Gary Gustafson 
Welcome to the Tuesday, June 22nd 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 back to a loaded Tuesday MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate where we have 14 games to sort through, a ton of aces and what looks to be an all-clear on weather which is helpful on a slate this large.
When opening up this slate, what stood out to me at first glance was how top-heavy the arms seemed with multiple high-end strikeout arms including Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, Zack Wheeler, Freddy Peralta and Lucas Giolito.
As Adam Strangis does every day here at Win Daily – he absolutely nailed the pitching breakdown in today’s Starting Rotation and we are in lock step with our pitching pool – well, with one exception.
Now this is not to say Adam did not write this man up, he did – but I do not think Adam beat the table enough for one Tarik Skubal. Now, maybe it is because Adam is just genuinely less aggressive than me, maybe because he also writes his articles at 1 AM when he is tired – but screw that noise, I am here bright and early with some strong coffee to tell you Tarik Skubal should be in your SP1 discussion while priced as a bargain SP2!
Want to play a fun game? Of course you do! And honestly, even if you don’t we are doing it anyways because it is my article and you are required to keep reading. See, I told you Adam was nicer.
Since May 1st – want to guess who the top 5 strikeout arms in baseball are with a minimum of 40 innings pitched?
Some of the names are going to be likely guesses including studs like Mad Max and Tyler Glasnow but there is a trio of lefties in the top 5 including Carlos Rodon and Robbie Ray and one Tarik Daniel Skubal, whose 33.7% K rate is higher than other names on tonight’s slate like Wheeler, Peralta, Kershaw, Giolito and Mr. Gerrit Stickytack Cole.
This is not me skewing numbers, literally you are getting one of the BEST strikeout arms in baseball tonight for $6,600 on DraftKings. Seriously, that is actually cheaper than playing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. tonight who is $6.7K.
Since May, in this most recent 8 game stretch, you are seeing the strikeout stuff spike for Skubal with a near 34% K rate and 13% SS rate and you can actually argue that he has been wildly unlucky as his .348 BABIP is significantly higher than the league average of .290.
What really has taken Skubal to new heights recently is his slider which has been a dangerous weapon against right-handed heavy line-ups and in games recently where he threw it over 20% (versus CWS twice, Seattle and Cleveland) – he racked up 6, 9, 9 and 11 punchouts.
What is interesting with Skubal is that his slider grades out as his best put-away pitch, and while his recent success you may think is because he is using it more – actually the inverse is true – he is using it less than he did to start the season but he is throwing it more effectively as in April this was graded out as a negative pitch type for him and now it has flipped to his most valuable pitch since May 1st.
The addition of a change-up has really helped keep hitters off balance on the right side and his increased use of the splitter has seemingly taken his game to new heights and with all 3 pitches sporting 40%+ whiff rates against right-handed batters, the path to ceiling is once again there for the Tigers lefty.
I am spending this time on Skubal because of the context I want to lay out – this is a slate now where you can get the Picks and Pivots favorite – DOUBLE ACES – but you are doing so basically with a punt SP2 as one of those aces.
This is very similar to the slates we have had with Shohei Ohtani, where he is priced in the $7-$8K range despite being one of the best K arms in baseball and we can pair him with a high-dollar stud to get two “aces” without having to pay the market price. Today with Skubal we are getting an even steeper discount so using him as your SP2 and pairing him with a $10K type arms gives you a path to locking in two 30%+ K rate arms with all the salary you want to stack bats.
Now with a high/low ace pairing – where oh where do we go with our bats.
14 game slate so we probably have a lot of paths right?
Totally not going to go to the usual suspects – let’s mix it up right?
WRONG.
Hello once again Tampa Bay Rays bats.
Now the reason I started here was that I was excited to see where the #1 prospect in baseball, Wander Franco would be priced in his MLB debut tonight and I go to find that DraftKings was asleep and left him at $2K. Seriously- $2K.
This is likely to bring some ownership the way of my favorite stack in MLB DFS but I simply do not care – against LHP Eduardo Rodriguez, I want to get me some Tampa Bay Rays stacking!
E-Rod is giving up a .200 ISO mark to hitters from both sides of the plate with a 44% hard contact rate to LHB and a 38% HC rate to RHB and with the addition of Franco to this Rays line-up you get an amazing combination of power/speed and R/L bats at all different price points to take advantage of this match-up.
From the right side – Randy Arozarena and Mike Zunino stand out with .255 and .320 ISO marks respectively against southpaws since the start of 2020 and Zunino specifically has MASSIVE fly ball tendencies (55%) which is exactly the kind of batted ball profile you want against a lefty who is trying to get ground ball outs.
We mentioned the struggles with power and hard contact for E-Rod against lefties and this is where you make stacks different by playing L/L as MLB DFS players will almost always over-look these plays in their stacks. We saw this last night as an example where the Reds bats from the right side were major chalk and then Joey Votto was there in the middle of the line-up and came in at 5-10% ownership.
Remember – if this stack goes off and is hitting, thus knocking E-Rod out, the “splits” you anchored to no longer matter as you get into the bullpens and now it becomes a totally different ball game! Over the last two weeks – the Red Sox bullpen has been one of the worst in all of baseball, giving up a league-leading 14 HR’s and sitting in the bottom 5 in runs allowed.
However back to E-Rod, I would argue his approach versus lefties is a reason to attack here as Brandon Lowe has a .210 ISO mark, with a 40%+ plus FB and HC rate against lefties since the start of last season. Austin Meadows, the Captain of the Picks and Pivots ship, absolutely hammers the splitter from lefties which is what Rodriguez will throw nearly a third of the time and Meadows has a .267 ISO and 40% HC rate against!
The Rays bats are always going to be one of my favorite stacks because of their ability to hit for power and the pricing tonight, as a result of the Wander Franco free-square makes this an easy stack to anchor to without having a high average salary per player.
The other stack that really stands out to me tonight is the Chicago Cubs against RHP Eli Morgan of the Cleveland Indians. Morgan simply looks like he was rushed to the Major League level after throwing just 20 innings above AA and has struggled in his first two big-league outings with 9 ER and 3 HR allowed in just 6 innings of work across two starts. My focus here would be at the top of the Cubs order where all of Joc Pederson, Kris Bryant, Javy Baez and Anthony Rizzo have .200+ ISO marks and 40%+ hard contact rates against RHP.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
Stepping back and looking at this MLB DFS Picks and Pivots stack, the build coming into the day seemed really clear and the Win Daily Discord crew knew it was coming – double aces and a Rays stack at the core.
However, the approach may not be as cut and dry as I think we can go double aces in a whole new way today as a result of the under-pricing on Tarik Skubal. Anchoring to him as a high K SP2, gives us the ability to go high/low with 30%+ K rate arms and still loading up on big time bats and stacks!
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!
