Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Sunday 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: Sunday Slate Aces
Happy Sunday Funday my friends as we have a strong 9 game slate here to break down as we identify our top MLB DFS Picks and Pivots! The storyline of this slate is we have loaded pitching slates with 2 and maybe 3 aces we can anchor to with Gerrit Cole, Shane Bieber, and Freddy Peralta on the hill and bringing with them elite swing and miss ability.
Let me stop you here – I write this article for strategy purposes so I don’t dive into the specific plays on the mound unless I think there is a need to. Today there is no need to – because Adam Strangis Starting Rotation once again – is the best pitching read in the industry. Go read it now, read it again and then you can come back here to thank me for telling you to read it.
Shane Bieber ($10K) is the class of the trio from a metrics perspective with a 41% K rate and 18% swinging strike rate since the start of 2020 and while Gerrit Cole ($10.4K) is not far behind at 35% and 15.6%. The surprising part for the casual fan may be that Freddy Peralta ($9.5K) ranks ahead of Cole with a 40% K rate and 16.3% swinging strike rate.
The sticker shock on Peralta is real – very real – as he was $6.9K on Opening Day and now is priced just $500 lower than Shane Bieber. Will that bloated price keep his ownership down relative to the other more established aces?
From a match-up perspective, Cole may have the best one in terms of K upside as Tampa Bay strikes out at a 25.6% clip against RHP which is 2-3% more than either the Pirates (Peralta) or Reds (Bieber).
Rather than nitpick our way through these top three – let me spin it another way – can we simply live with this as our pitcher pool on DraftKings and build our lineups around “Double Aces” while having lineups with $3.7K-$3.8 per batter?
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Stacks to Attack
If we opt to go “double aces” on this slate, then we need to find strong cost effective stacks which frankly tend to be easier on Sunday slates as we get rest days for stars and cheap punts entering the lineups.
We also more generally have a strong pitching slate, even beyond the aces, which makes finding offenses to stack even harder. However, there are two mid-range stacks I think we can focus on today – the Miami Marlins and the Milwaukee Brewers.
Now you may not look at the Marlins and think this is the offense to stack, but the reality is that no other team in baseball has scored more runs than the Marlins the last 7 days. Today, the Marlins face LHP Alex Wood who makes his first start of the season but this is an arm that had surrendered a .277 ISO and 50% hard contact rate to right-handed batters over the previous two seasons – and guess what – the Marlins are going to throw a whole lineup of right-handed batters at him!
Wood relies nearly 50% of the time on his sinker to RHB and both of Starling Marte and Jesus Aguilar have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type while Adam Duvall has an absurd .700 ISO and average distance traveled of *checks notes* – 405 feet.
If you look at the last season, the Marlins projected line-up has a .214 team ISO against LHP including two batters with .400+ ISO marks in Adam Duvall and SS Miguel Rojas.
The point here, this line-up is RED HOT and the power splits are seemingly all in their favor today against Wood. This stack could be the one to attack at bargain pricing to give you that path to double aces.
The Brewers meanwhile get similar splits advantage against RHP Chad Kuhl, who has given up a .231 ISO and 48% HC rate to left-handed batters and gets to face a Milwaukee line-up with 5 of their 8 projected hitters coming from the left side.
Kuhl is a similar sinkerballer to left-handed batters, throwing it nearly 50% of the time – and the Brew Crew hammer this pitch type. All of Jackie Bradley, Omar Narvaez, and Billy McKinney have .230+ ISO marks against that pitch type while Travis Shaw leads the team with a .400 ISO. We also get some cheapie value with Jace Peterson at $2.4K who we can use at 2B or OF today!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
Today is a great day for MLB DFS and our MLB DFS Picks are going to be focused on a two ace build with a Marlins and Brewers stack that allows us to attack opposing pitcher splits with serious power upside.
Enjoy this slate – let’s get in our FREE Discord today and chat it up while we dig through our cheat sheets and custom projections here at Win Daily to set up the start of this MLB DFS season with some big wins!
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!
