Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Thursday, July 1 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!
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Early Slate Breakdown
Welcome into another split slate MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have five early games and the common theme today will be the threat of rain and thunderstorms as many ballparks will be in the path of storms amidst a nationwide heatwave!
After navigating through some horrendous pitching yesterday, I am happy to report today is loaded with top-tier arms so our builds will feel much more stable when anchoring to the arms at our disposal.
The early slate has a few select aces with Carlos Rodon, Jose Berrios and Sean Manaea all pitching in the later half of the slate and all of them are in games that are free from rain risk which is a massive plus.
Carlos Rodon ($10.2K) is the lone arm over $10K on this slate and we are getting him at a discount compared to his salary in recent starts despite the fact he had a 31% K rate on those outings with 8 K’s each. The strikeout stuff for Rodon has stayed consistent despite the pitching world seemingly crumbling around Major League Baseball with the crackdown on the sticky stuff.
While there have been countless examples of pitchers who have seen their spin rates drop drastically since the crackdown – there is nothing in Rodon’s pitch arsenal that has seen a material change as you can see from this view into Baseball Savant.
While the opposing line-up of Minnesota has some pop with Donaldson/Cruz, they also have three hitters in the heart of the order with 30%+ K rates against LHP with Larnach, Jeffers, and Sano – so the upside for Rodon remains and at a price discount relative to his market rate, I think he makes for an ideal SP1.
Sean Manaea ($9K) is another arm we get at a discount today, as he has been at $10K each of his last three starts so this 10% discount feels like something we should jump on especially at home versus the K happy Texas Rangers.
Manaea has always had a home/road split worth noting pitching in Oakland, where his HR/9 rate drops, his K rate ticks up and his batted ball profile actually shifts slighty to more fly balls which does not hurt him nearly as much in his home digs.
The K upside with Manaea comes from left-handed batters as he has a 30% rate since last year against LHB, a 10% increase on his right-handed numbers and while Texas may only have Joey Gallo and Nate Lowe hit from that side, the simple truth is the more lefties the better.
Let’s stay in Oakland for a second shall we? If we want a stack today that has no rain risk, the Athletics bats may be the way to go against RHP Dane Dunning.
There may not be a lot in the surface stats on Dunning to think we should attack him but when you dig deeper into his pitch type, boy oh boy – it starts to get interesting.
Dunning is a heavy sinker arm, throwing it well over 50% to hitters from both sides of the plate and this Oakland team is just LOADED with bats that hammer that pitch type.
From the left side of the plate, batters have really hit this pitch with some serious authority against Dunning, with left-handed batters this season having a 56% hard contact rate, just a 4% whiff rate and an average distance traveled of over 311 feet.
The Oakland LHB, like Matt Olson, Tony Kemp and Mitch Moreland all have .250+ ISO marks against that pitch type with Olson/Moreland bot with 330+ average distance marks. Unfortunately on DK you have to pick and choose one or the other but what I will say – I plan to have an Oakland 1B in that spot today!
The RHB on Oakland has similarly strong profiles as well with all of Matt Chapman (.290), Sean Murphy (.242) and Ramon Laureano (.235) all sporting big ISO numbers against this pitch type which really helps us mix and match and round out this stack!
With no rain risk here and winds blowing out to RF at 10 MPH, I think anchoring to an Oakland stack with bats from both sides that hit the sinker well, is a way to build safety without sacrificing upside on a dicey early weather slate!
Want to take this one step further – why not take in the White Sox game as well for our secondary stack against Jose Berrios? Yes, I know I mentioned Berrios as an ace level arm but take a peek at his splits – if I told you there was an arm tonight that has given up a .257 ISO and 46% hard contact rate to left-handed batters, would you not be interested?
The White Sox are projected to have five batters from the right side tonight – with some high-end batters like Grandal/Moncada but also some serious value with Brian Goodwin, Gavin Sheets and Luery Garcia all offering you sub $3K value to mix and match from the left side.
With the wind blowing out 10-15 MPH, and Berrios having a 1.6 HR/9 rate against LHB this year, I would use the White Sox as a secondary power stack and go home run hunting against Berrios!
Main Slate Breakdown
Switching gears to the 7 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots Main Slate, we have similar rain risk with serious concerns in Washington and Colorado – so let’s outline a path with those games out of our initial player pool.
As Adam Strangis broke down in today’s Starting Rotation ($) – the clear path is to just rock with Jacob deGrom and Corbin Burnes and rather than wax poetic about deGOAT and Burnes elite K ability, I will just say Adam is right and this is the path I am going with – double aces and done.
Going with this build means we have just under $3.7K per batter and frankly, that does not seem like nearly as big of a challenge with how soft the pricing is on DraftKings for this Main Slate.
The one offense that jumps off the page to me tonight as significantly under-priced is the Houston Astros who head to play the Indians in Cleveland.
Now, I know I have been on JC Mejia as a cheap MLB DFS arm, but sometimes being able to dive into arms on previous slates, leads you to find weaknesses to attack on future slates and that is exactly what we have here.
Mejia has significant struggles with left-handed bats this year in limited sample size, surrendering a massive 55% hard contact rate and digging into the pitch types, I think we have a chance to attack this.
Mejia is a sinker ball arm, throwing it 50% to both sides of the plate and the left-handed batters on Houston profile extremely well against this pitch type.
Yordan Alvarez is the top bat here, with a massive .362 ISO and 54% HC rate against this pitch type while we get an elite punt catcher in Jason Castro ($2.2K) who has a .200 ISO and 55% HC rate against that pitch type.
The Astros by and large got a price drop with guys like Kyle Tucker and Michael Brantley sitting below $4K on DraftKings and with them being the away team – we get nine innings of guaranteed at-bats here tonight.
The one right-handed batter that stands out is Carlos Correa as he has a .221 ISO and 45% HC rate against the splitter and allows you to round out a stack with a premium play at SS.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Today’s split slate MLB DFS Picks and Pivots approach is essentially the polar opposite of yesteray in that I think on both slates we need to anchor to double ace attacks and we can largely do so with under-priced premium stacking options.
The key for me today is to avoid the risk and that means the rain – if we can find builds early in the day in spots with no rain concerns to build around, it gives us a massive advantage as other players will be forced to react and scramble later as thunderstorms erupt.
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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