Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday, June 15th 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!
After a big night on Monday Night where our Picks and Pivots core build anchored around Glasnow/Manaea and a Reds/Pirates stack hit for big money – we are back at it again tonight!
Main Slate Breakdown
Welcome in to a Tuesday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have 15 games on tap including a spot for the San Diego Padres in Coors Field that is going to go a long way in determining our roster construction.
Typically we start with the arms, but when we have a team like San Diego with a near 7 IRT against RHP Chi Chi Gonzalez and a slate with no real must-have arms, I think the prudent thing to do is work backward in our builds.
Gonzalez is a total disaster against right-handed batters, with a .252 ISO mark allowed and a massive 52% HC rate allowed and the middle of this Padres order with Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Wil Myers is a gauntlet that I think we almost have to anchor to tonight despite the likely insane levels of ownership.
Building a Padres stack is an expensive building block and I would argue that 3-4 San Diego pieces will be a core component of winning builds – it really then is about what you do next that differentiates you.
On a slate without any obvious elite arms, I think the general feeling from the field will be to pay down for arms and that is where I do think we can get different and instead use two top-tier studs with our Padres stack.
The match-ups for LHP Trevor Rogers against the Cardinals and Yu Darvish in Coors Field are clearly not the most ideal spots to attack but from a pure metrics perspective, it is hard to argue that there is any better pair of arms on the slate.
This duo ranks 15th an 16th in baseball in K rate and both sit in the top 20 in CSW% on the season as both give you 30%+ K rate upside despite the difficult on paper match-ups.
My man Adam Strangis already broke down the path for Trevor Rogers in today’s Starting Rotation so let me pivot to why I think Darvish is an ideal double ace SP2 on DraftKings.
Darvish has two pitches in his arsenal that has proven time and again to be effective in Coors Field – with a sinker/slider combination that is able to still work in the thin air. If you want to nerd out – and frankly, we know you do – this is a great article I found on the pitch types and how they can be effective in Coors Field.
In his first start this year in Coors Field, Darvish went heavy on his slider, 32% of the time which was by FAR the most he used it in any start this season while still anchoring to his cutter as his dominant offering.
The next start Darvish faced the Rockies in San Diego and his pitch type breakdown was wildly different – relying on his cutter and fastball while his slider was used far less frequently.
If you look at both games, what stands out to me is that his horizontal and vertical breaks on his cutter in Coors versus at home were nearly identical so the thin air really did not impact his primary pitch at all. In the secondary offering, however, we did see a stark difference.
In the slider metrics, you did see a big difference in Coors versus home, where he was getting a significantly less horizontal break on the pitch versus at home.
The fastball in both cases saw similar spin rates and actually was getting more vertical break in Coors and if you read the article above, that formula of using the fastball with low spin/high break is a formula for sustained success.
What does this all mean? Well – if Darvish opts to employ a similar pitch type strategy against the Rockies today that he did in his home start, using the fastball and cutter, he has a seriously high upside path awaiting him as he had a 37% CSW rate in that game and 10 K’s.
So going Rogers and Darvish and a Padres core stack probably has you saying – wait, don’t we have a salary cap? Where are you finding all this value?
Welcome to the Baltimore Orioles tonight my friends where the bats are cheap and the positions are plentiful!
The Orioles will take on RHP Cal Quantrill who has moved to the Indians bullpen after his last start on June 6th where he lasted just 1.1 IP, gave up 7 runs, and did so against – the same Orioles team he faces tonight.
The Indians bullpen will be needed in this game since Quantrill is not stretched out and this is a pen that ranks among the bottom 10 bullpens in terms of ERA the last 2 weeks while also ranking bottom 10 in HR’s allowed. This pen also has been recently taxed as Triston McKenzie was unable to get out of the first inning on Saturday, Shane Bieber was unable to make it through 6 innings and JC Mejia only made it 4 last night as the starter.
The Orioles bats are not plays in a vacuum that would stand out, but pricing matters to me in MLB DFS builds and the fact that this lineup has 5 of their projected 9 batters priced in the $2K range and the fact they are the road team with guaranteed 9th inning at-bats – makes them the ideal secondary value stack to give you a Padres/Ace path this evening.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Opening up this Tuesday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate on Tuesday, the easy comment would be it is a “San Diego Padres slate” – and well, that is true for the most part.
The key is how you get different from there and I think paying up for both arms, especially arms that are not in “perfect spots” will make your build wildly different than those who opt to pay down for salary relief and with that, more risk.
When building MLB DFS rosters, I am always going to anchor to the known commodities and that is pitching, especially high K arms like Rogers and Darvish. If that means rolling the dice with a punt Orioles mini-stack, so be it, hitting is the most variable part of DFS baseball and this O’s lineup has already seen and hit Quantrill hard!
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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