Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Saturday, May 29th 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: Early Slate Breakdown
Welcome into a split slate MLB DFS Saturday where we are set for another big day of wins here at Win Daily Sports. As you can see above – big-time congrats to our founder, Jason Mezrahi who clearly read Picks and Pivots yesterday and used the Chase Field game stack to ship some GPP’s! You love to see it.
The 10 game early slate has rain concerns in Pittsburgh & Washington and three of the games are 7 inning double-headers with Brewers/Nats, Pittsburgh/Colorado and Orioles/White Sox only scheduled to play 7 innings which adds complexity to our MLB DFS picks.
When you have these 7 inning double-headers, what it immediately does is removes those bats from consideration for GPP’s as you are limiting yourself to 77% of the “typical” innings for your batters and those extra innings and at-bats can become crucial for where to land in tournament play.
What stands out to me on this early slate is that we have elite K arms with Darvish, Peralta and Rogers but all of them are in less than ideal match-ups and which is making me think we can pay down at pitcher today with an eye on stacking the big bats.
So let’s start there because this slate has some serious firepower with the bats and it starts with the Toronto Blue Jays against LHP Sam Hentges. Hentges has struggled with RH power bats this season to the tune of a .266 ISO and 42% HC rate and has to face basically the worst possible match-up with the right-handed Jays power bats coming to town.
This Blue Jays stack has the potential to destroy Hentges here when you dive into his pitch types further. Hentges relies on his curve nearly 30% of the time to RHB and and oh boy, every player 1-6 in the line-up has a .200+ ISO mark against that type.
OK well no biggie he can just go to his slider that he throws 20% of the time – and oh God, it gets worse. All of Semien, Bichette, Teoscar and Gurriel have .300+ ISO marks against that pitch type.
You know that Simpsons GIF where the kids stand around and scream “STOP STOP HE’S ALREADY DEAD?!” Yeah, that is going to be Sammy Batting Practice today against this Jays offense. Load up.
The other offense I have my eyes on today is the KC Royals against JA Happ and part of the reason is how well they correlate with the Blue Jays as you can use Salvador Perez at Catcher and you have the flexibility to use Whit Merrifield now on DK at either 2B in place of Marcus Semien in a stack or keep Semien and move Whit to the OF slot!
Now paying for all those big bats means you can kiss Yu Darvish goodbye and get ready to scroll down in your pitcher pool – but don’t worry, I got something for you!
What if I told you there was a spot today for a pitcher facing a team that ranks top 10 in K rate at nearly 26% against their handedness and ranks among the top 5 in K rate as a team when playing in their ballpark. What if I also told you it was 50 degrees with 15-20 MPH winds blowing in for said pitcher?
Now what if I told you that pitcher was Luis Castillo ($6.9K)?
Now, listen – this pitcher is going to be scary to roster and for some reason he tends to be CRAZY chalk on every slate and if that is the case, I may change my tune but there is merit to this play on match-up alone as he has swing and miss ability, a high GB rate and gets a Cubs team that whiffs a ton against right-handed pitching.
If Castillo ends up gaining traction – we have some pivots in this range that offer value of their own with the 7 inning double header advantage for arms as they will likely see watered down offenses that play for two game sets.
Dallas Keuchel ($6.4K) is rarely an arm I look to because of his lack of K upside but this is a pitcher who has a massive GB rate (nearly 60%) and gives up essentially only soft contact. There is nothing sexy about this play but we have an arm that has gone 100 pitches now in back-to-back games and with this being a 7 inning affair he gets the potential to double dip with a win and a complete game bonus which would add to his DFS ceiling.
The other arm that fits this bill is Mitch Keller ($5.8K) who gets the simple flow chart of pitching against the Rockies outside of Coors Field. All of the last 5 RHP to face the Rockies on the road have gone for 20+ DK points and 7 of the last 8 have gone for 15+ DK points so this is simply a spot where you are attacking the match-up.
Lastly, we have a $4K Ervin Santana making a spot start against the Twins. He is $4K – that is basically the reason to play him. He has pitched extremely well out of the pen for the Royals this year and his ability to limit power to RHB will be a big selling point with the Twins rolling out likely 5 RHB in the line-up.
Listen – none of these arms have the usual “ACE” ceiling I recommend but sometimes I think you have to take what a slate offers you and today I think it is a slate where bats over arms are the early priority!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Main Slate
The five-game “Main Slate” has similar weather/rain concerns in Washington (again) and in New York for the Mets and Braves and well, the pitching may be even worse than the early slate.
The difference here on this slate is that I would argue there are no “must-have” big dollar offenses to force me to move down at pitching so going the most direct route with Julio Urias and Ian Anderson may be the best path. If Anderson gets rained out – the only real logical pivot in my eyes is Adam Wainwright as he will likely get a left-handed heavy Arizona line-up which sets up well for his sub .100 ISO and 22% K rate to LHB this season.
The reason we can live up top on this slate is the best slate in my eyes is Texas/Seattle and the pricing up and down allows you significant salary flexibility.
All apologies to my man Stix, but Folty SZN has been canceled, and stacking against arguably the two worst arms on the slate with Justin Dunn and Folty gives us a path to serious power and a late-night hammer.
If you look at Dunn’s metrics this season the flow chart is simple – stack the LHB against him because he has given up a .227 ISO, 48% HC rate and a 42% FB rate – and well if you think those are bad, Folty’s are even worse with a .298 ISO, 49% HC rate and 46% FB rate.
Are you a left-handed batter in Texas or Seattle’s line-up tonight? Well, then you are in my player pool.
Start those game stacks with Nate Lowe and Joey Gallo and run it back with Kyle Seager and Jared Kelenic. Honestly, the hardest decision is which RHB you use for your third OF with Mitch Haniger and Win Daily darling Adolis Garcia both sitting there to complete the stack!
Honestly – the main slate seems incredibly straight forward to me tonight much like it did on Friday – game stack Texas and Seattle and get two top end arms to anchor to. Easy game.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Alright kids – we got ourselves a solid MLB DFS split slate and I think the slates play very differently. On the early slate, I think we avoid the big arms and build around the bats but take the opposite approach on the main where we pay up for both arms and game stack a under priced Texas/Seattle game.
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!
