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 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 9 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Monday slate and a huge thank you to Jared/Adam for covering the MLB DFS content here at Win Daily over the weekend as I had my annual Fantasy Football dynasty draft weekend. I am back and ready to crush this Monday slate after a weekend of adult beverages, steaks, and questionable football picks!
When stepping back and looking at this slate, it is an incredibly top-loaded pitching pool with Corbin Burnes, Zack Wheeler, and Robbie Ray all catching my eye as high ceiling arms we can anchor to. Conversely, the pitching pool past them seems like far more floor options than ceiling, and even the secondary options feel priced to a point where I am better off finding the extra money to just get to the aces.
Robbie Ray ($9.7K) is the cheapest of the three, with arguably the best match-up against the Orioles, and comes into this game with the best recent form that is going to make him the default spend-up option and it is hard to argue a reason against him. The trickier decision though maybe what we do with Burnes and/or Wheeler at $10K plus price tags on DraftKings.
Corbin Burnes ($10.2K) by all metrics is the most dominant arm in MLB DFS this season with demonstrated 40+ DK point upside as a result of his 34%+ K rate. The last month, like many other arms in baseball, that K rate has dropped but what has not is his swinging strike rate which at 17.2% ranks second in baseball over the last 30 days and his CSW rate of 35% is tops in all of baseball.
So while the raw K arms have been more floor than ceiling if you look at it game by game numbers, overall, his swing and miss ability remain the best in the business and I think with Ray cheaper tonight, we may get the opportunity to get Burnes as an ownership pivot.
Burnes will take on the same Giants team he faced back on August 1st in Milwaukee where he struck out 5 batters and now get a sneaky boost as he moves into a massive pitcher’s park in San Francisco and oh by the way gets the Giants having to fly back home after a Sunday game in Atlanta.
As a GPP player, the appeal for Burnes is clear to me early on as I expect lower than normal ownership and for an arm that has gone for 40+ twice in his last ten games, he has the slate breaking ability I covet. While this Giants offense is not one we typically pick on, the fact is we have seen mid-range arms like Marcus Stroman and Frankie Montas rack up 9 K’s each against San Francisco over the last two weeks which gives us a path to a ceiling here for a league-best K arm like Burnes.
Going double aces on DraftKings tonight may not seem like the most obvious path but I think it is far too easy to do as a result of some seriously soft pricing across the slate. If you really look at the top offenses, sure the “main” pieces are pricey but there is a ton of value within team stacks that I think we need to mix and match to give us a roster build that allows for aces and big bats.
The San Diego Padres will take on LHP Tyler Gilbert in Chase field (roof status pending) and getting the Padres on the road with 9 guaranteed innings in Chase Field against a rookie who has given up 57% hard contact rate to RHB and a 55% fly-ball rate could spell serious firepower.
Gilbert utilizes his cutter as his primary pitch and bad news kiddo – the Padres lineup up and down feasts on this pitch type from lefties. Manny Machado leads the team with a .609 ISO mark, while Fernando Tatis Jr. leads the team with a massive 64% hard contact rate. Again – those are the obvious plays and the pricey ones – but dig deeper and you start to see some serious value.
Eric Hosmer ($2.7K) is a sneaky L/L bat in this stack who has incredibly strong batted ball data against the cutter despite the splits working against him. Hosmer has a .250 ISO mark with a 70% HC rate and actually leads the team with a 340-foot average distance traveled on this pitch type. Keep an eye on the lineup here but we may see $2K punt Ha-Seong Kim with 2B/SS which would open another path to salary flexibility and allow us to stack this team up and down with ease.
The other line-up that stands out to me as far too cheap is the New York Yankees who are likely to face an Angels bullpen game with Shohei Ohtani confirmed to start on Tuesday. Whether we get LHP Jose Quintana or recent call-up RHP Kyle Tiller, this Yankees lineup just feels collectively too cheap. Sure you have Aaron Judge over $5K and even Joey Gallo/Giancarlo Stanton sitting in the $4K range but after that, the majority of the Bombers are sub $4K including Anthony Rizzo/Luke Voit, DJ LeMahieu and $2K punt superstar Andrew Velazquez.
In both the Padres/Yankees cases, the ability to go high/low with lineups and mix and match around the ceiling high-priced bats in away games with 9 guaranteed innings makes them my favorite stack pairing, and oh by the way – you can do it with double aces – go ahead, it is too easy.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We start off the week with a solid 9 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and it starts with a familiar DK GPP path anchoring to the high K arms we need for ceiling and we can do so with two high powered offenses in favorable match-ups with underpriced stacking options.
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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