Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Thursday, June 24th 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 small slate Thursday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots where we have just an 8 game Main Slate with some pitching options that are gross, horrible, and downright poo. You excited yet?
As far as starting pitching goes – there really is not much to say beyond what Adam broke down in Starting Rotation and to tell you there are better paths as pure plays than Walker Buehler and Luis Garcia would be lying to you.
The thing with MLB DFS is, especially on small slates, are we have to find ways to think strategically if we want to pivot off the field and while Buehler and Garcia are good plays – they also do not posses the ceiling that I think is insurmountable if we fade them and let our bats do the talking.
Going past these two tonight is dicey but I do think we have some paths and one of my favorites is Carlos Martinez ($6.3K) against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Martinez is not a high K arm, the reality is – nobody in the mid to low range on this slate is – but he does have a match-up that he can take advantage of and has already this season. Back on May 2nd, C-Mart went 8 shutout innings, allowing just 5 total hits on 12 ground balls with 3 K’s on his way to 22 DK points – a total which would smash his salary at tonight’s price point.
The Pirates line-up is the ideal match-up for Martinez in that they hit for essentially no power against right-handed pitching, in fact they rank dead last in team ISO at .123 against RHP this season. Not surprisingly they also rank as the highest soft contact rate (20.4%), lowest hard contact rate (27.3%) and have a 44% ground ball rate which all plays into Martinez’s style.
The path for Martinez is all about ground ball outs, soft contact and easy outs – that is really it. The risk any time you play a path like this is if BABIP is not on his side, he does not have the swing and miss stuff to make up for it, but you could argue there is no better match-up if you are playing this type of arm tonight.
You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts.
Jean Carlos Mejia ($4.7K) against the Minnesota Twins.
Listen, this one is not going to be an easy sell and I get it – but we all know my stack tonight is going to be the Tampa Bay Rays so let’s not act like we need to rush to get to the next part – OK? Cool.
Mejia has converted from the Indians bullpen and has now made a series of starts and they, well, have not gone well. In fact, he is coming off his worst outing of the year where he gave up 6 ER’s and 7 hits in 5 innings to the aforementioned Pirates who cannot hit right-handed pitching.
I promise – there is a selling point here.
Mejia is a strikeout arm from his minor league profile with 26-27% K rates over the last two years in the minor league system as a result of a darting fastball/sinker that generates ground balls and a plus slider that gets swing and misses as you can see below.
Mejia has been crazy unlucky so far, and his 6.11 ERA is FAR higher than his 3 xFIP – in fact, it is one of the most extreme ” positive regression” marks of any pitcher in baseball this season. In the last two starts, he has a .333 BABIP despite the fact he is giving up minimal hard contact and has just a 2.8% walk rate.
He is not as bad as these few starts have shown and while I can quote “sample size” like some moronic touts in the industry do – I do not want to get Adam Strangis all fired up and have him body slam me when I argue the appropriate sample size amount.
That slider is going to be what gets us profit – its the biggest swing and miss offering he has and it comes mostly to right-handed batters. The Twins are only projected to have 3 righties – Cruz, Sano and Simmons – in the line-up tonight so that does limit his ceiling but let’s keep an eye on the line-up they roll out because the more righties the better.
There is massive risk here but there is a pedigree that I think we need to understand and the advanced stats tell us there is positive regression coming his way – this is the kind of first or last play in GPP that could make our break our night.
Part of the reason I want to look at cheap arms – is because I want bats – ALL OF THE BATS.
Let’s get this out of the way –Nick Pivetta against the Rays.
Lock. Load. Rays. Go.
Pivetta has a .200+ ISO mark to both sides of the plate since the start of last year and this Rays team has a .205 ISO mark against RHP – and that is before you add in the power of Wander Franco.
The Rays drew minuscule ownership the last two days even with Wander Franco being a popular one-off – but now he is up to $3.8K on DK this is a spot where everyone goes back to ignoring them and we get the stack at single-digit ownership AGAIN.
The other spot that is hard to ignore tonight is the Toronto Blue Jays against RHP Dean Kremer. Kremer’s metrics are just awful to both sides of the plate – arguably the worst of any arm tonight – with a .250 ISO, 50% fly ball, and 50% hard contact combo that has resulted in a 2.4 HR/9 rate this season.
With George Springer ($3.8K) now back – this Jays line-up is insane and I am not sure how any pitcher, let alone a terrible one with a bad bullpen behind him, is able to navigate it.
Bats win you this slate – and the Jays/Rays combo is the high upside path I want to anchor to tonight!
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
At first glance you may look at this 8 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and think it is a night to avoid because of the lack of pitching, but these slates tend to be my favorite because it forces you to think outside the box.
On a night where bats are going to win you the slate, finding a path to cheap arms is key and I think between Adam and I – we have laid out some solid, albeit risky, plays that get you all the bats your heart desires!
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!
