Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Thursday 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
We kick off our Thursday with a 2 game MLB DFS slate that on the surface looks underwhelming, lackluster and one that we could just skip right over – but I am a sucker for daytime DFS and this two game slate actually has some interesting strategy when breaking down our MLB DFS picks.
I say this every time we have a short slate like this – these slates are far more about strategy than they are about “top plays” so we need to approach them with a different mindset when building our GPP lineups.
In looking at both games – Reds/DBacks and Pirates/Tigers – we lack any real ace level arms and in fact none of the arms have even a 25% K rate since the start of 2020, which tells you these are far more floor than ceiling type arms.
At an overall level – both games have similar weather situations with 50 degree game time temperatures and the wind blowing out to left field with 10-12 MPH. The one difference I do see – the Reds game has a massive pitcher’s umpire while the Tigers/Pirates have a favorable hitting umpire.
My assumption today is that most will use the arms for Pittsburgh and Detroit in Mitch Keller and Jose Urena and they will stack the Diamondbacks and Reds bats.
Instead – I think we use the arms in that game in Great American Ball Park with Jeff Hoffman and Taylor Widener. Both pitchers have had two strong outings this season, sandwiched around one bad outing – which in both cases just so happen to come against the very same teams they face today. You know the game log watchers will see it and assume these are the arms to attack!
For Hoffman, he has put up 17 and 23 DK points outside of this one stinker in Arizona, that I am going to argue – was not really so bad. If you look at that game compared to his other two starts against Cleveland and St. Louis – there was one glaring difference – his ability to generate called strikes and swings & misses on his fastball.
In his other two starts he generated a 29% and 39% CSW rate on his primary pitch type but against Arizona, this sat at just 19%. Additionally, Hoffman had just a 25% O-swing % on that game which was nearly half of what he has had in his other two starts – meaning only 25% of the time did Arizona swing at pitches outside the zone.
So in this case, Hoffman was not getting the zone and could not get Arizona to chase outside which led to an abbreviated outing. In his last start against the Indians, we saw the ceiling – where he threw 70% of his first pitches for strikes, getting ahead in the count and ultimately racking up a 14% swinging strike rate.
Widener has had a similar story – strong starts in San Diego and Washington but trouble against this same Reds team he will face tonight. What’s funny is if you look at the game breakdowns and compare Widener’s good starts with his lone bad one – almost everything is identical – with one glaring exception, his BABIP.
In his two strong starts – his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) – was .200 and .222 while against the Reds, it shot to .316. For context – the league average BABIP is .285 – meaning that the Reds saw some serious good fortune against Widener the first start, finding holes on their batted balls in what seems to be a statistical outlier.
Now if my read is correct and the Arizona/Cincinnati game is where the bats are popular – using the arms in it gives us leverage, meaning stacking the bats in Pittsburgh/Detroit bats may give us added leverage if this is where folks default to for arms.
Of the four arms on this slate – Mitch Keller (51%) and Jose Urena (47%) are actually giving up the most hard contact of any of the starting pitchers and their struggles with LHB, could spell big time trouble in this spot today.
Keller on the season is giving up a .269 ISO mark and 59% hard contact rate to LHB and the Tigers have a projected line-up tonight with 7 left-handed batters among them. With Grossman-Candelario-Castro at the top of the order, all hitting from the left side, and rookie sensation Akil Baddoo and his .500 ISO against RHP this season down in the order, I think there are a lot of ways to attack this Tigers stack against Keller.
The book on Urena has been written in pen at this point because it ain’t changing – are you a left-handed batter against Jose Urena? Yes? OK proceed to the player pool for insertion into our MLB DFS picks.
Since 2019, Urena has a .224 ISO mark against LHB which is a full .100 higher then his mark against RHB so right at the top of this lineup we see guys like Adam Frazier, Bryan Reynolds and Colin Moran are going to jump out at us.
Urena throws his sinker over 60% of the time to LHB and really – the one batter that profiles well against it is Adam Frazier, with a .238 ISO mark against that pitch type.
