Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Saturday, July 31st 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 Saturday Edition of MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have a full day of baseball after an insane MLB Trade Deadline Day on Friday.
The scheduling today gives us an “early” slate but really that just means we have 3 games starting at 6:10 PM EST which makes the way this slate is chopped up super unappealing in my opinion for the early 5 gamer where pitching is weak and the games are back-loaded. My recommendation – the early slate is more “play for fun” than the one to focus on.
The Main Slate has a very clear direction in my mind – pay up for pitching and do not look back.
Listen, I get it, pitching the last month or so has been a roller coaster, and the “safety” of paying up for aces is long gone as Corbin Burnes showed us last night but I think tonight we simply have to live in this range especially with Yu Darvish and Aaron Nola in elite match-ups against the Rockies and Pirates as Adam Strangis laid out in Starting Rotation today.
The question though is how can you build around double aces tonight and still get the value and high upside stacks?
Well, let’s start with the Cleveland Indians who take on LHP Dallas Keuchel in Chicago.
Over the last month, the White Sox lefty is an arm we can attack as he is giving up a 2.45 HR/9 rate and 51% hard contact rate with a .438 ISO mark to lefties and a .222 ISO mark to RHB.
If you look at the Indians projected line-up you start to see why we are going here – because, well it is a $2K punt party up and down this bad boy. Myles Straw projects to lead-off at the minimum price while the entire starting OF while you also have Roberto Perez ($2.5K) catcher, Oscar Mercado ($2.1K) and Harold Ramirez ($2.7K) all offering you pure value in the heart of this lineup.
The two big bats you can mix and match in are Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes with J-Ram profiling as one of the best hitters on the slate. Keuchel is throwing the sinker/cutter combination to RHB over 50% of the time and both pitches are getting smoked the last month – to the tune of a .450 ISO allowed.
Ramirez profiles exceptionally well against both pitch types with a .359 ISO against the sinker and a .467 ISO against the cutter. I know he is pricey but with all this punt value in the Indians lineup, he makes for the ideal spend-up within the stack.
One of the things an Indians stack lacks is a strong 1B-SS mini correlation and it just so happens we get a new duo to unleash tonight in Flushing with Pete Alonso and Javier Baez and they get to do it against a soft-tossing lefty in Wade Miley.
Alonso just faced Miley in GABP and hit a home run off him and while Miley was able to rack up 8 K’s in that outing, he also was getting hit HARD with a 45% hard contact and 7 base hits allowed and so with the Mets seeing him again just a few days later – this could be a spot where they tee off on the lefty.
As a Mets fan, I am fascinated to see how Baez impacts this line-up, and more anecdotally, I am expecting him to be a dynamic acquisition for the Mets similar to the impact we saw Yoesnis Cespedes have back in 2015. Baez is a polarizing player, and one who when he is hot, can carry a team – and I think going to New York, where he wanted to play and said so publicly – I think he comes out and has a monster first game against a Reds pitching staff he is intimately familiar with.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
The MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate looks to be a good one tonight and an opportunity to roll out double aces which frankly, has been more of a GPP strategy lately than what we saw early in the year when top-end arms were steady and consistent.
The dirt-cheap Indians offer us an opportunity to load up on arms and do so while attacking one of the worst arms in baseball the last month in terms of ISO and hard contact allowed.
Well – that is it for me. I am heading out on vacation and will be back after some quality family time but don’t worry – the Win Daily Crew had you covered. Just remember when I am gone – stack the Rays and celebrate Lester Day!
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!
