Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Friday, July 9th 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 14 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate here on Friday Night where we finally start to get some weather clearing but unfortunately the DFS gods have decided to make this pitching slate one of the more unappealing ones we have had in weeks.
With some really inflated pricing at the top end, I think living in the mid to low range with arms is the most appealing approach today as it will allow you to anchor to strong double team stacks on a night where I think nailing offense and simply avoiding landmines at pitcher is the key.
Kenta Maeda ($7.1K) was our sub 5% gem his last start out against Kansas City and after a 10 K outing, my guess is the price jump from $6.2K is not nearly enough to keep the masses away. Maeda was simply fantastic in that game, pounding the zone with 75% first-pitch strikes which was a season-high and which led to another season-high – nearly 50% of swings on pitches outside the zone. That ability to get ahead of hitters early and force them to chase outside the zone once behind in the count seems like a simple “playbook” for pitchers to follow and when executed like he did last start, you see the ceiling.
Today he gets a Tigers team that ranks second in all of baseball with K rate against RHP at 26% and their projected line-up tonight has a 28% K rate against right-handed pitching this season. Maeda will no doubt be more popular, but for good reason, and on a slate where we lack “must-have” arms, I am fine taking the price discount here on a ceiling arm in a plus match-up.
There is another arm in this range that I love for GPP’s, especially considering anyone looking at the price point likely looks to Maeda or Alek Manoah ($7K) who gets to face a Rays team he just struck out 10 times and well, go back and watch his command and usage of the slider and you will see why he will be popular today.
What if I told you there was an arm tonight that ranks 3rd in all of baseball in K rate over the last month with a 36.1% K rate and ranks 4th in baseball in CSW% and gets to race a team that ranks 8th in all of baseball in K rate against their handedness?
Interested?
You should be.
Enter Zach Thompson ($6.9K) who will take on the Braves for the third time this season, after going 5 & 6 innings in his first two outings against them with 6 K’s each and 16 & 25 DK points.
Not only have the strikeouts been there for Thompson but this match-up is one that right-handed arms have been excelling in for weeks now.
10 of the last 25 RHP to take on the Braves have gone for 20+ DK points with 20 of the 25 putting up double-digit DFS outings with 13 of the 25 racking up at least 6 K’s.
The curveball has been his swing and miss offering and well, you can see why. Interestingly enough, the usage on this pitch has grown with each start as he threw it just 16% in his first outing and had it up to a season-high 26% usage in his last start.
Now there is always danger in using a rookie arm his third start around a veteran team like Atlanta but the K stuff is very very real and I love having pivots at price points similar to Maeda/Manoah where we could get a massive ownership advantage if/when these two $7K arms become popular.
Now going with this mid-range of arms means we can pay up for bats and there are two teams I plan to attack tonight.
First is the Philadelphia Phillies (again) against Garrett Richards the Red Sox. Over the last month, Richards has been arguably one of the worst arms in baseball with a 43% hard contact rate allowed which is 6th highest among pitchers with 20 innings of work and his 2.5 HR/9 rate is 9th highest in baseball.
We have talked about it in Picks and Pivots before but Richards has been outspoken about having to adjust on the fly to not using sticky stuff and with the wind blowing out in Fenway at 10 MPH tonight, well it may be another rough outing for an arm trying to reinvent himself mid-season.
Now while Bryce Harper and Rhys Hoskins are pricey, the rest of this team is really under-priced with every single other batter under $4K which makes a full-on Philly stack really easy to build.
The other team that has a nice mix of high-low bats, and also happens to be a visiting team with 9 guaranteed innings of at-bats, is the Chicago White Sox against Jorge Lopez and the horrendous Baltimore pen in Camden Yards.
Piggybacking off the Richards comment, Lopez ranks 20th in all of baseball the last month in hard contact allowed at just under 40%, so there is a great case to be made here to simply attack 2 of the top 20 arms (and the 2 worst on tonight’s slate) in terms of giving up hard contact.
The White Sox offers you some high-priced plays like Jose Abreu, Tim Anderson, and Yoan Moncada but much like the Phillies, you can balance their cost with $3K bats like Brian Goodwin, Gavin Sheets, and Luery Garcia who all have the advantage of the split.
The one thing I have noticed at first blush this morning, building with these teams on DraftKings- they correlate really well from a position perspective which makes mixing and matching based on lineup spots, a very flexible way to attack this slate.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Stepping back and looking at this 14 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate, the pitching looks far more treacherous at a macro level than it really is and I think we have multiple paths in this $7K price point that we can utilize that offer strong K upside we can bank on. Doing so allows us to stack the Phillies/White Sox as two visiting teams, in great hitting spots and guaranteed 9 innings of at-bats!
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.
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