefties this season at 31% and the White Sox are expected to roll out 5 left-handed hitters – that have a 24% K rate as a group against RHP this season and a 26% rate over the last month.
I am interested to see how Montas uses the slider against the right-handed batters here though – as I think it is the key to unlocking his double-digit K ceiling. Over the last month, the slider which he throws 25-30% of the time to RHB, has generated a 52% whiff rate which is up from the 35% mark on the season.
The big right-handed bats like Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert have 45-50% whiff rates against that pitch type while Jose Abreu/Tim Anderson are at 30-35% with sub .150 ISO marks.
We just saw a right-handed arm dominate this White Sox lineup with sliders and that leads me to talk about Griffin Jax ($7K) against the Indians. Jax is fresh off a 10 K start with 14 swinging strikes in which he used the slider at a nearly 50% clip.
Jax to me is an ownership play as game log watchers may jump on him, especially to afford the Coors Field bats, but there is clearly swing and miss stuff here that is at play and if he continues to rely on his slider as he did last start, his upside is tremendous.
In that outing, Jax had a massive 56% swing and miss rate on his slider which he threw almost entirely to the right-handed batters – in fact, he threw the pitch 34 times to RHB and the Indians tonight are expected to use 6 batters from the right side.
There is a risk here basing the upside on one start but the K upside came with a clear pitch mix/approach shift for Jax and if it were to continue tonight – the upside is there to smash this $7K price tag.
However, it brings me back to Montas because when you see how he used the slider to keep the White Sox off-balance, you wonder if Montas can rely on a similar strategy to get swings and misses.
With Coors Field on the slate, paying up for both arms is a path that I expect will be underutilized and while the Cole ceiling is obvious, my hope is that Montas goes overlooked and could be the double ace pairing that unlocks a big-time GPP night for us. If Jax continues to go overlooked, he is the pay-down SP2 you can use with Cole or Montas to get yourself the bigger bats to stack around!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Top Stacks
With a game in Coors Field with the Padres/Rockies – the likelihood is that these bats drive ownership and with it will come similar build types – so how can we find ways to pivot off them?
If we opt to pay up for arms, we still need to look for big-time stacks/bats as I noted in the open, we have 7 teams or 1/3 of the pool with 5+ IRT’s so we need to chase big-time offenses with both stacks even IF we opt to go Cole/Montas.
Let’s start with the obvious – it is Matt Harvey against the Tampa Bay Rays – let’s not overthink it.
While Harvey has been much better over the last 30 days, the metrics are still screaming to stack against him – especially with a 50% fly-ball rate and 45% HC rate to left-handed batters during that time.
Against left-handed batters – Harvey has been a mixed bag pitch type-wise, using a low 90’s fastball, sinker, and change-up combination nearly 70% of the time. The fastball and the sinker have been his undoing with .240+ ISO marks on the year and both surrendering 50%+ HC rates over the last 30 days.
If you look at the hitters on the Rays that have strong profiles against the fastball/sinker combination from the left side – well, it is all of them. Austin Meadows, Brandon Lowe, Wander Franco, Ji-Man Choi and Kevin Kiermeier are all .200+ ISO/40%+ HC rate types against these pitch types so there is some massive power upside for the left-handed batters here.
Load up on the Rays today – they are winning us a GPP tonight – book it.
The secondary stack that I love tonight for pricing/correlation is the Houston Astros against RHP Carlos Hernandez. Hernandez has been able to navigate his way through lineups recently with only one game in which he gave up more than 2 runs, but the underlying metrics say he is getting lucky.
Hernandez has a 5 xFIP the last month with a 49.2% HC rate with reverse splits that make the right-handed hitters stand out to me. Hernandez relies on a sinker nearly 30% of the time as his primary pitch to right-handed hitters and over the last month, that pitch type has given up 72% HC rate with just an 11% whiff rate to RHB.
The Astros have some players that profile really well with Carlos Correa and Aldemys Diaz sporting .200+ ISO marks and 45% HC rates against the sinker from right-handed pitchers. If you take it a step further, the slider becomes the next weapon of choice against RHB for Hernandez and again – both Correa and Diaz have .200+ ISO and 40%+ HC rates.
The big bat here that stands out on the left side is Yordan Alvarez who well, who simply hammers the sinker to the tune of a .429 ISO and 61% HC rate.
The Astros get the benefit of being the road team here tonight so stacking them up with a guaranteed 9 innings of at-bats could be a low-owned pivot off the chalkier Coors stacks tonight.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
I love how this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate come together and I think we can find ways to build that totally ignore Coors Field chalk and give us massive upside.
With Gerrit Cole and Frankie Montas up to and Griffin Jax as a cheap SP2, we have so many paths to stacking up the Rays/Astros tonight that correlate so well together on DraftKings and that is the exact route I intend to take tonight!
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.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter at @2LockSports and be sure to sign up for an ALL ACCESS GOLD ACCOUNT account here at Win Daily Sports. Gain access to our Projection Models and jump into our Discord where we will have our experts talking plays across every sport and slate!
