Brian Tulloch 
Welcome to the Tuesday, June 29th 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 in to a monster 15 game MLB DFS slate where we have tons of aces, stacks upon stacks of big bats in warm weather and a game in Coors Field so go ahead and buckle in because this one is going to take some time!
Let me start here because any time we get a slate this deep, I think it is worth repeating – you need to minimize your player pool or you are going to get WILDLY overwhelmed.
I have already read Adam’s Starting Rotation and Jared’s Aces and Bases and guess what – they are right and I nodded along to every play they outlined.
That’s the thing – there are a TON of good plays today, more than you are going to be able to play and if you are a single entry player like me, these slates can seem insane at times but if you anchor back to your core strategies, you will find a way through to strong builds.
So what is OUR core philosophy here in Picks and Pivots? Any time we can anchor to a double ace build with high strikeout arms, that is where we want to start and here today that is exactly where I want to start my path with both Brandon Woodruff and Robbie Ray.
Over the last month of action, there are only NINE qualified arms in baseball that have both a 30%+ K rate and a 30%+ CSW rate (called strikes plus whiff rates) – and four of them actually take the hill tonight with Woodruff, Ray, Lucas Giolito and Kevin Gausman.
Now take the same time frame and look at the bats in baseball and who is striking out a lot – over the last 30 days, no two teams strike out more than the Cubs (29.8%) and Mariners (27.3%) – who both just so happen to be facing Mr. Woodruff and Mr. Ray.
This is an instance where the recent performance AND the match-up align for ceiling games and when that happens, I want to find ways to simply anchor to that path.
Now, going for two arms that cost you around $11K on DraftKings each means we have to get creative with bats and finding stacks that offer high/low salary stacks is where I want to start.
Now, Adam already touched on the fact we have Shohei Ohtani in Yankee stadium and I think this is a spot that may allow us high/low stacking in an advantageous spot. James Taillon is an arm we have attacked all year long in the right spots – those spots being when he faced left-handed power because his .227 ISO and 50% fly ball mark are big-time red flags!
Now put Taillon in Yankee Stadium with the short porch in RF and you wonder why the metrics spike to a 58% fly-ball rate and a 2.6 HR/9 rate against lefties. So yeah Ohtani is the big bat – but how about the fact we have multiple $2K punts from the left side in Scott Schebler and Luis Rengifo that you can use to balance out the cost of someone like Ohtani while still attacking the same splits we want with the bigger Angels bats like Ohtani or Jared Walsh.
The other spot that stands out to me – well, it ain’t gonna surprise you – but it came out in my research on Taillon that there is another arm that has similar struggled against left-handed power – Joe Ross of the Washington Nationals. Guess who he faces today? Yep, the left-handed heavy Tampa Bay Rays.
If you look at all qualified starting pitchers this season, Ross ranks as one of the top 5 in all of baseball in terms of hard contact allowed to left-handed batters with a whopping 49.3% rate. Much like Taillon – take those marks into his home park and his 50%+ fly ball rate and 2+ HR/9 rate to LHB stands out.
Take it one step further and Ross, who throws his splitter nearly 40% of the time to LHB has to take on Austin Meadows – who jumps off the page with a .240 ISO and average distance of over 340 feet on that pitch type. Meadows is going deep tonight and we will get him under 5% owned as we always do. Keep fading – we won’t.
Much like with Ohtani and the Angels, we have punt options on the Rays side we can pair Meadows with – including $2K OF Kevin Kiermaier. Again, much like Schebler, this is a spot where you can take a pure punt you are attacking with the same splits and pair them with a high-dollar bat from the same team which helps you afford the big arms we want to anchor to.
MLB DFS Picks and Pivots – The Wrap-Up
We have a really strong MLB DFS Picks and Pivots slate today and one that I think we need to stay disciplined on in our builds as casting our net too wide, could mean we over extend ourselves.
The key to me on this slate and a spot where I think we can help keep ourselves condensed in our process is to anchor to both aces in Woodruff/Ray tonight who get the perfect on paper upside match-up.
That will require value but as I outlined above, I think we have paths to that early and that is before we even get the 30 MLB teams confirmed lineups.
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!
