Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Monday, May 17th 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
Happy Monday my MLB DFS friends – after a big weekend of winning here at Win Daily Sports, we are back to kick off this week with a strong 8 game slate on Monday Night!
What stands out to me on this short slate is just how top-heavy the pitching is and anytime we have such highly concentrated ace level arms available to us, my first reaction is to see if we can anchor to double-ace type builds.
With Gerrit Cole, Yu Darvish and Walker Buehler all sitting over $10K on DraftKings, I think we have to outline the potential path in our MLB DFS picks to anchor to two of these high K arms with Cole and Darvish being the primary pairing.
As Adam outlined in Starting Rotation, the path to ceiling is just massive here for Cole against a K-heavy Texas team and Darvish taking on the Rockies outside of Coors Field. Anchoring to both SP1’s will leave you with $3.6K per batter for the rest of your roster and frankly, I think with the insane amount of punt hitter value tonight, there is every reason to start your day with this build in mind.
Even with two aces at pitcher, the reality is that on this slate we have high upside power stacks with strong value within them and my favorite tonight is the LAA Angels against LHP Sam Hentges.
Hentges is an arm that the advanced metrics will tell you is due for some serious regression as his 3.29 ERA is well below his xERA of 5.8 and with a 98% left on base rate, he is walking a dangerous tight rope.
Hentges has struggled this year with right-handed bats to the tune of a .317 ISO with a 42% hard contact rate and 4 HR/9 rate allowed. Well, with Anthony Rendon back in the heart of this Angels line-up, this becomes a nightmare spot for Hentges.
Not only will he have to navigate Rendon-Ohtani-Trout in the middle of this Angels order but he will likely have a total line-up of 7 right-handed batters to make this splits disadvantage even worse. While the “Big 3” are expensive, the Angels do offer value with Taylor Ward and Justin Upton sitting in the mid $2K range on DraftKings which allows ut o easily stack the Angels big bats and work value around there for a full-on 5 man stack!
Hentges pitch type looks like trouble here as well as he relies nearly a third of a time on his curveball and all of Ward, Upton and Trout have .500+ ISO marks against that pitch type while Rendon leads the team with a average distance traveled of 358 feet on a .316 ISO mark of his own.
Going with a Cole/Darvish 1-2 punch and a 5 man Angels stack, will leave you with $2.6K for the last 3 spots in your build – more than enough wiggle room considering the amount of near $2K punts available throughout projected lineups on Monday!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
In stepping back and looking at this slate, there are some key priority build paths that I see tonight and the most important is anchoring to two aces. Listen, we have two arms up top in Cole/Darvish that have league leading swing and miss stuff and they both have advantageous match-ups this evening. Now combine that with the lack of appealing value arms and I am going to take the path of least resistance with my arms tonight.
That means we have to find ways to save salary with our bats without sacrificing power and upside. That my friends is where the Angels bats come into play as we can stack the big three of Trout-Rendon-Ohtani and do so by using the value around them in Ward/Upton for a high upside and balanced cost stack against the Indians!
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.
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!
