Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday 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: Main Slate Pitching Picks
We have a monster 13 game MLB DFS slate here on Tuesday with not a single weather concern to worry about and frankly, a really intriguing GPP slate.
From a pitching perspective, this is an incredibly top-heavy player pool with Mad Max, Buehler, Giolito and Javier up top, and as the President of the “Double Aces” roster club, this seems like the obvious place to start. As he always does, Adam Strangis does an incredible job of his pitching deep dive in today’s Starting Rotation and so I would implore you to read it for more on how to prioritize these elite arms.
However, there are some bats I really want today – and so finding value arms could be a way to differentiate from the builds that go top-heavy with their pitching picks. So let’s go dumpster diving!
One of the first spots we need to go seemingly every slate these days is to find the pitcher going against the K heavy Texas Rangers and then use them. Today – the lucky winner is Jose Quintana ($6.5K) – who will make his second straight starts against Texas after an 8 K outing where he racked up 21.7 DK points and as you can see from our friends at Statmuse – left-handed pitchers have had consistent success against Texas this season.
What is amazing to me about Quintana’s last start is that while he had 8K’s, he really did it without getting a ton of swinging strikes, in fact he had just an 8.4% swinging strike rate. What Quintana did really well was get called strikes early in the count, in fact he had a 75% first strike rate which was markedly up from his 50% rate over his first two games and that was in large part due to a serious change in his pitching approach.
Quintana used his fastball nearly 63% of the time against Texas after not using it more than 50% in his first two starts and where he was change-up heavy through his first two starts at 25%, he all but abandoned that against the Rangers, throwing it just 6% of the time, and instead relied heavily on his curveball which he threw a season-high 24% of the time.
I also found this interesting – the Angels made the decision after his first two starts to change Quintana’s position on the rubber for that starts against Texas – moving to the first base side of the rubber after he set up on the third-base side the first two outings. This article from the OC Register really dives into the reasons why, but this quote to me was telling.
“We give these guys the information because we want them to buy in and he made the decision on his own,” pitching coach Matt Wise said. “Sliding back over to the first base side makes it easier to command the breaking ball. And his fastball we think plays a little bit better over there. So he bought in. He was pretty excited about it when he’s has been getting off the mound recently.”
Jeff Fletcher via OC Register
So to me this is not just one tweak in his pitch mix, or the single decision to change his position on the mound – it appears this was a cumulative effort to change his approach and against Texas it worked incredibly well as he gave up just 2 hits and racked up 8 K’s – so I am ready for a repeat here today.
After Adam and I hit on the Matt Harvey play at 1% ownership yesterday against the ice-cold New York Yankees – can we go right back to the well and attack Bruce Zimmermann ($6.1K) against the same Bomber bats?
Listen, the Yankees are a talented offense – there is no doubt – and at some point the “back of the baseball card” will prove itself out but this team is lost right now at the plate, failing to make any sort of consistent contact and racking up swings and misses.
Today they face LHP Bruce Zimmermann, who has racked up some solid K metrics early in 2021 with a 12% SS rate and much of that is due to a change in approach this season, with a heavier reliance on his curveball – which as you can see below, is filthy.
You can see a serious maturation with Zimmermann in 2021 with increased velocity on his fastball and more swings and misses on his slider.
And last but not least – his change-up, a key cog to attacking right-handed heavy line-ups like the Yankees – is another dangerous out pitch for him.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – Big Bat Stacks:
Now I spent all the time digging into a double punt strategy with Quintana/Zimmermann for a reason – we want bats, and we want ones that can carry us to a big MLB DFS score.
The first stop today is going to be in Chicago where the White Sox take on RHP Jose Urena and the awful Tigers bullpen. Now Urena’s always been a clear splits pitcher – struggling against LHB and limiting his issues to RHB, which at first glance may not seem like the spot to attack since the White Sox are a right-handed heavy team outside of Yasmani Grandal, Yoan Moncada and Adam Eaton.
However, past Urena, we have the worst bullpen in the bigs – giving up the most runs and most HR’s and I absolutely love this visual from Keith Lott to show how teams pitching staffs chart. It is not simply about attacking the SP but the bullpen behind them – and so when we get a bad starter like Urena and a league-worst bullpen behind him – it becomes an elite spot to attack.
I will prioritize both Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada with a focus on their splits as both have .200+ ISO marks against RHP and have .225+ ISO marks and 40% HC rates against Urena’s primary pitch – the splitter. However, after those, do not be afraid to take power bats from the right side as no pen in baseball is giving up more HR’s or more hard contact to opposing batters.
The other spot I am going right back to today – the New York Mets.
Part of this is about attacking Garret Richards, a pitcher with a 7+ xFIp, a walk rate of 15% which is higher than his 14% K rate and one who is giving up 44% HC rate. The other part of this is that the Mets bats are starting to wake up and watching them over the weekend, especially Sunday, you saw a team that was getting on base and hitting for power.
Richards is essentially a one pitch pitcher right now – literally, like one pitch. Against Toronto last outing, he threw his fastball 73% of the time – what is this little league?
For a pitch that generated just a 9% swing and miss rate, not sure exactly why he thinks the ole #1 is what he should rely on – but hey, if you want to throw 93MPH fastballs that batters don’t generate swing and misses on nearly 75% of the time, God bless ya!
I am sure this won’t surprise you – but the Mets hit the fastball with that velocity quite well – frankly what competent Major League team would not. Every single batter other than Jeff McNeil has a .225 ISO mark against the pitch type with Pete Alonso and Michael Conforto both with .500+ ISO marks against it.
Richards is struggling with command, and so combine that with his inability to get swing and misses and you see a scenario where the Mets get runners on base, and then hammer Richards for crooked numbers. I am calling it right now – Nimmo lead-off walk, followed by a Polar Bear bomb in the first inning.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap Up
On a slate with so much top-end pitching, I certainly thought I would end on double aces but with my focus on the big bats in Chicago and New York, I am going to take the approach of using cheap arms with K upside tonight that will unlock a unique GPP path and also likely give us continued leverage off some chalky stacks that are ice-cold!
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