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 15thto 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 back my friends to a full MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate here on Tuesday Night and after we absolutely CRUSHED last night’s slate courtesy of some Rays and Astros HR Derby – we are back at it again tonight and ready to build our bankroll higher!
When looking at a huge slate like we have tonight, remember – there are a ton of good spots but trying to capture all of them in our builds is going to leave us in a constant state of tinkering, so instead I want to reiterate how critical it is to limit our player pool and really try to concentrate on our core build strategy.
Much like we had last night, we have one very clear-cut SP1 with a massive strikeout ceiling in Corbin Burnes ($10.2K) who gets a significant splits advantage as Mr. Cole got in his spot last night. Burnes has a 41.1% K rate this season to right-handed batters and tonight he will face a St. Louis team with 7 of the 9 projected batters hitting from the right side. In his only other start this season against the Cardinals, Burnes struck out 9 batters on his way to 30+ DK points and I think anchoring to these high ceiling SP1’s as a single entry GPP player is a core start each and every day.
Going high/low tonight with pitching looks to be ideal and pairing Burnes with a $7K Vladimir Gutierrez against the Cubs feels like a high K pairing with a serious ceiling.
No team in baseball is striking out more than the Cubs right now – 27.2% over the last month, 31.5% over the last 14 days, and 30.4% over the last week. Sort the data set however you want – in the words of the great Jay Sherman – THEY STINK!
Guttierez comes into this game in great recent form as well with 4 straight starts of 6+ innings, 4-6 K’s per game, 2 or fewer runs allowed, and 19-23 DK points in every single start. In these four starts, you are seeing the Reds right-hander pound the zone with 62% first-pitch strikes, while his fastball velocity has ticked up and he is using his secondary pitches like the change-up and slider more often.
Over the last two weeks, attacking the Cubs with pitching has paid off essentially every night with 10 of the 14 pitchers going for 14+ DK points, 6 going for 20+, and 3 going for 30+. To say this is a ceiling match-up would be an understatement and we should attack it every chance we get.
Going with a Burnes/Gutierrez pairing on DraftKings allows you the ability to really go after some big bats and the place that jumps out to me tonight is the Los Angeles Dodgers against RHP Wil Crowe of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Crowe is giving up a .200+ ISO mark and 40%+ hard contact rate to hitters from both sides of the plate in 2021 so stacking against him allows us to mix and match and worry far less about one side of the splits. Left-handed batters have the higher fly-ball tendency against Crowe, although the righties have been his HR bugaboo with a 2.7 HR/9 rate this season to RHB.
If we dig into the pitch type, against left-handed batters Crowe is going to rely heavily on his change-up, throwing it a third of the time and giving up a .231 ISO and 55% HC rate with it with both Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger profiling the best against this pitch type.
The fastball around 93-94 MPH is where Crowe lives primarily to both sides of the plate around 40% of the time and this is not only a fastball that generates little swing and miss activity (just 18% whiff rate) but it also gets hit hard to the tune of a .341 ISO and 40% HC rate.
The Dodgers have a plethora of options that hammer a mid 90’s fastball from right-handed pitchers – in fact, 7 hitters in the projected line-up have a 200+ ISO mark and all 8 have a 45% or higher hard contact rate against it.
I love this stack every single way you can slice it and the pricing is such where you can easily afford a stack, especially if we get $2.1K Billy McKinney in the OF again.
The Dodgers have a near 6 IRT run total – right in line with the Coors Field bats and as we saw last night, any time Coors is on the slate it is going to soak up the ownership and leave these “other” high profile stacks lower owned than they should.
Finding the right mini-stack to correlate alongside the Dodgers is key and well, would you look at this – don’t the Tampa Bay Rays sit nicely alongside the Dodger Blue.
The Rays get a match-up with LHP John Means followed by the super awful Baltimore Orioles bullpen and I think going right back to the well here with Tampa is a great strategy, especially from the right side.
Over the last 30 days, Means has shown serious splits – basically avoid the lefties and attack at will with righties. Right-handed batters have a massive .312 ISO with a 45% fly-ball rate and 40%+ hard contact rate while Means has just a 15% K rate against that side of the plate.
During this last month, Means is relying far less on his fastball to right-handed batters and with a .714 ISO and 56% HC rate allowed – well, even throwing it 37% of the time may be too much. Instead, Means has elevated his change-up usage and this is a pitch type that Nelson Cruz and Mike Zunino both HAMMER! Cruz has a .364 ISO and 49% HC rate which would seem awesome until you see Zunino rocking a .515 ISO, 50% HC rate, and an average distance traveled of 353 feet!
Also, I hate BvP but this is just stupid – Mike Brosseau is 5 for 11 against Means with 4 of the 5 hits being HR’s. That seems almost impossible.
Means has given up 2+ HR’s now in 6 of his last 10 games including twice to the Rays and is coming off a start against the Tigers where he gave up 3 HR’s and I think using the Rays as an HR based mini-stack tonight could pay big-time dividends.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We step back and look at this 15 game MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate and you can see a very clear path being drawn out with high ceiling strikeout arms that still afford us the ability to get the big bats we will need.
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!