Now do not be afraid to stack the righties here and I say this because you don’t want to JUST attack Urena, you also want the Tigers bullpen which has the worst ERA in the majors, the most HR’s allowed and has surrendered the most hard contact (45%) of any bullpen in the big leagues this season! If Pittsburgh gets through Urena with a crooked number, the worst pen in baseball awaits for your stacking pleasure!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Main Slate Breakdown
If you thought this five game MLB DFS Main Slate would be more straight-forward, well I am sorry to tell you – it is not going to be pretty.
We have two elite K arms on the slate, frankly only two – with Walker Buehler and Christian Javier – and while I do not love the spots, I will continue to push the story every single day for DraftKings GPP’s – K’s are king.
However, the metrics and the narrative changes relatively quickly with someone like Buehler, depending on how you split up the seasons. In 2020 – he had a 32% K rate, 13% SS rate and 30% CSW rate and every single one of those metrics thus far in 2021 have plummeted – to a 17% K rate, 9% SS rate and 28% CSW rate. Now tack on that he is giving up a career high 44% hard contact rate and faces the San Diego Padres loaded line-up and there are plenty of reasons to look elsewhere.
Javier meanwhile takes his electric K ability, especially to right-handers with a 31% mark, and gets the same right-handed heavy Angels line-up we thought we would see yesterday with 6 RHB in it. Well, we know the Angels went lefty heavy against Folty, and honestly could work something similar here again today which would flip the script a bit on Javier but if he gets this RH line-up he could dominate.
Javier’s slider is his DFS ceiling pitch – one that has generated a 53 and 39% CSW rate thus far with a 46% swing and miss (whiff) rate. His biggest difference in two starts – he had a 60% first strike rate in his last game compared to his 26% rate in the first game. Get ahead of batters, then put them away with the slider – seems like an easy formula to execute right?
My dude Adam already highlighted arguably the pitcher in the best form though in Alex Cobb and I think for those who are not paying attention, they may not realize the change in pitch type that is driving this huge increase in strikeout stuff. The Astros also leave Coors Field to head back to Houston and it may be anecdotal, but I love attacking teams the first game outside of Coors Field and the thin air.
Lastly, I have interest in Nick Pivetta against the Mariners and much of this is due to their marks against RHP this season more than anything else. On the season, Seattle has a 27% K rate against RHP which ranks among the highest marks in baseball, while also having one of the top 5 highest soft contact rates (20.1%) while also walking at one of the lowest marks (7%).
So to summarize – they strike out a lot, do not walk and when they make contact it is like a wet noodle.
Pivetta is sporting an 11.2% SS rate on the year so the swing and miss stuff is real and while his walk rate struggles are a concern, if the Marines are not a team that looks to work counts – maybe this is the perfect spot to balance that out!
I apologize in advance – but I am doing it.
I am going back to the Mets bats here tonight – in fact, I am going back to this game in Wrigley Field in general with the Cubs and Mets.
My guess is that the Cubs bats are popular against LHP Joey Lucchesi tonight after they outburst on Tuesday and honestly, the pitch data supports going back to it. Lucchesi is going to rely nearly 60% of the time on sinker to right-handed batters and oh boy – the Cubs primary RHB jump off the page with this pitch.
Willson Contreras has a .727 ISO mark and 67% hard contact rate, Javier Baez has a .684 ISO mark and Kris Bryant has a .330 ISO mark – meaning, this could spell seriously hard contact woes for the Mets lefty.
On the other side of this – the Mets are going to break out tonight. Book it. Lock it. DO IT.
Trevor Williams is a low K arm who has given up a .190 ISO mark to LHB since 2019 while the right-handed batters have actually been his issue with a .243 ISO mark.
Williams is basically a two pitch pitcher – fastball/change to LHB and fastball/slider to RHB.
With a left-handed heavy line-up opposing him – looking at that change-up is key. All of the Mets big lefty bats have .200+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Lindor, Smith, and Conforto hitting it for power. The slider meanwhile to RHB, Mr. Alonso has a .247 ISO mark and a 50% hard contact rate against it – so you hang one of those bad boys with the wind blowing out at 15 MPH today at Wrigley and it is Polar Bear SZN SON!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
If you are a GPP player for MLB DFS, these are the kind of slates you have to love because the strategy ends up being almost a bigger part of your process than simply “picking the top guys.”
We have two underwhelming pitching slates which I think gives us the chance to build around bats and live in a mid-range with our arms while still capturing K upside which is key.
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!
