Gary Gustafson 
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 my friends to a 14 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Friday Night slate of baseball where we have a mostly clear weather outlook, with some slight rain chances in Colorado and KC but nothing that should result in postponements and a smaller slate.
We once again have a Coors Field game on the slate with a slate high 11.5 game total but unlike last night we have a larger player pool and 6 other teams with 5+ IRT’s that we can pivot to which should result in far less ownership than the 40-50 and even 60% ownership we saw last night on some of the Braves bats.
Pitching Picks
Unlike last night and the last few nights, the pitching is well – not nearly as strong at the top end and the fact that Adam Wainwright is the highest-priced arm on the slate in 2021 at $10K tells you everything you need to know. I think what this likely means more broadly from a roster construction perspective is that the lack of must-have high-priced arms will mean everyone and their mother is able to load up on the bats.
While I am not overly interested in Waino, I do have interest in Nathan Eovaldi ($9.8K) against the Cleveland Indians. Over the last month, the Red Sox right-hander is quietly among the best K arms in baseball with a 28.6% rate that has him ranked 14th in the league over that time frame and he is doing it by dominating left-handed batters.
Over the last month, Eovaldi has a 34.1% K rate to left-handed batters and with the Indians, a team he just faced and struck out 7, projected to throw out 5 left-handed batters – I think we have a serious path to ceiling here once again.
In that last outing, there are a few things that jump out to me past the box score – Eovaldi had a 14.4% SS rate which was far higher than his season metrics and he did it with a pitch mix change – relying heavily on his slider and curveball and threw his fastball just 35% of the time which was his lowest mark of any start this season.
One thing that is interesting in reading about Eovaldi is this strategic use of a quick pitch where he changes the end of his delivery, simply striding forward to deliver the ball to the plate instead of going through his fullleg kick.
This awesome view from Pitching Ninja shows the overlay and the difference in his delivery.
That timing difference in the eye of the batter is massive, especially for a pitcher with 98 MPH gas coming at you. This was a move that Eovaldi used on Franmil Reyes last game to get a K and his continued changes in the delivery type and pitch mix, make me really bullish on a ceiling game here tonight.
Not far down the player pool is another high K arm in top form recently with Vladimir Gutierrez ($8.5K) at home against the K-heavy Detroit Tigers. Gutierrez has really been able to dominate RHB the last month with a 32% K rate and the Tigers are projected to roll out half their lineup from the right side while also losing the DH heading to a National League park.
We talked about this yesterday with Frankie Montas, but this match-up has screamed ceiling for opposing right-handed arms with 4 of the last 9 going for 30+ DK points and while Montas stumbled late yesterday, he was on his way to a similar outing with 7 K’s before some late runs knocked his performance down.
The one arm sitting among the league leaders in K rate the last 30 days that frankly, I did not expect was Cal Quantrill ($7.2K) who has a 29.5% K rate over the last month and he is doing so with a 38.5% K rate to LHB. Quantrill is coming off the same match-up with the Red Sox he just struck out 6 batters against on his way to 21 DK points and his price went down from $8.3K to $7.2K. Insert Ryan Reynolds – “But Why” GIF.
What is great about this slate for pitching is that it is not “as bad” as it may seem but it also lacks obvious plays – and as Adam Strangis mentioned in Starting Rotation, that may lead to condensed ownership on the “names” like Shohei Ohtani or a $5K punt like Glenn Otto. I have a feeling the arms I mentioned above are all going to be 15% or lower owned today once ownership shakes out – and if so, I think we have a path to really building around strong K arms that most people will overlook.
Stacks on Stacks
I am not going to waste your time here with Coors Field – it is Coors, it will be popular and with a lack of top-end arms, it will be a default option for many.
Yawn.
It is a 14 game slate – there are a ton of other strong offenses we can target and so as a GPP player, please all go play chalk bats in Colorado and the rest of us can find low-owned stacks that give us GPP ceiling. If the chalk hits so be it, if it doesn’t – well, these are the kind of tournament slates you can make massive bankroll gains.
It has been a long time since I went to this spot – honestly, I cannot even remember the last time I did – but tonight, this is a spot I think the New York Mets bats break out in a big way against LHP Sean Nolin and the Washington Nationals.
After not pitching in the bigs since 2015, Nolin returned to the Nationals rotation 3 games ago and has made 2 of his first 3 starts against this very same Mets lineup. For a pitcher with a low K pedigree, seeing the same team 3 times in 4 turns could spell disaster and the fact is, this Mets lineup has seen the ball well against him.
In 8 innings against the Mets, he has given up 14 hits, 6 ER, and 3 long balls with Kevin Pillar blasting two against him last game. If you dig into those two games, Nolin has a SIX PERCENT soft contact rate so this is a spot where a career mid-teens K rate guy is going to give up contact and lots of loud contact at that.
The two big hitters against left-handed pitching for the Mets are Pete Alonso and Javy Baez who have .345 and .290 ISO marks respectively against LHP in 2021. I would imagine the red-hot Jonathan Villar and Kevin Pillar after his two HR performances get the nods here again today and the price points on most of the Mets allow us for some serious mid-range pop in a balanced 4-5 man stack.
Finding a team to correlate with the Mets tonight led me to another team that honestly – I can’t recall stacking recently. It is odd, but when is the last time I mentioned using the Tampa Bay Rays.
Oh wait – I do that every day.
The Rays take on Randy Dobnak – a right-hander who throws the sinker 50% of the time. You guys know the drill – when the Rays face a sinkerball arm you lock in Austin Meadows and Brandon Lowe and you don’t think twice.
Against the sinker – Lower has a .232 ISO and 50% HC rate, while Meadows has a .296 ISO, 45% HC rate and an average distance of 340 feet. This duo is at the core of my builds today and they correlate perfectly with the Mets bats no matter how their lineup breaks.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Today we have a great MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate for GPP’s and one that I think we can really capitalize on with low-owned builds that pivot off the likely heavy chalk of Ohtani and Coors. If you want to play the chalk – go for it – I won’t and tonight is the perfect night I think to play the slate differently.
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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