Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Saturday, May 1st 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!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Early Slate Breakdown
We get a nice looking 7 game MLB DFS slate here to start off Saturday that frankly, is not all that obvious to navigate, especially on the pitching front as we lack clear ace arms and the offenses on this slate present difficult match-ups for the second tier arms we have to choose from.
On slates like this, where the match-ups are tough and the pitching choices become less transparent – I side with strikeout ability and simply look to avoid the landmines.
The first arm that I want today is LHP Jesus Luzardo who gets a home start against the same Baltimore Orioles team he just faced in Camden Yards. What stands out for me in that start is the high number of swinging strikes that Luzardo racked up – a total of 14 – giving him a 34% SS% in that game which resulted in 8 strikeouts.
Luzardo, like many of the Oakland arms, has significant splits as a result of their spacious home ballpark and with today’s game on his home turf, I think we could see a ceiling game. In his short career thus far, Luzardo has a 2.79 ERA at home compared to a 6+ ERA on the road, with a K rate that is 4% higher and most importantly, a HR/9 rate that drops from 1.73 to .39 when he is at home.
Luzardo’s swing and miss stuff is how you unlock his DFS ceiling and with home runs being his issue in his last start, I think the shift to his home ballpark with a massive pitcher’s umpire scheduled to be behind the plate – we lock in the A’s young lefty.
It may seem odd to go in this order- but I would argue my SP2 is Lance Lynn, who is actually the highest-priced arm on the slate. The price is at its highest point of the year after a 10 day IL stint due to a strain in his back- an injury that let’s face it – is scary when you are paying nearly $10K the first time back on the mound – and that is why he is more a SP2 for me than a priority arm.
The thing with this slate though is that I think you have more risks than “known” commodities so anchoring to Lynn makes sense as he has struck out 10 and 11 batters in his last two outings including his last start where he racked up those 10 K’s against the very same Indians squad he will face today.
From a bats perspective, we have a ton of great offenses on the slate and frankly, it is hard not to simply go right back to the New York Yankees against Spencer Turnbull today. The wind is once again blowing out at 15-20 MPH in Yankee Stadium and you get a mediocre SP followed by one of, if not the worst, bullpen in all of baseball.
Turnbull historically has been able to avoid trouble due to his high ground ball tendencies but so far in 2021 that has not been the case as his 50% GB rate has dropped to 33% and his fly ball rate has elevated to 48%. Now, it would be easy to cite small sample size but Turnbull has made pitching mix changes that might give us an idea of the change in batted ball profile as he is throwing his fastball 10% less than he has in his career and has seen a spike his his curveball usage.
That curveball increase seems counter to what the metrics would say he should do as it has the highest ISO of any pitch type at .200+ and it generates a ground ball rate 12-15% lower than his fastball/sinker repertoire.
With a 41% HC rate this season and a barrel rate of 13%, this could be a really troublesome spot for Turnbull before he turns it over to a Tigers pen that has given up the most HR’s in baseball (20) and has a 6.7 ERA that is a full run higher than any other pen in the majors.
This early slate for me is where we go with a 5 man Yankee stack – alongside Lynn/Luzardo – attacking big bats and two elite K arms and let others make the mistake of using the landmine arms that could sink their slate before it even begins.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Main Slate Breakdown
The 6 game Main Slate is in many ways, a carbon copy of the early slate – where we have solid arms but terrible opposing match-ups and more landmines to avoid than arms I actually want to roster.
I mean sure – Brandon Woodruff and Anthony DeSclafani are talented but I do not make a habit of attacking the Dodgers and Padres lineups – far more risk than reward.
As Adam Strangis broke down in his Starting Rotation today, this looks like a slate where we simply live up top and I tend to agree with him that the clear top arms when aligning talent and match-up look to be Dustin May and Eduardo Rodriguez.
In both instances, you have elite K arms, facing high K teams – and on this slate, you simply are not finding many other spots where that aligns for arms – so this seems like a spot where we simply play it straight.
Again, much like the early slate I want to anchor to a high octane offense and the one that stands out to me is the Atlanta Braves against the Blue Jays bullpen game with lefties Travis Bergen and Tommy Milone scheduled to start.
We have seen the park in Dunedin play as a bandbox and this Atlanta offense mashes LHP with all of Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies and Marcell Ozuna having .260+ ISO marks against lefties since 2019. You can even extend this stack to the bottom of the order with Austin Riley and Pablo Sandoval who have .282 and .215 ISO marks respectively against LHP since 2019 and all of a sudden you get a full-on 5 man Atlanta stack that can do some serious damage.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
While we may have split slates today in our MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, the reality is both slates play pretty similarly in my eyes. We need to anchor to the high K arms in the safest spots and most importantly avoid the landmines and we do so wrapped around the power stacks of the Yankees/Braves.
Enjoy the day – watch lineups and take advantage of value – weekend MLB DFS is almost always where we find the $2K punts that open up entirely new roster builds!
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