Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Friday 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
Welcome to Friday Night’s monster 14 game MLB DFS slate where we have an absolute plethora of high-end arms to choose from, some rain concerns in Boston/Kansas City and *checks notes* – Jacob deGrom pitching in Coors Field in SNOW!
Say word?
We are getting some of the most elite arms in baseball on this slate with Jacob deGrom, Walker Buehler and Max Scherzer all available to us and my guess is that most will opt for at best – one of these arms – and I anticipate most will certainly not look to pay up for our favorite strategy here at Picks and Pivots – double aces.
But what if we decide to go this route and simply anchor to tried and true arms with elite swing and miss ability. Instead of taking a path where we take arms that “get there” – why not go after arms that can win us slates?
If you look more broadly at this slate, it is not like we have a ton of crazy offensive spots to attack, with only two teams of he 28 with Vegas IRT of 5+. So if we are all sorting through the same mediocre hitting pool, why would we not opt to pay up for the elite arms and lock in studs that can anchor us to double-digit K type builds?
For the sake of argument – if you take two of deGrom, Buehler and Mad Max that leaves us with $3.6K per batter for the rest of our build – and I would argue that is more than enough – again in the context of this slate.
The game that really jumps out to me in this price point is the Reds/Indians – a game with a total of 9 – with two hittable arms in RHP Jeff Hoffman and LHP Logan Allen.
Now Hoffman is someone I think we can utilize outside of Coors Field now, he has the ability to miss bats but even through two starts this year he is surrendering seriously hard contact. In fact only 11% of the balls in play have been considered “soft contact” and he is giving up a .200 ISO mark to LHB with a 42% hard contact rate which could spell trouble against an Indians lineup that will likely roll out 7 left-handed hitters.
Jose Ramirez stands out as the best play in this stack as he leads all left-handed batters in ISO/hard contact metrics with Eddie Rosario not far behind. The value bats like Ben Gamel, Josh Naylor and Jake Bauers all stand out with high contact rates and sub 20% soft contact rates against RHB and become an ideal mix and match stacking partners around big bats like Jose Ramirez.
After Hoffman, the Indians get the benefit of teeing off against a Reds bullpen that ranks bottom 5 in runs allowed and HR allowed and has given up the 3rd highest hard contact rate of any pen in the majors so far in 2021. Targeting bats against starters is always where we start – but if we can find a starter to attack that has a bad pen behind him, that is when we unlock ceiling!
The Reds side of this game will play traditionally as Logan Allen’s biggest issue with hard contact comes from facing RHB with a 45% HC rate allowed compared to just a 29% HC rate allowed to LHB since 2019. The Reds also are loaded with RHB that have serious power – as studs like Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez sport .300 ISO marks each against southpaws with 44% and 51% hard contact rates respectively.
Nick Senzel becomes a nice cheap lead-off candidate with a .200 ISO mark and 48% HC rate and do not overlook the value of Aristedes Aquino who has MASHED LHP in his short career with a .259 ISO and an average distance traveled of 340+ feet!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
This slate is going to be one that really will hinge on weather as we could see the games in Boston and Kansas City get PPD and the Mets/Rockies game could once again come off the table with snow falling near Coors Field.
However, I find this slate to be one that for GPP’s we have so many interesting paths in building our MLB DFS rosters that will allow is to pay up for elite arms while still finding our way to big time bats.
Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!
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!
