Gary Gustafson 
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 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 6 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Monday slate where we look to get the all-clear for weather in what sets up for a perfect GPP slate in my opinion. Personally, I love these smaller Monday slates of 6-7 games where the player pool is large enough to be different but small enough where you can really dive in and think through the strategy of your builds.
From a pitching pool perspective, there are frankly only three names I have any interest in – Lance Lynn, Alex Manoah, and Antonio Senzatela.
Lance Lynn ($9.9K) and Alex Manoah ($8.5K) are arguably the two highest ceiling arms on the slate but the matchups against the White Sox and Blue Jays bats are not ones we typically go out of our way to attack.
Lynn has faced the Blue Jays once before this season, back in the beginning of June, where he struck out 9 batters, giving up just a solo HR, on his way to 29.4 DK points. Interestingly enough, his opponent that game was also Manoah who struck out only 4 batters on his way to just 13.7 DK points.
What is interesting is that if you look at recent trends, Manoah has actually flashed more ceiling than Lynn (with significantly less steady of a floor) as he has gone for 30+ DK points twice in his last six outings but the underlying metrics for Lynn are better with a 30% K rate and just a 29% hard contact rate allowed over the last month.
Senzatela ($6K) feels like the default SP2 as he takes on the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field and for all the reasons we were on Carlos Hernandez yesterday, are why we should go to Senzatela today.
In the last two weeks, of the 14 starters to face the Cubs, half of them have eclipsed 23 DK points with 11 of the 16 going for double-digits including Hernandez who struck out 8 batters over 7 innings on his way to 29.6 DK points.
Senzatela is everything we talked about with Hernandez yesterday, a high ground ball arm, giving up low ISO who has the run prevention floor, and the added K ceiling with the match-up. The only real reason to avoid him today is ownership as we saw Hernandez pushing 40-45% ownership yesterday in single entry GPP’s and on a smaller slate today I think Senzatela could eclipse 50%!
So how do we play this?
The Senzatela ownership really is going to help drive some of my decision-making today because I think that if the ownership mirrors what we saw with Hernandez yesterday, we have to re-think whether he is “needed.” In 20 starts this season, Senzatela has gone for single-digit DK points in half of those starts – so are we really ready to play a super chalk SP2 who fails to get double-digit DK points half the time?
The sneaky play here may be to go “double aces” with Lynn/Manoah despite the less than ideal match-ups and shoot for ceiling games from both. Look back at yesterday, a slate that was similarly blah from a pitching perspective however we saw four arms go for 30+ DK points with Adam Wainwright, Vladimir Gutierrez, Sandy Alacantara and Carlos Hernandez.
At some point, pitching still sets the cash line and on a short slate like this, if Lynn/Manoah have ceiling games, you could be way ahead of the field. The other mid-way option – simply split the difference and go high/low with one of Lynn/Manaoah and pair them with Senzatela as your cheap SP2.
UPDATE – The first pass of ownership is out and- um, excuse me? Alek Manoah is 60% projected? OK, well that takes him out of consideration for me, and the Chicago White Sox just became the ultimate leverage on a boom or bust arm that has been lit up twice in his last eight starts.
If we look at the bats on this slate, we really don’t have a ton of stand-out spots, with only the Astros sporting an IRT over 5 which adds to the GPP intrigue of this 6 gamer. We have aces in bad match-ups and no offenses to pay for – what a world!
The one spot that really intrigues me tonight is the Yankee/Braves game in Atlanta where Jordan Montgomery and Huascar Ynoa will take the mound. Ynoa is an arm I want to attack tonight with the Yankees, despite the loss of the DH, because the underlying metrics and pitch data suggest this could be a spot he gets worked.
Ynoa in his short career has been a reverse splits pitcher with a .220 ISO mark to RHB and a 1.87 HR/9 rate which makes the Yankees bats really appealing to me on this slate especially considering the pricing as they are largely under-priced.
Ynoa is basically a two-pitch pitcher with a 96+ MPH fastball and slider that he throws nearly 50% of the time to right-handed batters so finding the Yankees bats that hit the slider and high-velocity fastball well is the priority. Aaron Judge stands out as the key bat in both cases with massive ISO/HC rates against both pitch types with a .437 ISO and 75% HC rate against the high-velocity fastball and a .212 ISO and 46% HC rate against the slider.
Both Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez have similar .200 ISO marks against both pitch types and while the lefties may not necessarily be the “way to attack” Ynoa – it is hard to overlook the slider data with both Anthony Rizzo and Joey Gallo sporting .250 ISO marks against the slider from RHP.
While the HR power has not been there for the lefties against Ynoa, what is sneaky is the 49.1% hard contact rate allowed and while Ynoa is a GB-specific arm, the Yankees have the left-handed bats like Gallo and Rougned Odor with extreme flyball tendencies to balance it out.
On the flip side of this game the Yankees are throwing out Jordan Montgomery and I am sorry – but in what world is he a $10K pitcher on the road against the Braves?
While Montgomery is not an arm that gets lit up, he has given up a 46% HC rate to RHB the last 30 days and this Braves lineup is LOADED with right-handed batters that have a .230 ISO and 46.7% HC rate against southpaws this season.
Jorge Soler’s numbers in the last 30 days are just insane against LHP with a .590 ISO, 50% HC rate, and a 62% fly-ball rate with an average distance traveled of 370 feet. My goodness.
Ozzie Albies has quietly been red-hot as well against lefties with a .211 ISO and 50% HC rate – again with a 50% fly-ball rate which is key against a ground ball arm like Montgomery.
This Yankees/Braves game stack correlates really well from a position perspective and with the Yankees being priced in the mid-range, it allows you the ability to load up on the key bats from this game on both sides!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
This is a great MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate tonight with a ton of GPP appeal as ownership could really open up some fascinating low-owned paths. Today is the kind of slate where you get a general early build and we use ownership to sharpen our focus as we head toward lock.
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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