Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Monday 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
After Sunday’s horrendous pitching slate that left us with negative points from Ponce De Leon and injuries to our SP1 in Adrian Morejon, you can bet I was pumped to turn the page and see a Monday MLB DFS slate full of aces.
That all starts today with Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow who both sit above $10K today on DraftKings but I would argue that they are both worth every penny and my goal on this slate is to find a way to lock in both. Listen, you get two arms with 34% and 37% K rates respectively and 16% and 14% swinging strike rates which are both among the best marks in baseball since the start of 2020.
If you have read Picks and Pivots before, you know I am a massive believer in going double high K aces on DraftKings assuming we can get high upside cheap hitting stacks and so rather than wax poetic about this aces – I want to spend my time on if this approach is doable today for our MLB DFS lineups.
I will be honest – DraftKings has set this up where I do not think you have to look all that far. In fact, what if I told you that you could get the two best arms on the slate and stack the game with the highest Vegas run total in Oakland/Arizona?
This game will take place in Chase Field where the roof is scheduled to be open on an 80+ degree day in Phoenix and we get two hittable arms in RHP Chris Bassit and LHP Madison Bumgarner.
MadBum simply gets the worst possible spot as has struggled mightily against RHB since the start of last season to the tune of a .310 ISO, 42% fly ball rate and a 45.5% hard contact rate. The HR ball has been a killer for the lefty, surrendering 11 HR’s to RHB in just 30 innings last season and while the HR ball has yet to bite him in 2021, he has surrendered 9 ER in just 8 innings of work with a 44% HC rate.
This Oakland team is just going to hammer you with right-handed power as they have 5 batters with .200+ ISO marks against lefties since the start of 2019.
The pitch type data also jumps off the pitch as MadBum relies nearly 40% of the time on his cutter to righties and all of Mark Canha, Matt Chapman, Stephen Piscotty and Elvis Andrus have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type.
Even in the L/L match-up here, Matt Olson looks like a GPP difference maker as he sports a .538 ISO against the cutter which Mad Bum uses 50% of the time versus LHB and he has a .630 ISO against his secondary pitch to LHB in the curve.
The Oakland A’s pricing is laughably cheap on this slate and I love the fact that you can stack them as the road team and get guaranteed 9th inning at-bats from your high upside stack.
Going full game stack here in this spot is interesting because the correlation position wise for Arizona with Oakland works quite perfectly on DK especially when we factor in how we want to attack Chris Bassit.
Bassit has always been a pitcher who dominates right-handed heavy lineups but his .200 ISO mark, 41% fly ball rate and 45% hard contact rate against lefties are essentially the mirror image of what we attacked with the Oakland righties against Bumgarner.
So we want the Arizona LHB today – Kole Calhoun, David Peralta, Asdrubal Cabrera, Eduardo Escobar and Stephen Vogt.
Bassit relies heavily on his sinker to left-handed batters and guess what – wever single left-handed hitter noted above has a .200+ ISO mark against that pitch type. David Peralta looks like the prime target here if you are home run hunting as he has a 81% contact rate with a 53% hard contact rate and leads the team with a 317 average distance traveled against that pitch type.
I woke up today feeling dangerous – and also looking for a cheap game stack to put with my double aces – and I think I found exactly what I needed in Chase Field tonight!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
We have a large MLB DFS slate tonight but my focus is going to be crystal clear with the two primary aces in Cole/Glasnow and an Oakland/Arizona game stack with the roof open at Chase Field.
Stack it up and let’s ride tonight!
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!
