Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Monday 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: Main Slate Breakdown
After a big day Sunday for our MLB DFS Picks and Pivots, we are back with an interesting slate on Monday that at first glance feels like it could end up REALLY chalky.
The slate has some obvious starting points with Corbin Burnes as the clear SP1 ace, a far too cheap Shohei Ohtani as an SP2 and the New York Yankees bats with the highest implied run total on the slate against Matt Harvey.
This feels like the clear cash game route and my guess is, even writing this as a first look, this is how the ownership ends up working out.
For me – Corbin Burnes is a non-starter – I play elite K arms as my DK anchor every single day and Burnes is one of the best in the league with an insane 47% K rate this season and a 20% swinging-strike rate. End story – dude is my SP1 – get cute elsewhere.
The next decision points however are not so cut and dry!
The Dark Knight versus The Bronx Bombers
The first spot though I am totally out on as chalk is the Yankee bats against Matt Harvey. I am sorry, but this ownership is going to be entirely name value driven because there is almost no metric that supports going after the Yankees and frankly – going after Harvey and the Orioles bullpen.
Against RHP this season, the Yankees rank bottom 5 in runs scored, team ISO and team HC% while ranking dead last in all of baseball with a .189 batting average.
Now tack on that the Baltimore bullpen ranks top 5 in ERA this season and sits in the top 10 in soft contact rate and GB % and what exactly are we targeting?
Oh, I see – you are going after Matt Harvey – that has to be it right?
Yeah I get it – Harvey has a 5.12 ERA and he was horrible last season in KC, so let’s stack against him. What if the truth is Harvey is not has bad as you think, and actually the advanced metrics would tell you this is a league average arm that has been on the bad luck side of the beat to start?
Harvey has a SIERA and XIP of 3.9 which is a full run+ lower than his season ERA and those makrs are almost identical to the league average marks on the season across baseball at 3.93 and 3.96 respectively.
Harvey has an unsightly .333 BABIP which is significantly over the league average of .282 and considering he has allowed just a 3% hard contact rate on the year – feels like a whole lot of bad luck thus far.
If you dig into the advanced metrics, what has really worked against Harvey is the contact rates of the opposition inside and outside the zone. The Z Contact % which measures contact made in the zone is at a 92% rate for Harvey this year which is significantly above the 85% mark in baseball and his O Contact % (contact made outside the zone) is well ahead of the 61% mark in baseball.
If we look at the Yankees bats in those specific metrics, they have a 81% contact rate inside the zone and a 57% rate outside the zone – BOTH marks rank bottom three in baseball this season.
The Yankees team BABIP of .245 also ranks 2nd to last in all of baseball – setting up for the ultimate question tonight.
Are the Yankees due for some movement back to a league-average offense or is this a spot where Harvey, who has seen his share of bad luck to start 2021, gets the perfect get right spot against one of the worst statistical offenses in the bigs?
Not only do I think you argue the full-on fade of the Yankee bats, but I think Matt Harvey ($5.6K) becomes a legit SP2 GPP option on this slate.
The reality is, starting pitchers have been a place to target the last two weeks against the New York bats as we can see from our friends at Statmuse.
Of the last 7 right-handed starters to face the Yankees, 6 of them have gone for 15+ DK points, while 6 of them have pushed for 20+ points. Now, Harvey is clearly not at the level of Bieber or Glasnow but look at what Michael Wacha did against the Yankees just a few days ago – 33 DK points on 9K’s?
Do you realize Wacha has not even cracked double-digit DK points outside of that start? So there in lies the upside, the lightning in a bottle of taking an arm who is due for positive regression against an offense that ranks as one of the worst in baseball this season.
One of these spots will get right tonight – I am happy to take the leverage with Harvey and bet on it being him instead of eating the chalk on an ice cold offense that makes Michael Wacha look like Tom Seaver.
Will the real Ohtani please stand up?
Shohei Ohtani at $7.7K on DK tonight against the K happy Rangers seems like chalk city for our SP2 after he struck out 7 Rangers in his last start but there are some serious red flags here.
Through two starts, Ohtani has 14K’s in 8.2 IP but that has come with a whopping 11 walks. His 1.04 ERA does not quite match his 4.5 xFIP as a result of an 80% LOB rate and at some point, the walks have to come back to bite him.
Listen K’s are king in DFS so I understand he appeal of a 34% K rate but when that comes with a 27% walk rate – there is some serious risk in inflated pitch counts and one big swing with runners on, making this a spot where Ohtani gets blown up.
I think you can play this spot with leverage and use the Rangers as a boom or bust secondary stack against Ohtani. The path is simple – walks and base runners, leads to a mistake and a home run in Texas hitters ballpark. So go ahead and take shots on the big power bats like Joey Gallo and Nate Lowe and you can expand that with Isaiah Kiner-Felefa who has just a 16% K rate in the lead-off spot and gives you a nice option in front of the big bats to optimize your mini stack.
Now the real pay off could come in this game stack on the other side with the LAA Angels against Jordan Lyles and a Rangers bullpen that ranks 2nd to last in team ERA with the most HR’s allowed to opposing batters on the season.
The Angels line-up is one to watch tonight as we could see a wildly different team to what we saw over the weekend as Mike Trout is expected to return from injury while both of Anthony Rendon and Max Stassi are expected to be activated off the IL prior to the game.
All of a sudden, this line-up feels like stack city against arguably the worst starting pitcher on the slate in Lyles and the worst bullpen on the 9 game MLB DFS slate.
One thing I want to watch today is the umpire assignments – if we get a hitting heavy home plate umpire today for this game, it could be the type of GPP game stack that goes completely crazy!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
The only thing I really know early on today is that I want Corbin Burnes as my SP1 but after that, I think there are some serious paths to leverage what I would consider bad chalk on this slate.
Today has the makings of a day where the MLB DFS crowds follow blindly and ignore the advanced metrics and rather than eat the bad chalk – we attack with leverage and use the data to support a path to pivoting off the field!
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