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 to 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 into a loaded Friday Night MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate with 14 games on tap and literally – every single thing we could ask for. We have aces galore (finally), we have a game in Coors Field and we have 13 of the 28 teams with 5+ IRT’s.
What does it all mean? Well, my first take – you better not miss tonight because the opportunity cost of getting a pitcher or stack wrong is going to be huge this evening with so many options on both ends.
The mantra of “cannot miss” is one I am going to reiterate over and over again on this slate because of the depth of the player pool and the size of the slate – if you find yourself putting in a player at any spot “because they fit” – challenge yourself to do better. Just getting there – won’t get there tonight.
Any time I see a slate where my inclination is “we cannot get cute” – that means living in the “Double Ace” route and this slate is the type where it sets up perfectly to employ with all of Walker Buehler, Robbie Ray, and Chris Sale and their massive K ceilings.
Buehler ($10.5K) is the top-priced arm on the slate, coming off a 10 K performance against the same Mets team he just faced in New York and honestly, I am not sure why his price would have gone down $100 from that start. The Mets are just scuffling right now and look lost at the plate collectively – frankly, Walker gets them at the perfect time at home to drive for another ceiling game.
Robbie Ray ($9.9K) is next on the list against a Detroit Tigers projected line-up that has a 27% K rate against LHP this season and while Ray’s K rate has dropped the last month of action, it has been a result of LHB as his K rate versus righties still sits at 27% over the last 30 days. With the Tigers projected to roll out 9 right-handed batters, this could be a spot where Ray jumps back to his 30+ DK point ceiling performances.
Chris Sale ($9.7K) is next on the list and as Adam Strangis laid out in Starting Rotation, it is hard not to see a scenario where he ends up as chalk with arguably the best on paper match-up of any of the aces against Texas. I think ownership will help dictate how we rank these guys as the day goes on and the nice thing about this trio is that they are all priced so similarly that you can easily mix and match the double ace builds using two of these guys with the same basic lineup construction.
Now – going double aces means you have under $4K per batter for the rest of your build and with SO many good offensive spots to attack, getting the high ceiling bats with the double ace approach is not going to be easy. I will be honest – I struggled to make it work all morning because as much as I want the Braves, Yankees or Blue Jays – well, it is just not something that works within your salary constraints.
That does not mean however that we have to go full-on bargain hunting – remember, we cannot afford to miss in our selections tonight, so this is not the spot to get cute and stack the Pirates because we think they “could get there.”
Stepping back and looking at the salaries for the projected lineups tonight – it finally hit me, I can go double aces and stack the best hitting spot on the slate – that’s right Coors Field and Double Aces!
The pricing on the Arizona Diamondbacks specifically is really what unlocked this but the truth is, the Rockies are largely under-priced as well and the correlation of these two in a full-on game stack works almost too well on DraftKings.
Rockies LHP Austin Gomber has been a strong arm all season and one that I know Adam has been all over with much success as a low owned GPP pivot this season – and the truth is, his ability to limit hard contact with a high ground ball rate doesn’t make him the “ideal” arm to stack against.
The flip side is if you dig into Gomber’s pitch profile over the last 30 days you start to see some cracks in the armor as the lefty’s change-up which he throws over 30% of the time to right-handed batters is getting hit to a .320 ISO and 58% HC rate.
The Arizona right-handed batters against the changeup from lefties really stand out when you overlay those recent struggles as all of Ketel Marte, Carson Kelly, and Asdrubal Cabrera has .200_ ISO and 40%+ hard contact rates against it. Not only has Gomber struggled with that pitch type but he’s using it more and more, up from just 22% over the full season so if this trend continues – I think we have a chance to jump on it.
Interestingly enough, you are seeing a similar trend with batters from the left side where the slider he throws nearly 45% went from being a pitch that batters could not make contact with to a .286 ISO and 50% HC rate over the last 30 days which would all of a sudden give you some cheap L/L options in this stack like Pavin Smith and David Peralta.
The Rockies side of this game is equally interesting against LHP Tyler Gilbert who is coming off his no-hitter and will have to face a Colorado lineup with 6 of the 8 batters projected from the right side. On the year, all of Connor Joe, Brendan Rodgers, Trevor Story, CJ Cron, and Garret Hampson have .200+ ISO marks against LHP and even better – only Story is priced like a true Coors bat over $5K.
If you look at the projected lineups for this game, you will see we have 7-8 sub $4K bats with some pure punts like Christian Walker and Drew Ellis at $2.5K and those are the types of plays that you can mix in, while still getting the priority bats to make this full-on game stack with double aces, work with ease!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
When stepping back and looking at this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate my advice is simple – shoot for the ceiling at every single spot in your build. Every single one.
With so many strong high K arms and half the slate with 5+ IRT’s you need to hit across the board tonight and when I see slates like that my advice is always going to be to find a way to go double aces at pitcher first and foremost. Now, doing this and still being able to stack Coors Field and a 12 IRT was not something I expected I could pull off but if the lineups come out as projected, the paths are numerous to make that build work.
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!
