Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Friday, June 4th 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 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 in my friends to a Friday Night of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a monster 15 game slate staring at us with some seriously aggressive pricing on our arms, a game in Coors Field and what looks to be an all clear from a weather standpoint.
I am going to take a little different approach today in how I layout Picks and Pivots to try and give some slate context into just HOW I build.
In our Discord community, we spend a lot of time talking about how to build lineups and one of the questions I get asked often is “do you build with pitchers first or hitters first?”
Well, the answer is – it depends.
However, let’s use today’s slate as an ideal example because I think this Friday Night slate is an ideal of example of where pitching will control your roster make-up and decision process.
Before I even peaked at Adam Strangis Starting Rotation for this slate, the initial path seemed clear to me – a Max Scherzer and Shohei Ohtani pairing as a SP1/SP1 build on DraftKings.
The rationale is simple and it is one we preach in MLB DFS Picks and Pivots all the time – K’s are King – and any time you can get two arms with 30% or higher K rates and 14% or higher swinging strike rates, you have the opportunity to get two high ceiling arms as the anchor of your build.
I also think pricing dictates this combination due to how aggressively DK priced up their arms tonight. If I am going to pay $10K or more for an arm on this slate, I am not going to do so with guys that frankly are over-priced and in bad match-ups when I can take the one arm at this top range in Scherzer who A) has the high K ceiling and B) has the match-up with a depleted Phillies team to get the highest possible K output from Mad Max.
The pricing on Ohtani meanwhile at $7.6K seems like the one “outlier” as he actually saw his price decrease by $200 since his last start despite going 6 innings, 93 pitches with 5 K’s and as Adam outlines, the velocity was back.
The ultimate takeaway here is that it feels like I am almost forced into a Max/Ohtani pairing at pitching as a result of the pricing/match-ups across the board and so when I answer “it depends” to the question initially asked – you can start to see why slates dictate that answer.
So now what? You have a Scherzer and Ohtani pitching duo and you have $3,875 per batter for the rest of your build on DK.
Let me give you a view in to how I approach my builds.
The first thing I do is I go and look at the projected starting lineups and I simply get a feel for the pricing to understand what (if any) stacks are doable within the pricing constraints that I have. There are many DFS players that I have talked to over the years that say they do not look at pricing at all until they do their research but I have always taken the approach that pricing dictates builds and so understanding what player pool I have within the salary constructs is Step #1 after I have locked in my two arms.
What I noticed tonight when I simply toggled on pricing was that we had very few stacks that worked within that mid-range pricing – meaning, DK also has aggressively priced the bats. Although there was one team that stood out in this process and that was the Cincinnati Reds against LHP Kwang-Hyun Kim.
What stood out to me in this spot was how the Reds pricing was largely deflated, with only three starting bats over $3K and even the “top bats” like Eugenio Suarez ($3.7K) and Nick Castellanos ($3.9K) were largely discounted.
Past those two – you have a 4-8 in the line-up that is all sub $3K with some serious punt options with Tyler Stephenson, Kyle Farmer, Jonathan India, Alex Blandino, and Scott Heineman.
Now Kim has been solid this year with a 2.61 ERA but his near 5 SIERA tells you regression is coming and his 43% HC rate to RHB could give us a really nice path to value here tonight with the right-handed Reds being so under-priced. Add in the fact they are the visiting team and we get 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats to pool from and you start to see how this team becomes a key cog in our building process.
Now, we mentioned that the stacks were expensive tonight – and so how do you get a build with a 5 man high-dollar stack and still rock Max/Ohtani?
Well, that is where finding a cheap stack like the Reds unlocks the path!
Let’s assume for a second you want to mix and match this Reds mini-stack – using pure punts like Farmer, Blandino, Heineman and/or Stephenson and even using Suarez or Castellanos – you know what you can build from there?
Anything you want!
As an example – you can take this approach with the cheap Reds bats, alongside Scherzer and Ohtani, and wait for it – you have enough salary to build a 5 man Oakland A’s stack with their slate-high 6 IRT in Coors Field.
Bet you did not think at the start of this you could find a way to get Scherzer and Ohtani with a Coors Field stack – but here we are!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
This MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate on Friday Night seems pretty cut and dry to me at first glance despite the massive slate size and much of that is due to the need to simply lock in Scherzer/Ohtani as a 1-2 punch at pitcher.
From there you have options – even more so if you use a cheap Reds right-handed mini-stack which opens up a path to anchor to the 5 man high-priced stacks of your choosing.
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!
