Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Monday, May 10th 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: Someone has a case of the Monday’s
Nothing like kicking off your week with a Monday MLB DFS slate that has just six games and likely will have only five come lock with massive weather concerns in Coors Field with freezing temperatures and rain/snow expected during the day. Oh, and by the way, I would get a strong drink before looking at the pitching options – because well, it is terrifying.
I am not going to spend a ton of time on the pitching because to me, I am likely going to work backward on this slate, prioritizing hitters while keeping a very tight core of arms in consideration.
I think that this slate will set up where people will take risks at SP, especially on DraftKings where we need two arms, but I am going to take a different approach – playing it straight at SP and looking to avoid the landmines.
That means my pitcher pool will be some combination of Alex Wood, Tyler Mahle and Kyle Gibson. The options are gross. Paying nearly $10K for Alex Freakin Wood is gross. However, we are all dealt the same hand here tonight, and sometimes on these slates people will throw caution to the wind and take shots on guys that have no business being in lineups.
So I am going to be boring and pay the premium for arms that I think can get me 20 DK points each and hope that A) my bats do the talking and B) the random arms that have ownership tonight get blown up.
Paying for two arms is going to likely take you out of consideration for the big stacks tonight but there is one stack I think tonight that stands out with elite talent and far too cheap pricing – and that is the Cincinnati Reds against RHP Mitch Keller.
Just looking at the metrics, Keller you can argue is the single worst arm on this slate – with a near 6 SIERA, an xFIP over 6, a 17% BB rate and a SS% rate of under 8% – all of which are at the bottom or minimally in the bottom 3 among SP’s on this slate of pitching poo.
This season, Keller is giving up a near 50% hard contact rate with a .196 ISO to LHB and .239 ISO to RHB. This Reds line-up has a .232 ISO mark against RHP this season with 5 batters sporting .200+ ISO marks in the heart if their line-up this season.
The lefties – Jessie Winker, Mike Moustakas and Tyler Naquin all have .280+ ISO marks against RHP this season. Both Moustakas and Naquin have .200+ ISO marks against the curve which is Keller’s primary offering off his fastball to lefties and Naquin specifically has a 52% HC rate and 94 MPH exit velocity which ranks as the top mark among left-handed bats in the Reds line-up.
The right-handed big sticks like Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez have .270 and .230 ISO marks against RHP so this is a spot where you can literally go 5 deep with every single hitter sporting massive power against a pitcher who is giving up hard contact and power to hitters from both sides of the plate!
Nick Senzel ($3.1K) also becomes a super valuable part of this stack – both from a salary relief perspective, but you get a lead-off man you can use at 2B or OF on DK. Senzel is more of a stack play than a one-off as his path to value really correlates with the big bats behind him as his strengths lie in a team-high walk rate (important with Keller’s command struggles) and his team-high 80% contact rate to RHP this season.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
This MLB DFS slate is gross – it is ugly – it is scary to put your hard-earned American or US Dollar equivalent (that is for you Ghost) – but up on the line. But here is the thing – we all have the same player pool – so we are all playing from the same angle.
The key on a slate like this where we do not have elite arms to anchor to is to avoid unnecessary risk and instead lean on the slim pitching options we do have while still building elite stacks. The Reds stack tonight is the perfect core GPP anchor because it allows us to attack arguably the worst arm on the slate with elite power bats that are priced reasonably and still allow you to pay for the “top-end” arms.
Good luck tonight all!
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