Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Sunday, June 20th 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 Sunday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and for all the Dad’s out there – Happy Father’s Day! We have a solid 9 game slate here today with a 7 inning game for Atlanta/St. Louis as part of a double-header and some late-day rain concerns at Wrigley Field we will need to manage around.
As I always do, I sit down before I start writing Picks and Pivots and I jot down my player pool for arms to see if there is any overlap between what I like and what Adam likes in Starting Rotation. Well, my top three arms I wrote down were Taijuan Walker, Lance McCullers, and Kenta Maeda – so safe to say, we see things similarly at first glance. My initial builds all had Walker-Maeda and my guess is – that is a cash game pairing today.
Now, nobody wants to read my poor imitation of Adam’s well-articulated analysis – so rather than simply re-focus on the same arms, let me give you some GPP options specifically around the price point of Kenta Maeda, who I would expect is going to draw massive ownership based on price, name recognition, and match-up. If you are using Maeda to get to the same big-dollar stacks, it becomes really hard to find any pivot ownership-wise and so maybe swerving at pitcher is the right way to be different.
Alec Mills ($7K) gets a second straight spot start for the Cubs due to injury after his solid outing against the Mets the last time to the mound. Mills threw 57 pitches in that game, with 6 K’s, and what really stands out to me is the 80% first-strike rate in that game – a key metric for an arm that is not all the way stretched out.
Attacking Miami recently has been a profitable strategy as 9 of the last 13 arms have put up double-digit DK point outings and 6 of the 13 arms have struck out 6 or more in their outings.
Mills has primarily pitched out of the pen for the Cubs this year, but they sent him to AAA earlier in June to stretch him out and he threw 6 innings of shutout ball in his last minor league start before re-joining the big club so I think he can go deep enough to be relevant here today on a slate that is lacking the elite pitching options we want.
Bryse Wilson ($6.9K) is another arm that has been working in AAA and gets a spot start on Sunday in a double-header affair with the St. Louis Cardinals. Wilson is fully stretched out, going 5-6 innings in each of his last 4 AAA starts and we saw his him succeed in his last two starts at the MLB level before the demotion with 20 and 15 DK points against the Jays/Pirates.
Wilson’s splits favor right-handed heavy teams as he has a 21% K rate, 50% ground ball rate and a just a 30% hard contact rate against RHB since the start of last season. The Cardinals will have 5 of the 8 hitters in their line-up hitting from the right-side with a projected line-up that has a 23% K rate and 40% GB rate against RHP, so this is a spot where I think Wilson has a path to success.
In this price range, I think everyone is going to push to Maeda and I understand why but Wilson and Mills have similar paths to 15-20 DK point outings in my opinion and if Maeda struggles, you have immediete low owned leverage in this price point. Even if Maeda hits, I do not think he outperforms either of these arms but a material enough amount to warrant the massive difference in ownership.
One of the reasons Maeda is going to be super chalky today – everyone is going to load up on the Blue Jays versus Matt Harvey and for good reason. You do not need me to wax poetic about why the Jays offense is in the ideal spot today in Camden Yards with 9 innings of guaranteed at-bats against Harvey and Co. The chalk is going to be chalk for a reason – and while I would argue you need to eat it, that is why I also argue that using them with Maeda becomes far too “similar” of a build for GPP’s and why I think we need to pivot somewhere to make our builds different.
Staying in this game could offer us the ideal game stack with the Orioles power bats against Ryu and the Jays pen. Attacking Ryu is simple – you go after him with RHB as he has given up 11 HR’s in 60 innings versus RHB with a 1.65 HR/9 rate.
Behind Ryu is where I think this stack really pays off as the Toronto pen has been among the worst in baseball over the last 7-14 days with a near 6 ERA over the last 7 games with 17 ER’s in 26 innings of work including 6 HR’s. Ryu himself has been at his worst form recently as well, giving up 12 ER and 5 HR’s over his last 3 starts and this Orioles lineup is arguably one of the hottest in baseball ranking top 10 in runs scored and HR’s hit over the last 2 weeks.
We have two high-powered offenses in one of the best hitter’s parks in baseball with 90-degree temperatures, humidity, and the wind blowing out to CF – game stack city!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
This 9 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate seem like a strong one but I also think it could end up very chalky with Maeda and a Blue Jays stack being at the core. Finding ways to slightly pivot with our arms or secondary stacks is the key to making waves in GPP’s today and that is where the focus will be as we get clarity on lineups and ownership.
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.
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