Gary Gustafson 
Welcome back MLB DFS fans! Tonight, we have another solid slate on DraftKings with big prizes pools to take down so let’s get started with our top MLB DFS picks for today’s slate!
First and foremost – I want to sincerely thank Adam Strangis, who for the last two weeks while I was on vacation, covered Picks and Pivots every single day for both NBA and MLB and did a tremendous job. I loved checking into Discord and seeing all the screenshots each morning from the winning the night before based on Adam’s analysis – and hey, we even got a Jon Lester regression game while I was gone!
For those of you new to Picks and Pivots, the goal of this MLB DFS article each and every day is to provide you a “First Look” overview of the slate where we use DraftKings pricing as a baseline to help us get started. Rather than simply write out the “top plays,” this article will focus on slate strategy and roster construction with a GPP mindset to help you get started on your initial builds. Without further ado, let’s dive into today’s slate!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Starting Pitchers:
Opening up this ten game slate, it looks very similar to Monday’s slate where we have dominant top-end arms without the “obvious” offensive stacks. I love slates like this because we do not have to worry about a game in Coors that skews the decision making and instead we can start our lineup process with the top-tier arms.
Shane Bieber ($10.8K) and Gerrit Cole ($10.6K) are the only arms over $10K on this slate but considering their form so far in 2020, they have been worth every penny.
Bieber is leading all of baseball with a massive 43.3% K rate and a similarly dominant 18.7% swinging strike rate. For DFS purposes, that has equated to to putting up 35.4 DK points per start with four ceiling games that have included 36, 39, 41 and 46 DraftKings points. That 46 DK point gem was back on July 30th where he racked up 13K’s against the very same Twins team he will face tonight. Bieber at this point is basically plug and play on his advanced metrics alone and on a slate without “must have” stacks, paying for him as your SP1 is an ideal building block.
Cole meanwhile just keeps doing his usual – ranking among the top 10 in the league in K rate and SwStr rate, all while putting up 20+ DK points in every single start of 2020. Cole is basically everything you want from a top-tier arm in that he has shown cash game stability and his consistency going deep into games and pitch counts, coupled with his K rate, give him GPP winning upside on any single slate.
Lucas Giolitio ($9.7K) becomes an interesting pivot and salary saver off Cole if you want to pay down a tad more at your SP2 spot and metrics wise you can argue, he may be a better play than Cole.
Thus far in 2020 his SwStr rate of 14.4% and 31.7% K rate rank at/above Cole and his match-up on paper seems a bit easier as he takes on the Pirates instead of Cole’s match-up in Atlanta.
While Giolito has the upside to match Cole, take a stroll through his 2020 game log and you will see he has a floor that Cole simply has not shown, as two of his starts combined for 12 runs and a total of TWO fantasy points. The price savings are nice and the upside is absolutely there to match Cole for $1K less if you need the money but understand the downside that exists as well.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Stacks and Bats:
Locking in Bieber as your SP1, and then deciding on either Cole or Giolito as your SP2, means you are going to need some value bats and the stacks you want may end up driving your decision on if you need to drop down from Cole to Giolito to make it all work.
With teams like the St. Louis Cardinals sporting a 5+ IRT and their relatively cheap pricing against Matt Harvey, you can start to see a cash game build come together pretty easily.
However, with a GPP focus, I think offense is where you find your pivots – staying the course with your high-priced arms, and simply moving off a chalky offense.
That leads me to the San Diego Padres today as my spend-up stack as they take on LHP Marco Gonzales. #SlamDiego as they are known in 2020 gets a juicy match-up today as they can load up against a LHP with right-handed bats that have a .247 combined ISO against southpaws since the start of last season.
Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. are the core parts of this stack, both with massive .300+ ISO marks against lefties while both Ty France and Wil Myers have .200+ ISO marks as secondary parts of this stack.
Marco Gonzales relies nearly 50% of the time on his sinker to RHB and that is a pitch type that both Tatis and Myers have hammered – with .450+ ISO marks against that pitch type and the fact both of this guys are fly ball hitters against lefties is key to counteract the ground ball desires of Gonzales.
Trent Grisham may not have the splits in his favor with the L/L match-up but his pitch type data is hard to over-look, as he has a .500 ISO and average distance traveled of 347 feet against the sinker and will likely be an over-looked part of any SD stack. Jurickson Profar is another interesting secondary play who arguably has the largest sample size of success against the splitter from lefties, with a .314 ISO mark, 322 average distance and near 40% HC rate and gives you 2B and OF eligibility on DraftKings.
Now in order to get a 5 man Padres stack that includes the $5K bats of Machado/Tatis along side the big arms – it is going to require some serious punts – and that is where the Detroit Tigers bats come into play.
The Tigers will take on Tyler Chatwood and the Cubs, who is fresh off the DL and will likely have a short leash after a back injury. Chatwood’s metrics show a strong 2019 in the bullpen but his 2020 performance also shows his downside as a starter after his last outing against KC that resulted in 11 hits, 2 HR’s and 8 ER’s in just 2.1 IP.
Chatwood, similar to Gonzales, works heavily on his sinker and this Detroit squad has some bats that sneakily profile well against that pitch type including catcher Austin Romine and OF Christian Stewart, who have a combined .215 ISO and 45% HC rate in 100 batted ball events against that pitch type.
The cheap OF options for the Tigers are plentiful here today with the entire outfield at $2.5K or cheaper including lead-off man Victor Reyes and Jacoby Jones and it is that kind of salary saving that gives you the ability to build two aces along side a top priced stack like the Padres.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots: Wrap up
Today is all about the pitching for me and finding the stacks to work it in. Since I expect the top-tier arms to be chalky, offenses is where and how you get different and I suspect the Padres will not garner the same ownership as teams with higher implied run totals and the Tigers – well, they are never highly owned.
Keep an eye on the Win Daily projections today because those have helped uncover some serious value as they did last night with the Cubs mini stack of Caratini/Bote/Baez.
Stick around in Discord today and let’s talk some baseball!
Let’s get it tonight my friends!
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 as sports FINALLY return.
